The Works of John Ruskin

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

w-.w

W.-^z *

\v* •.\f

<c^y

\^C^

j^y

1 ■

i ''U___________________________________________________________________

Two thousand and sixty-two copies qf this edition—qf which two thousand are for sale in England and America—have been printed ai the Battantyne Press, Edinburgh, and the type has been distributed.

II. Vesuvius in Eruption (Photogravure from the drawing by J. M. W. Turner, R.A.) .

V. Blair Athol (Photogravure from the plate in " Liber Studiorum'').......

VI. Dunblane Abbey (Photogravure from the plate in "Liber Studiorum").....

VIII. Greek Dancing Girls (Photogravure from a drawing by Ruskin from a Greek terracotta)

IX. Lady with the Brooch (Photogravure from the oilrsketch by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.)

XII. Psyche received dito Heaven (Photogravure from the design by Sir Edward Burnt-Jones, Bert.) ........ _u u 64

XVII. Mill near the Grande Chartreuse (Photo-gravure from the plate m "Liber Studi-

XX. The Princess Matilda Sophia (Photogravure from the picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P,R.A,) •••••••»» 2M

XXI. Head of an Eagle (Photogravure from a drawing by Ruskin)......„ „ 889

XXIV. Debonnairete (Photogravure from a dramng of a fresco in the Painted Chamber, Westminster) ......To face page 314

XXV. "Things Celestial and Terrestrial as Apparent to the English Mind" (Wood-cuts: the upper one facsimiled^ and the lower two enlarged, from Bewick) ₉₉ _n 565

XXVH. Astrologia : " At Et'nino prom the Top or Fesole" (Photogravure from an Italian ^graving)......$9 t» 381

XXIX. " Heat considered as a Mode op Motion " Florentine Natural Philosophy (Photogravure from an Italian engraving) . „ „ 408 Fig. 8. The Child's Bedtime (Facsimile woodcut from Holbein's "Dance of

Fig. 9. " He that hath Ears to Hear, let him Hear" (Facsimile woodcut from the same).....„ „ 416

k XXXII. The Nvuph Beloved op Apollo (Photo-gravure from the painting Ay Michael ff-X/

JULailL Simlla Hellespontica : "In tub Wood* of Ida" (Photogrmmrt from an Hahan en-pmmg). . . . '■ . . . „ _n 450

_?1 Michael Amsu> and Tihtoret^m (g 11, It).' • „ 84,85 A Page or the MS. or «Tb* Ragle's New" 0 79) . „ 180, 181

This volume continues the series of Buskin's Oxford Lectures from Volume XX., and covers the years 1871 and 1872, to which, however, Fors Clavigera will, in a later volume, take us back. The works here included are: I. Three Lectures on Landscape, delivered in January and February 1871. II. The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret^ and III. The Eagle*s Nest; both of which were delivered in the earlier terms of 1872. IV. Ariadne FlorentinOj delivered in November and December of the same year. In the Appendix are given, as explained below (p. xli.), Notes for two later courses—"Studies in the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds" (1875), and "Readings in Modern Painters™ (1877). This arrangement, which is convenient for the better distribution of the material into volumes approximately of the same length, has the further advantage that the topics mainly treated in these later courses are closely connected with the doctrines enforced in The Eagle's Nest.

In the present Introduction account is first given of Ruskin's life and work during the years 1871 and 1872, so far as, on the one hand, they have not already been covered in the two preceding volumes, and with special reference, on the other hand, to the lectures here collected. Some particulars then follow of the several books contained in the volume.

It will be noticed that in 1871 Ruskin delivered only three lectures at Oxford. He did, however, some work there in the early part of the year in arranging his Collection and organising the Drawing School;¹but there were reasons for the barrenness of the year so far as the Professor's lectures were concerned. Partly, he allowed himself to be distracted by other work; and for the rest, the year was one of personal sorrow and serious illness.

With the beginning of January 1871 commenced the series of monthly letters which he called Fors Clavigera, and which led him, as we shall see in a later volume, into many schemes and activities. A year later he broke with his old publisher, and took into his own hands the publication and sale of his books. Early in 1871 he spent

some time, also, as a member of the .Mansion House Committee which had been formed to send help to Paris, then besieged.

But the year 1871 was also one of domestic upheavals and the breaking of old ties. In April his cousin, Joan, was married to Mr. Arthur Severn, younger son of the " Keats¹ Severn,** who was also a friend of Ruskin and his father.¹ Though the separation was only to be a short one, the departure of his cousin was a heavy loss to Ruskin. Shortly before, he had returned home one day to find his old nurse lying dead Next to that of father and mother, he wrote afterwards* there was no loss which he felt so much as this of " Anne, my father's nurse and mine."* "She was one of our many," he adds—one erf love's meinie in the household at Denmark Hill; and though she was somewhat of a tyrant, and even according to Buskin's mother " possessed by the Devil," Ruskin felt for her something of the clinging affection which Stevenson has expressed so beautifully in the dedication of his Child's Garland of Verse to " My second mother, my first wife." The strength of Ruskin's mother was beginning to fail; and he had further anxiety in the illness of Mrs. Severn from rheumatic fever. As soon as she was able to join him, she did so with her husband. They found him at Matlock Bath, where he had gone for a summer holiday. It was a cold, wet July. Ruskin, up with the sun as ever, was painting a spray of wild rose for his Oxford School.⁸ He caught a chill, and a severe attack of internal inflammation intervened. He was a difficult patient, but he had affectionate nursing from Mrs. Arthur Severn and her husband, and Lady Mount-Temple, and Dr. Acland was in professional attendance. To his friend and physician Ruskin, immediately on recovery, sent the following letter of thanks:—

"My dear Henry,—I was glad to have your letter, beginning myself to get anxious about you, knowing well how much among other things you had been tired by my illness. I am afraid the cheque enclosed will not cover the mere loss of your time, and your kindness I would not, you well know, think of valuing in ways like this.

"I am thankful you are resting at Holnicote. I cannot answer for my own movements at all until I am less anxious about my mother; but she is better since I came home.

" I knew very thoroughly how ill I was; I have not been so near the dark gates since I was a child. But I knew also, better than anybody else could, how strong the last fibres and coils of anchor

were; and though I clearly recognised the danger, should have been much surprised to have found myself dying. I did not quite know how frightened all of you were, or 1 would have comforted you. I am now going to attend to my health as the principal thing, until 1 can He down in Coniston Water.

"I am greatly delighted and relieved in mind by your brother's permission to keep his name as Trustee for the St George's Fund.¹

Buskin had in fact been perilously near to death. The anxiety which his friends had felt on his account appears in a subsequent letter from Carlyle:—

"Dear Ruskin,—I cannot explain to myself the strange, and indeed lamentable, fact that I have not seen you, or heard a distinct word from yoe> for, I think, seven or eight months. It is a fact that has become not only surprising to me, but distressing, and the source latterly of continual anxieties both about myself and you. For three months I had no amanuensis (I in the Highlands; Mary in Dumfries-shire, far away), and without a hand could not write to you myself; about the middle of that period, too, there came the most alarming rumours of your illness at Matlock, and both Lady Ashburton and myself (especially the latter party, for whom I can answer best) were in a state really deserving pity on your account, till the very newspapers took compassion on us, and announced the immediate danger to be past. All this is wrong, and not as it should be. I beg earnestly that, wherever this may find you, you would at once devote one serious half-hour to me, and write a few words of authentic news concerning yourself, and especially a word of prediction as to when 1 may expect to see you again, if ever. The Fort Clavigera sufficiently assures me, from time to time, that it is not want of the old goodwill towards me whieh keeps you silent, but the Fort Clavigera itself (which very few can get hold of, though many are seeking it) awakens anxieties in me instead of satisfying them all. In short, a deliberate bit of letter is indispensable to me for all manner of reasons.

" It is four weeks to-day since I returned hither; said by sanguine friends to be visibly 'improved in health'; felt by myself to be only invisibly so, if at all Now, as formerly, I have my daily (especially my nightly) battle to fight with the innumerable Beasts at Ephesus—human, diabolical, and also of the inanimate sort—which never quit a poor fellow till they have brought

¹ Sir Thomas Dyke Aeland : see Fbr* Otafaers, Letter 9. ' The Ruskin Drawing School: see VoL XXL p. xxix.

him to the ground altogether; against which I faintly, but really sometimes with an earnest wish, endeavour to make fight, though of course with weaker and weaker effect. Froude has returned, and is often asking about you; as indeed are many others, to whom the radiant qualities which the gods have given you, and set you to work with in such an element, are not unknown. Write me a word at once, dear Ruskin. Mary sends her love to you. The most mournful tragedy has happened in her and my circle—the death of her eldest Brother by the accident of leaping down from a coach here, probably with too much trust in his nimbleness of limb; an excellent, completely faithful, and valiant young man, whose loss has thrown a gloom over us all. No more to-day. Do swiftly what I have begged of you.

Ruskin, like Carlyle, had his fight with wild beasts at Ephesus. We have heard him say of the year 1871 that in it he experienced his " most acute mental pain " and " most nearly mortal illness." The pain to which he referred was suffered in the region of the affections, for this year was a dark one in the chequered story of his romance. The illness at Matlock was accompanied by many dreams, some of which he recounts in Ariadne Flarentina (§ 213).

Among the recollections of early years which crowded in upon Ruskin during his illness was one which "Fors" was presently to drive in with the hammer of fortunate occurrence. His mind had gone back to his boyhood's days when he had stayed—then as now—at Matlock, and had thence gone on to the Lake Country:—

"I weary for the fountain foaming, For shady holm and hill; My mind is on the mountain roaming, My spirit's voice is still. . . . I weary for the heights that look Adown upon the dale. The crags are lone on Coniston ..."

So he had written as a boy,¹ and now it seemed to him that only by the shores of that deep-bosomed lake could he find peace and refreshment. At the very moment W. J. Linton, the poet and wood-engraver, was seeking a purchaser for his house at Coniston:—

"I found a home (writes Linton) at Brantwood, on the eastern side of Coniston Water, some nine or ten miles from Ambleside, a house under Furness Fells, in Monk Coniston, so called because the land had been part

of the domain of the Cistercian Monks of Furness Abbey (Church Coniston village was on the western side of the lake). The manorial right had fallen to the Buccleuchs at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries; and to the Duke of Buccleuch, my portion of the land being copyhold, I paid a yearly fine of one shilling and three halfpence, to have my title recorded in the manorial books, when after a year's tenancy I was enabled by the help of mortgage-money to buy the estate—a fairly large house and ten acres of copse-wood steeply rising up the fell."^l

" Anything so splendid in the way of golden and blue birds as the pheasant I put up at my own wicket-gate to the moors oat of my own heather, was never seen except in my own Joanie's own pheasant drawing that she's never asked alter this age.* My wrist is stiff with rowing; I've rowed full six miles to-day, besides scrambling up the bed of a stream holding on by the heather, and, more than I cared for, juniper bushes, which is exercise also.

" There certainly it a special fate in my getting this house. The man from whom I buy it—Linton—wanted to found a 'republic,' printed a certain number of numbers of the Republic like my Fort Cladgera ! and his printing-press is still in one of the outhouses, and

'God and the People' scratched deep in the whitewash outride, Well, ft won't be a 'republican centre' now, but whether the loaded men round will like my Toryism bettor than his Repabttcanfeas, remains to be seen.

"The house Is built on the rock itself, and In a recess of the hillside* which rises too steeply behind the house, almost as the hill did at the Giessbach behind Connie's room, that yon got to by the bridge. A bridge twelve feet long would reach the hillside from my foot, and I'm sorry to say the spring which I am so proud of has been allowed to soak Its way down exactly there! and under the house as fiur as chinks of rock wfll let it, with what result to apricot fmm Inside jfoa may fancy! The first thing I've to do Is to cut a trench In the rock to csrry away this drainage; it is just like a dripping well at Mattock, behind the house.

"For the house itself! Well, there u a house, certainly, and It has rooms in it, but I believe in reality nearly as much will have to be done as if it were a shell of bricks and mortar. Meantime, the first thing I've to do is to build a wall up one side of my sue, net five, acres of moor."

"Friday.—I've so much to do, and it's so beautiful, I can't go to Scotland. Write here always.

" I've been rowing and cutting wood (nuts some) in my own woods. I send you my first nuts in a box."

Having thos inspected the domain and given the necessary orders for its being pat into repair, Raskin went to Scotland to visit his friends the Hilliards, who were staying at Abbeythane. The journey invigorated him:—

"I've had such an exquisite drive from Kcswick," he wrote from Carlisle (September 23), "over the high moorlands by the English Wigtown. The day was, most fortunately, the clearest I have seen this year—with the sweet Northern clearness I remember so well in old times—and when I got about half-way to Carlisle, to the bow of the moorland, there was all the Solway, Criffel, and the blue promontories as far as your own Wigtown on one side, and all the Liddesdale hills and the western Cheviots on the other, with the vast plain of Cumberland between. I think I never in England saw * anything so vast and so beautiful—I saw, indeed, the Solway from Sldddaw, but that was late in the day, and from so great a height it is too much like a map—-to-day it was all divided into bars of blue and gold by sunny gleams between flying clouds, rich and vast as the plain of Milan, but with a sweet wfldncss and simplicity of pastoral and solitary life expressed in it also; very wonderful. Then the air was as pure and bracing as air could be."

He spent two days at Melrose, and then, as he notes in his diary, "by Gala Water, Edinburgh, Stirling, Perth, Dundee to Arbroath by moonlight" (September 25). He stayed a week with his friends, enjoying the sea air, and then returned for a few days to Coniston, afterwaids stopping on the way south at Lichfield.

Raskin's little journey in the north had completed his convalescence, and he was intending to lecture at Oxford during the October tens, but tbe increasing failure of his mother's health caused him daily anxiety, and he was compelled to relinquish tbe idea. The dangerous illness of her son had hastened her decline, and on December 5 the end came. Buskin sent some account of the last days, and after, to his old friend W. H. Harrison and to Dr. Acland:—

"Dbtmabk Hnx, 8.E., "6lk Dee^ 71. " My dkab Hauuson,—Your old friend passed away at a quarter after two yesterday afternoon. Yon hare every cause of happy thought respecting her, bettering her to be now where she would like best to be, and having nothing bat love and kindness rendered to her in life, to look bade upon, on your part

" I have not by any means your certainty on the first head, and find myself more repentant than I ever expected to be, fcr the contrary of love and kindness, rendered to her.

M fended I knew pretty well how I should feel at the end, often patting ft to myself. Bat I am much more ~~surpris~~ed at the new look of things in the twilight than I was after the son had set for my father.

"J. Roskim. -You would like to cone to the fimeral perhaps. I would mat no one; but come, if you would like."

"My okaudt Hdtsy,—You would like better to see my mother now than when you last sate beside her. She reminds me altogether of what she was when she taught me the Sermon on the Mount, and two or three things more, not nseleui to me: and her hand lies on her breast as prettily as if Mino of Fesole had cut it, and it fc very pretty, though so thin.

"The last days were very crueL I am glad no members of the Metaphysical aw them, of the Huxley side, lest they should be afraid to speak without hurting me. For, indeed, the sinking of all bade to the bleak MedmaMm was difecmlt to bear the sight ot at last, with aspect of i

" J have kept fairly well by the help of your good nurse, who ' entirely invaluable to us, and of Joan, and the servants. They spared me all they could; Joan is a preciousest creature in any real need— very precious at all times.

Ruskin's mother was ninety when she died. She was laid to rest beside her husband, whom she trusted to see again—"not to be near him," she had said, " not to be so high in heaven, but content if she might only see him."¹ In after years Ruskin added to the inscription on the monument which he had designed for his father,² this tribute to his mother's memory:—

This inscription was not the only monument which Ruskin desired to erect to his mother's memory, whose Christian name was Margaret, and whose early home had been at Croydon.⁸ He tried to restore a spring of water between Croydon and Epsom, and he erected a tablet at the spot, bearing the following words: "In obedience to the Giver of Life, of the brooks and fruits that feed it, of the peace that ends it, may this Well be kept sacred for the service of men, flocks, and flowers, and be by kindness called MARGARETS WELL. This pool was beautified and endowed by John Ruskin, Esq., M.A., LL.D." His project, however, failed, for the reason which he gives in one of his Oxford lectures.⁴ The stream was again fouled; the inscription was taken down;⁶ and though at the close of 1880 we find him again reverting to the subject in his diary and proposing a fresh inscription,⁶nothing now remains to record his attempt.

¹ W. 6. Collingwood's Life and Work of Ruskin, 1900, p. 283. * See Vol. XVH. p. lxxvii.

⁴ See below, p. 633; and compare Crown of Witd Otioe, § 1 (Vol. XVIII. p. 385). ⁸ The tablet was at one time re-erected by a purchaser in a neighbouring garden.

⁶ "1880, Nov. 30.— I thought of my mother's memorial again: 'This Spring, in memory of a maid's life as pure, and a mother's love as ceaseless, dedicate to a spirit in peace, is called by Croydon people Margaret's Well. Matris animss Joannes Ruskin: 1880.'"

The loving trust which the mother placed in the son, who thus honoured her memory, was shown by her will, made immediately before her death: " I leave all I have to my son."¹ An honour, which came to Ruskin at the end of the year, perhaps pleased his mother in her last days. He was elected Lord Rector of St. Andrews University by 86 votes against 79 given for Lord Lytton. It was presently discovered, however, that by the Scottish Universities Act of 1868 any one holding a professorship at a British University was disqualified for a Lord Rectorship. Lord Neaves was chosen instead, and the students missed a Rectorial Address from Ruskin.

Deeply though Ruskin felt his mother's death, he conceded nothing to idle sorrow. "To-day" was his life's motto, and so soon as his mother was laid to rest he threw himself into the tasks and duties of the world around him. It was during those weeks that he obtained permission from the Board of St. Giles's to employ at his own expense a regiment of the unemployed upon the better sweeping of the streets in Seven Dials; one of his diaries contains notes on the characters and histories of several members of the squad. At this time, too, Ruskin was again seeing much of Carlyle, who loudly applauded his manifold and practical activities.

Tlie death of his mother decided Ruskin to give up the Denmark Hill house, and to transfer his things to Oxford or Brant wood. Mr. and Mrs. Severn had been established in the old house at Herne Hill, where Ruskin's nursery was always kept as a sanctum for him when staying in London. The departure from his old home was, however, a severe wrench to him. "Increasing despondency on me,* he wrote in his diary (January 11, 1872), "as time for leaving draws near." "I write my morning date for the last time in my old study" (March 28). The next entry is at Oxford: "29 March, 1872. Good Friday. In my college rooms, having finally left my old home. I open at and read the 89th of Ezekiel, and, secondly, by equal chance, at the 16th Psalm." These Sortes BibUcas may be taken as declaring the spirit of- the work which he had now been set free to resume at Oxford. "Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Grog;" what was this but Ruskin's mission? "I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel;" is not this the spirit in which he discoursed upon the heavenly wisdom in The Eagle's Nest? He had at first proposed for his next lectures three more on Landscape and then three on Fishes. He had been working on the classification of fishes and their artistic "points" somewhat fully, as his note-books show, and the

course on fishes was to hare been a particularly good one. ^uTm very anxious," he wrote to Acland (December 2S, 1971), "to have the Deaa at them, if possible. The fish ones are not to haye any jests, but to be real work all through." When it came to the point, however, the subject of fishes was put aside, and Ruskin opened his work at Oxford for the year 1872 with a longer series on the relations of Science and Art. Each of these lectures was delivered twice—first to the University and then again to a general audience.

After the double delivery of these ten lectures, with work still continuing on the arrangement of the Art Collection, Ruskin determined to seek relaxation in change of work in Italy, where also he might gather material for future lectures.¹ He was accompanied on this occasion by Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn, and Mrs. and Miss Hilliard, and also by Mr. Albert Goodwin, in whose then rising talent he took the liveliest interest, and to whom he rendered many offices of friendly counsel and assistance. They went first to Geneva, and he notes in his diary "Goodwin and Arthur hard at work on my well-known path, at the sunset over Bonneville." Next, they went, again on Ruskin's old road, by Genoa and Sestri into Italy, making some stay at Pisa and Lucca. At the former place Ruskin made several sketches for his Oxford schools, and observations which left their mark in a subsequent course of lectures (Val (TArno). At Lucca he noted "Chapel of Rose destroyed, as of Thorn at Pisa" (May I). Similarly, from Lucca he wrote to Mr. Macdonald (May 4): "Two of my favourite buildings in Italy have been destroyed within the last two years, and I am working day and night (or at least early morning) to save a few things I shall never see again." He rose sometimes, as entries in his diary show, before four in the morning; for in addition to his sketching, he was busy with correcting various books for the press, and in writing the " Instructions" for his Drawing School. His travels may in part be traced in For* Clavigera; as, for instance, in Letter 18 ("Val di Nievole") written partly at Pisa, partly at Lucca, and partly at Rome. It was among the hills above Lucca that Miss Hilliard lost her jewelled cross, which the peasants found and returned without thought of reward. The incident figures both in Fors and in a lecture which Ruskin

¹ The itinerary was as follows: Paris (April 13), Geneva (April 14), Annecy (April 16), Turin (April 20), Genoa (April 23), Sesti (April 24), Pisa (April 27), Lucca (May 1), Florence (May 6), Rome (May 11), Assist (May 21), Perugia (May 24), Siena (May 26), Orvieto (May 30), Florence (June 1), Bologna (June 14), Verona (June 15), Venice (June 22), Milan (July 13), Como (July 14), Bareno (July 15), Domo d'Ossola (July 19), Simplon (July 20), Sion (July 23), Geneva (July 24), Herne Hill (July 26).

delivered two years later on Jacopo della Quercia.¹ At Lucca, as at Pisa, he made many drawings which are now at Oxford. But, as ever with him, the more he did the more he grieved at what had to be left undone. "My life flying like a dream," he says in his diary (Lucca, May 8); and so a little later at Rome, "days flying like the dust in the wind.** Yet at Rome, as at Florence, Perugia, and Assisi, he worked incessantly and constantly, noting new impressions, or connecting in new ways the results of his observation. A page or two of the notes in his diary may here be transcribed as a sample of his memoranda at this time:—

"Inlaying.—Font of Baptistery at Pisa. Precision with studied irregularity, consummate. Colour only used, not gold.

⁴⁴ Pulpit of St Bernardino at Perugia—late, refined, but Byzantine gold method kept.

" Florence, outside of Duorao and Baptistery—consummate in power and modesty.

" Square of red and white superb in pure precision and scale. St. Chiaro of Assisi, north side (the buttressed one).

" Duomo of Perugia. Outside, in superb panels: highly finished— leads on to the Hospital of Venice and Miracoli.

" At last it becomes effeminate, and takes to imitation in Florentine tables. But what tables! in the Pitti Palace, of shells and flowers. This devotion of it to private luxury its ruin."

At Rome Ruskin's chief interest was in the work of Botticelli in the Sistine Chapel. ^u I am very glad,*" he wrote to Acland (Siena, May 27), " I said what I did in my lecture on M. Angelo.' The Sistine roof is one of the sorrowfullest pieces of affectation and abused power that have ever misled the world. Its state is better than I expected, its colour good. But it is, in pure fact, a series of devices for exhibition of legs and arms, with a great deal of fine feeling used to disguise the intent." The earlier masters proportionately delighted him:—

"(Rome), May 17.—Yesterday early out to St. Peter's; found glorious Moses by Perugino, and little dog of Sandro Botticelli."

"(Perugia.)—Perugino's frescoes in Sala del Cambio. Refinement possible with merchandise and money. Grass all done with black dots on green, all gradated with the touch. Black outlines as firm and calm as finest penmanship. Colours absolutely clay-like and valueless in themselves—glorious in gradation and opposition. Softness

¹ See Vol. XXIII. The scenery and peasant-life of the hills between Luoca and Pisa remained much in Ruskin's miud: see, in a later volume, Roadside Staff of Tuscany ("Notes on the Life of Santa Zita").

often obtained In hair, etc, by fast sweeps of odour fading away; so also by M. Angelo. Every quality—firmness, breadth, precision, tenderness, softness—in its right place.

^HI am wofully forgetting the lovely Sandro of the Vatican. Moses at the Borning Bosh twice over—palling his shoes and stockings off, in middle of picture; action repeated by Perugino in the Baptism. Below, he is leading his family away from Jethro's house, his staff in his hand; the infinitely wonderful little dog is carried, with the bundle, by the eldest boy; its sharp nose and living paws marvellously foreshortened.

"The grandest Perugino I saw, in oil, is the Assumption in the Annunsiata¹ at Florence; Andrea del Sarto's tailor fresco taking the eyes from this, as M. Angelo in the Sistine: the essentially vulgar qualities always set to conquer the gracious ones. But the local colour in the shadow of the Virgin's robe against the sky in this picture is the most perfect unison of colour and chiaroscuro, all right, that I saw in Italy. John Bellini's colour is grand, but bard and wooden in comparison; Titian's, sublimely joyless. Here is enjoyment of the most exquisitely delicate and pure kind—like a child's enjoyment of fruit—with perfect dignity. The law that every local colour is to be kept separate and shaded with itself universal in great work. Benono Gosaoli in Campo Santo, and Riccardi Chapel, a model for all early students."

Many of these notes left their mark in the ensuing course of lectures (Ariadne Florenimd). To Perugino he awards "the captain's place⁹¹(g 72, SflS); GershouTs Uttle dog was shown (§ 267); and Botticelli was one of the main subjects of the course. Other impressions of the same tour recur in Val (TArno (1873). From Rome and Tuscany Ruskin and his friends went to Verona, where he wrote a monograph on the Cavalli Monuments for the Arundel Society (Vol. XXIV.), and to Venice, where he made further study of Carpaccio.

On his return to England Ruskin had a brief period of exceptional happiness—soon, however, to be yet more darkly clouded over. A few entries in his diary tell of his peace of mind:—

"18th August, 1872, Tuesday, Broaolands.—Entirely calm and clear morning. The mist from the river at rest among the trees, with rosy light on its folds of blue, and I, for the first time these ten years, happy. Took up Kenan's Si. Paul as I was dressing, and read a little; a piece of epistle in smaller type caught my eye as I was closing the book: Grdce & Dieu pour son ineffable don." *

¹ In the seventh chapel. The Andrea del Sarto is his famous fresco, the "Madonna del Seco"; '^tsilor fresco," a play on "Sarto,*⁹ tsilor-msde. * 2 Corinthians ix. 16.

"\lth August, Hernb Hill.—Oh me, that ever such thought and rest should be granted me once more."

" 18<A August, Sunday.—In the morning, in church at Toft, beside R. Now at the corner of a room in the Euston Square hotel, altogether miserable. Going to bed, I take up the inn table New Testament It opens at 'A little while, and ye shall not see Me; and again a little while, and ye shall see Me, because I go to the Father.'»

The clouds, however, soon descended, and Ruskin sought relief, as was ever his way, in hard work. On September 18 he took possession of Brantwood, which was now ready for his occupation, and he had his Oxford lectures to prepare. These {Ariadne Florentina) were duly delivered in November and December, and he presently returned to Brantwood:—

"Brantwood, Sunday, 28th December.—Last night the first here; slept sound, and dreamed of teaching some one how to paint angels, and then showing them how angels should be represented as flying to music"

"1872, last day of, Brantwood, Tuesday.—Intensely dark and rainy morning. But I, on the whole, victorious, and ready for new work, and my possessions pleasant to me in my chosen, or appointed, home, and my hand finding its deed."

His hand, as we shall see, was to find much to do, which he did with all his might, in the years that were now to come.

The lectures on Landscape (1871), which stand first in this volume, break no ground that will be new to readers of Buskin's earlier works; they were essentially lectures to his own class, and the point of them lay much in the illustrations. In a letter to Acland, Ruskin explained their scope:—

" I cannot let the bonnets in, on any conditions, this term. The three public lectures will be chiefly on angles, degrees of colour, prisms (without any prunes), and other such things of no use to the female mind, and they would occupy the seats in mere disappointed puzzlement. They shall all come, if they like, when I get on the religious schools again.

"There's a small Sandro Botticelli in the Old Masters worth giving up a day full of patients to see.¹ It makes heaven look so nice that if any patients are dead when you get back—you'll feel they ought to be the more obliged to you."

The principal proposition which the lectures were meant to enforce— namely, the dependence of the power of landscape-art upon human sympathy—is to be found also laid down in Modern Painters,* and it was again the theme of one of Ruskin's final lectures at Oxford.

He did not at the time publish this course. "When first I undertook the duties of this professorship," he explained in 1888, "my own personal liking for landscape made me extremely guarded in recommending its study. I only gave three lectures on landscape in six years, and I never published them."⁸ Another reason was the difficulty of illustrating the lectures. Later improvements, however, in methods of reproduction overcame this obstacle, and in 1897 the lectures were issued to the public with numerous and attractive plates.

The text of the lectures, as here given, follows a fair copy made in 1871 by Buskin's servant, Crawley, and revised by the author in that year; it shows a few minor differences from that printed by the editor of the 1897 edition (see the Bibliographical Note, pp. 6-7). The first draft of much of the lectures, in Buskin's hand, is in one of the ledgers already described (Vol. XX. p. xlix.); from this source some additional passages are here given beneath the text (see, e.g._% pp. 20, 22, 29). It was also used in the 1897 edition to supply §§ 26, 27, which are missing from Crawley's copy. A few further passages are now supplied from loose MS. sheets among Buskin's papers at Brant-wood (p. 11 n.), or from the reports of the lectures published at the time of delivery (p. 15 n.). A facsimile of a page of the first draft is given (pp. 12, 18).

The lecture which follows those on Landscape in this volume was delivered with a special purpose, and excited more attention, compelling also more opposition, than any other of Buskin's discourses from the Professorial chair. The University Galleries contain a

¹ The "Nativity," with the flying angels, now in the National Gallery: see below, Lectures on Landscape, § 58, p. 46.

¹ Chapter i. of pt ix. §§ 8, 0 ('"Ae Dark Mirror"): see Vol. VII. pp. 268-269. Compare also Vol. XIV. p. 128. The lecture of 1883 on Landscape is given in a later volume.

particularly fine collection of drawings by Michael Angelo. Ruskin's early admiration for that master had been much modified by later studies and enthusiasms, and he felt that it was part of his duty as Professor of Fine Art in Oxford to deliver his opinion upon some of the most famous of the University's art-treasures. He decided, accordingly* to deliver a public lecture on Michael Angelo, and in it he embodied some of the notes upon Tintoret which, as we have seen, he had at one time intended to expand into a whole course on that painter.¹ The lecture was delivered in the theatre of the Museum, and admission was by ticket. "I cannot adjourn to the Sheldonian theatre to-morrow," he wrote to Acland (June 12, 1871), "under any pressure, as I must show things and be understood, if I can anyhow contrive it." The lecture was illustrated, as the reader will see from the text, by constant reference to drawings in the University Galleries. Tlie lecture was published, as a separate pamphlet, early in the next year, and the Professor's heresies about Michael Angelo excited loud and indignant protest. His fellow-professor at University College, London (Sir Edward Poynter), at once made a spirited reply, alike in defence of Michael Angelo and in condemnation of Ruskin;' and when Ruskin was succeeded in the Chair at Oxford by Sir William Blake Richmond, the first lectures of the new Professor were devoted to an elaborate appreciation of Michael Angelo's work in the Sistine Chapel. Ruskin's dear friend, Edward Burne-Jones, was also sadly perturbed by this lecture on Michael Angelo and Tintoret:—

"Ten years after the evening at Denmark Hill when the thing happened, Edward said of Ruskin's lecture: ' He read it to me just after he had written it, and as I went home I wanted to drown myself in the Surrey Canal or get drunk in a tavern—it didn't seem worth while to strive any more if he could think it and write it too/ In 1871 Edward writes again about Raskin to Mr. Norton: 'You know more of him than I do, for literally I never see him nor hear from him, and when we meet we clip as of old and look as of old; but he quarrels with my pictures and I with his writing, and there is no peace between us—and you know it's all up when friends don't admire each other's work.' The old word 'clip' exactly describes the greeting that usually passed between him and Raskin in their own houses; it was an impulsive movement forward by Edward, to whom his friend's visible presence was always a joy, and a carious half-embracing action of Ruskin's in return, which clasped his arm up to the elbow and drew them quite closely together. Later still another

letter to Mr. Norton says: 'Ruskin is back—came one day last week—and I forgave him all his blasphemies against my Gods—he looked so good through and through. But I want you to keep the peace between us, for after a month I shall begin to quarrel again/"¹

In reading Buskin's lecture attention should, however, be paid to the limiting condition on which he himself insisted. The reader is to "observe that its business is only to point out what is to be blamed in Michael Angelo, and that it assumes the facts of his power to be generally known." * Ruskin referred his readers for the other side to Mr. Tyrwhitt's Christum Art; and in a preface contributed by him to that book⁸ he again commends Mr. Tyrwhitt's lectures as showing "the most beautiful and just reverence for Michael Angelo," whereas his own lecture "is entirely devoted to examining the modes in which his genius itself failed, and perverted that of other men. But Michael Angelo," he adds, "is great enough to make praise and blame alike necessary, and alike inadequate, in any true record of him." Ruskin might have referred not only to Mr. Tyrwhitt, for the necessary supplement to his criticisms of Michael Angelo, but to the passages in his own early chapter on " Imagination Penetrative," which contain ^rso noble a rhapsody upon Michael Angelo's master-works.⁴Ruskin in his preface to Mr. Tyrwhitt's book speaks of himself further as a "miner" discerning the master's faults; and perhaps something should be allowed, in reading the lecture, to the miner's temptation of exaggerating the significance of his finds, as also to the lecturer's love of startling paradox. Sir William Richmond has a charmingly characteristic reminiscence of Ruskin in this connexion. Among other statements in the lecture, as Sir William recollected it— but not as Ruskin wrote it—was the assertion that "one lock\of hair painted by Tintoretto is worth the whole of the roof of the Siatine Chapel put together." Twelve years later Sir William Richmond resigned the Oxford professorship that Ruskin might be re-elected:—

"I think that this touched him, and he wrote me the sweetest possible letter asking if he might come and dine with me, to which request, of course, I acceded with alacrity, delighted once again to shake him by the hand who had initiated me into so much that, without him, I should never have known ^of. Disagreement should never sever friendship. Nothing could have been more delightful than the evening we passed together,

¹ Memorial* qf Edward Burne-Jone*, vol. ii. pp. 18, 19. 6 * Prefatory Note (below, p. 76). ⁵ See below, pp. 109, 110. ⁴ See Vol. IV. pp. 280-283.

recalling old times and talking only about the subjects concerning which we were in entire agreement, an evening that I shall ever remember to the last; and it was the last time that I saw him. He rose to leave me; turning round, he said, ' Willy, why did you make that violent attack upon me about Michael Angelo?' My answer was, 'Mr. Ruskin, because you wrote nonsense.' ' What did I say ?' was the retort. I quoted the sentence that you have lately heard; at which, with ample generosity, he took both of my hands and said, 'My dear Willy, you are quite right; it was nonsense/ This is a noble instance of his real character."¹

In fact, however, Ruskin had not said the "nonsense" attributed to him. He set "the waves of hair in a single figure of Tintoret's" against, not "the whole of the roof of the Sistine Chapel," but, "all the folds of unseemly linen" there²—which is by no means the same thing. Nobility of character Ruskin had; but it cannot honestly be claimed that he was so repentant of his heresies as Sir William Richmond seems to suggest. His further studies in the Sistine Chapel in the summer of the year following the lecture only confirmed him in the view therein expressed, and in the subsequent lecture on Botticelli, (Ariadne Flortntina) he returned to the attack on Michael Angelo with renewed vigour, and, as we shall find,⁸ with great gusto. The real fact has been well expressed by a judicious critic:⁴ "We do not ask of S. Francis an impartial judgment of Caesar, for he was no imperialist. ... So we must not ask of Ruskin to praise Michael Angelo. He did praise him, and then he turned and smote him. . • . The first movement was one of intellectual consent to admiration of a great figure; the second was the profound revolt of a spirit whose real friends were the meek and humble, against a proud and angry art." Yet Ruskin's intellectual admiration of Michael Angelo was both sincere and enduring, as may be seen in this volume from references to his mighty imagination made in a lecture of 1875 (below, p. 500). In 1872, however, Ruskin was unrepentant, for in the course of the lectures on engraving (Ariadne Florentina), he returned to the charge,

• See the letters to Acland (above, p. xxvii.) and Mrs. Severn (below, p. xxxiv.). ⁴ "Ruskin and his Critics/' by D. S. M., in the Saturday Review, October 20, 1900.

We may compare a remark by Ruskin himself: "Of course the first persons to be consulted on the merit of a picture are those for whom the artist painted it; with those in after generations who have sympathy with them ; one does not ask a Roundhead or a Republican his opinion on tne VandVck at Wilton, nor a Presbyterian minister his impressions of the Sistine Chapel" (Preface to E. T. Cook's Popular Handbook to the National Gallery).

"I'm to glad you're at Mr. Richmond's,² and can love and comfort Urn a little at yon do me,

"How / should hate discomforted him to-day, I've been going in at M. Angelo with all I know—and was in good trim, and the Prince was there, and a nice Unrrenfty audience, and the lecture went on hotly for an hour and a quarter—and I'm sure M. Angelo'a none the better for it, though I daresay Mr. Richmond will say he's noo* the watte. (I should say so too, for I don't think he can be worse.) But really it was interesting, on the early divinity and theology of Botticelli, and I had good illustrations, and everybody teems pleated. I showed the Prince in and out, and he sent afterwards to ask if he might come and tee some of the illustrations mom quietly/'

The fee* frf the lecture on tie Relation between Michael Jngdo and Tmionfi was never altered by Buskin. The manuscript of the first draft of much of it occurs in one of his diaries, and a page is here reproduced (pp. 84, 86); and an additional passage is introduced from thai same source (p. 8$ ft.). There is also at Brantwood a small note-book containing, in Mrs. Arthur Severn's hand, from Ruskin's dictation, % detajied description of Tintoreft "Paradise"—written as they tat opposite the picture in the Ducal Palace, day after day; he with operarglaai in hand, rapturous at each revelation of the painter's meaning., Prom this note-took an additional passage is given (p. 107 a.). No other MS. of the lecture is known to the editors.

The title of the lectures which next fellow- needs perhaps tonW explanation. Tlie subject is the relation of Natural Science to -jloftl and *I am not fantastic in these titks,^w says Raskin, "but try shortty to mark my chief purpose in the bode by them.*¹* What, than, is the purpose here marked by calling the lectures "Tim Ba^hW-JNaat*? The answer it to be found in the lines which Buskin quotes in the tecond lecture from Bhke¹! Book qf Thcl:—

¹ aee else a nets ef 1881 in Vol XL p. 187. * George Richmond, who in Raskin's early days at aome of hit artistic heresies (sse PrwterUa, ii. §§ 86 *eq.). ⁸ Ariadne Fforentina, § 27 (below, p. 315).

"The glory of the higher creatures is in ignorance of what is known to the lower.¹* The higher the creature, the nobler are its conceptions in range and dignity. This is the central idea of the book, and this the main purpose expressed in the title; but Ruskin, as was his wont, plays around his chosen title, and finds, or makes, as he proceeds, many sub-meanings in it. Thus, in denouncing the prurience of mean cariosity, he asks whether science is to be eagle-eyed only in the sense that "wheresoever the carcase is, thither shall the eagles be gathered together**? (§ 86). He exhorts his hearers to the unselfish wisdom, of which the reward is "that our youth is renewed like the eagle's" (§ 64). So, again, in a beautiful and often quoted passage, he describes the recompense of modest and contented knowledge under the figure of " !•£**# of pleasant thoughts . . . houses built without hands for our souls to live in" (§ 206). And so, again, he traces yet another secondary meaning for his title in the etymology of " debonnaire" —"out of a good eagle's nest,^nl of gentle race, that is; and so, once more, "to preserve your eagles' nests is to be a great nation," for "it means keeping everything that is noble; mountains, and floods, and forests, and the glory and honour of them, and all the birds that haunt them."²

Though the title of the book may thus require some explanation from other passages in Buskin's works, the lectures themselves are more clearly arranged and less discursive than some of his other courses. They were written, he tells us, " not with less care, but with less pains, than any in former courses" (Preface); but he was at any rate at pains to make the order of the argument clear. The reader may find it helpful to turn at the outset to the summary of Lectures i.-v. which Ruskin gives in § 96 and again in § 172. Their theme is general, "defining the manner in which the mental tempers, ascertained by philosophy to be evil or good, retard and advance the parallel studies of science and art." Then he passes in the next three lectures to "the literal modes in which the virtues of art are connected with the principles of exact science"—dealing in Lecture vi. (which is summarised in § 122) with the proposition that " sight is a distinctly spiritual k < power"; in Lecture vii. (summed in § 148) laying down that art is concerned with the aspects, not the materials, of inorganic nature; and in Lecture viii. (summed in § 149) making the same point in the case of organic things. But though art has no concern with invisible -w ^ structure, it has much with invisible things (§ 173); and so Ruskin

¹ Ariadne Fhrentina, § 27 (below, p. 316). And so in Val d*Arno, § 200, he speaks of " debonnairete, high breeding, ' out of good-nestedness.'" » For* Clavigera, Letter 75.

passes at the end of the book to illustrate how art may be ennobled by the study of mythology (Lecture ix.), and of the national history which lies embedded in heraldry^l (Lecture x.).

Many of the maxims, principles, and illustrations which occur in The Eagle** Nest lie very near the centre of Ruskin's teaching. The spiritual essence of Sight is one of such principles; the reader will find it often recurring in some later Oxford lectures, of which notes _i \^ are given in the Appendix to this volume (see pp. 510, 512). Again, "You will never love art well, till you love what she mirrors better*'; this, he says, was one of the maxims which he was most eager for his hearers to accept (§ 41). Another maxim, that " anatomy will not help us to draw the true appearances of things" (§ 159), is characteristic of Ruskin's art-teaching; its enunciation was " instantly necessary," he says, "in explanation of the system adopted for the direction of my Oxford schools" (Preface); and it forms a connecting link between The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret and The Eagle's Nest. The general ideas of the book belong also to Ruskin's central and ultimate beliefs. It has been said of him, with some truth, that he was "intellectually an agnostic, and spiritually a mystic."² In this book, as in many other places, he faces the intellectual alternative: the belief of men in the existence of a living power greater than their own may, he admits, be the result of imagination, rather than of perception.⁸ But he bridges the chasm by an.appeal to experience: "every formative art hitherto, and the best states of human happiness and order have depended on the apprehension of the mystery [of the Forming Power], which is certain, and of its personality, which is probable."⁴ And so in these lectures on Art and Science the attitude of the spirit, or the form of thought " which makes common-sense unselfish, knowledge unselfish, art unselfish, and wit and imagination unselfish" (§ 29), is throughout regarded as an emanation from the Divine Wisdom.⁶

The text of The Eagle's Nest was never altered, and there is, therefore, nothing to be said under this head. Of the manuscript, a few loose sheets are at Brantwood, and one of these is here reproduced (pp. 180, 181). Some additional matter is given in footnotes. Thus,

² "The Sophia ot Raskin. What was it? and how was it reached?" by A. S. Mories, in St. George, vol. iv. p. 158.

⁶ Mrs. Meynell (John Ruekin, 1900, p. 214), and again Mr. Frederic Harrison (John Ru*kin, 1902, p. 127), state that The Eagle's Nert was "a book which Carlvle liked best." The authority for the statement is not given in either case. Carlyle's letters seem rather to suggest that Val d'Arno was his favourite (see Vol. XXIII.).

a passage, intended for a continuation of one of the Oxford Catalogues, illustrates the Preface (see p. 121 n.); and a passage introductory of the lecture on the Halcyon is also printed (p. 289 n.): this was written when the lecture was first delivered in January 1872 "to the cannon-making workmen ^m at Woolwich.¹

The "Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving,*' which come next in this volume, were delivered in 1872, the title then announced for the course being " Sandro Botticelli and the Florentine Schools of Engraving." They were published in separate parts at irregular intervals between 1873 and 1876 (see Bibliographical Note, p. 298); the later lectures were rewritten at Assisi in 1874, after Ruskin's further study in that year of Botticelli's work at Rome.² The fragmentary nature of some of the book is sufficiently confessed by the author at the beginning of Far$ Clavigera, Letter 60: "The Appendix," he says, "is a mass of loose notes which need a very sewing machine to bring together—and any one of these that I take in hand leads me into ashamed censorship of the imperfection of all I have been able to say about engraving." The fact is that on this subject, as on nearly every other which Ruskin touched, his sayings are scattered. With the present work on the art of engraving in general, the reader should connect the earlier papers entitled The Ccstus qf Aglaia (Vol. XIX.); on the art of etching he should refer to the paper on "Mr. Ernest George's Etchings" (VoL XIV.); while for some remarks on mezzotint he should consult Vol. XIV. p. 492. "Ariadne Florentina is in small part a scientific treatise, but there is no other book comparable to it," says Professor Norton, "in opening the more recondite sources of interest and enjoyment in the study of the art of engraving, and of its relations to the other arts."⁸

The first title given to the course indicates what was perhaps the original impulse in the lecturer's mind. He had come back from Rome and Florence after his tour of 1872 full, as we have seen, of Botticelli,⁴and this course took the work of that artist, together with Holbein's, as

¹ See in a later volume the letter to Professor Norton of December 23, 1871.

• Introduction to the American (" Brantwood ") edition of Ariadne Fhrrntma, p. viL ⁴ Later volumes contain further studies of him ; for references in earlier volumes,

see VoL IV. pp. 317, 365-366; VoL V. p. 87; Vol. VIII. pp. 55, 149; VoL XV. p. 345. Pater's essay on Botticelli had, as already remarked (VoL IV. p. 355 ».), preceded Ruskin in calling special attention to that painter. Mr. Collingwood states Wfky p. 298) that in the Ariadne lectures, as delivered, Ruskin "quoted with appreaatioii the passage on the Venus Anadvomene from Mr. Pater's 8htdiee m the BenmiiMnt* just published." This does not appear in the lectures as published.

the standards of engraving. And here an important explanation must be made. Raskin, as has been already stated, in a note upon Aratra PmteUcij followed Vasari in attributing to Botticelli a share in all the engraved plates commonly ascribed to Baldini. Later research, however, has rejected this theory altogether. Even the existence of Baldini is held to be uncertain; Botticelli's share in any of the plates ascribed to Baldini is not generally accepted; and the plates, formerly ascribed to him collectively, are now commonly assorted into different schools and manners. The plates of which in this book Ruskin speaks as Botticelirs belong to four different series:—

(1) The set of "Tarocchi cards" already described,¹ which are now sometimes assigned to the school of Ferrara.²

(£) A set of plates representing the Planets, and their supposed influences on human character and destinies; these are of the Florentine school, dated earlier than 1465.⁸

(3) A set of plates representing the Sibyls (who from very early in the Christian era were imagined to have been half-inspired prophetesses of the new dispensation dwelling in the midst of Paganism);⁴ these engravings are also of the Florentine school, dated about 1460-1480.

(4) Commonly associated with the Sibyls were the Prophets, of whom also there is a set of early Florentine engravings.

To the first of these sets, belong Plates XXVII., XXVIII. here; to the second, Plates XXVI. and XXIX.; to the third, Plates XXXI., XXXIII., and XXXIV.; and to the fourth, Plate XXX. An acquisition which Ruskin made at the time when he was preparing the lectures for publication confirmed him in the belief of Botticelli's authorship. He had already in his possession impressions of the plates above described, acquired partly at the suggestion of Burne-Jones. The same friend now brought to his notice a book of drawings which was in the market, and in which, again, Ruskin thought to detect Botticelli's hand. He wrote to Burne-Jones about the book at once:—

" 26th and 26th Feb. [1873], "Brantwood, Coniston. "So many thanks for your letter.

"If the British Museum won't buy that book, I will, on your farther report and recommendation, buy it myself, but I don't want to do it unless absolutely necessary—I mean, if the Museum can be got to buy it.

' See Mr. Sidney Colvin's Introduction to the Florentine Picture Chronicle, p. 34 n. * A calendar of that year accompanies a set of them in the British Museum. Botticelli was born in 1447,^iror, according to some, in 1444. ⁴ See Ariadne Fhrentina, § 211 (below, pp. 443-444).

" I never thought you and I should ever differ aboutjfgvne drawing, till that great schism about the Orvieto man¹—I forget his name (it's cold to-day, and my brain frosen). (FoUajoolo also I can't stand.)

"But I will trust to your dealing in this matter. The BakLinis I got (on your judgment partly) are among the most precious things I have, and these Sibyls make my mouth water. . . .

"Yesterday, at mid-day, came to me from Florence two of the corner-stone uprights of the Font that Dante broke,² and an angel between St Mark and Luke from the middle of it The two uprights are each two angels kneeling and blowing of trumpets. He could have broken a trumpet or wing merely by leaning against them/*¹

The book which Ruskin thereupon bought is The Florentine Picture Chronicle, already mentioned (Vol. XV. p. 880 *.). He refers to one of the drawings in § 187 of Ariadne Florentina; they are now ascribed in the British Museum to Maso del Finiguerra, to whom Ruskin makes a reference in these lectures.⁴

When the earlier parts of Ariadne Florentina appeared his friends at the British Museum pointed out to Ruskin that there were some impressions of his favourite plates which contained the light and shade which he supposed to be absent from them (§ 246, p. 477), and also that his ascription of them all to Botticelli was, at best, exceedingly doubtful. In the last part, therefore, he speaks more tentatively on the subject (see § 210, p. 44S). Ruskin, it should be said, laid no claim to what the French call expertise. "My readers," he says, "may trust me to tell them what is well done or ill; but by whom, is quite a separate question . . . not at all bearing on my objects in teaching."⁶ And so, here, he says in the Appendix, " whatever is said in the previous pages of the plates chosen for example, by whomsoever done, is absolutely trustworthy" (p. 477). For "Botticelli" in the text, where engravings are spoken of, the reader should read more cautiously "Early Italian School."

The title "Ariadne Florentina" is, as befits its labyrinthine allusion, one of the least obvious in meaning among Ruskin's book-names. It was itself an afterthought, not appearing, as we have seen, in the

¹ Signorelli. For incidental references to him, see below, pp. 435, 441. ¹ See Ariadne Florentina, § 67 (below, p. 343). The fragments remain at Brant-wood.

notice of the lectures, which also, when first announced for publication, were given a different title—" Facinora Dierum " (suggested perhaps by the Works and Days, "Epya teal 'H/ui/xu, of Hesiod—one of Ruskin's favourite poets). The first meaning of the title ultimately adopted is explained in the text, where he speaks of "the orders of decorative design, which are especially expressible by engraving," and which belong to "the instincts for the arrangement of pure line in labyrinthine intricacy, through which the grace of order may give continual clue." When, therefore, the author first thought of the title, he "hoped to have justified it by careful analysis of the methods by labyrinthine ornament, made sacred by Theseian traditions "—the traditions celebrated by Callimachus, among other authors, in his reference to "the intricacies of the winding labyrinth." This part of the subject Ruskin only glances at incidentally;¹ and his title must therefore be taken more generally as meaning the grace of the early school of Florence, which gives a clue, like Ariadne's, to lead the searcher after truth through the complicated study of engraving. But moral precepts were always present in Ruskin's mind beside artistic analysis. In his own copy of Ariadne, he noted § 27 on the flyleaf as the "cream of the book." The section so noted is that in which he enforces his favourite doctrines that the "didactic and intellectual" qualities distinguish the higher from the lower art; that like is known only of like, and the appreciation of noble art requires some answering quality in the observer; and, further, that the art-power of any individual is in large measure inherited from his race.² With these thoughts in his mind, and with his intense sympathy for the work and teaching of Botticelli, Ruskin's treatise became in large part a discourse on lines of conduct, no less than on lines engraved upon wood or steel, and "Ariadne Florentina" meant to him, further, the clue which the grace and order and faith of the Florentine masters may be made to afford through the perplexities and pitfalls of the labyrinth of life.

The text of Ariadne calls for no remark; the book was never revised by Ruskin. The trouble which he took in preparing it for the press is noted by himself (§ 44 w.). The manuscript of the book is unknown to the editors; but Mr. Wedderburn possesses (given to him by Ruskin) the first proof of Lecture vi.: this shows the author's usual care in revision.

¹ See § 221 (p. 461); and compare what he says elsewhere of the quality of

froiKikla in art, and of Daedalus, the mythical builder of the Cretan labyrinth (Vol. XX. pp. 349, 352). See also Fors Clavigera, Letter 23.

³ This is the point of Ruskin's dwelling in § 27 on the meaning of "de-bonne-aire " as " out of a good eagle's nest" (compare p. xxxv., above).

The lectures and notes for lectures, given in the Appendix, carry us forward somewhat beyond the chronological order. The lectures were delivered in 1875 and 1877, some of earlier date being, for convenience of topical arrangement, reserved for later volumes.¹ The two courses here included were, as will be seen, largely extempore, and to them applies the general account of such discourses given in an earlier Introduction (Vol. XX. pp. xxiii. seq.).

The "Studies in the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds" (Appendix I.) contain much that is felicitous and just in regard to their professed subject; but the Discourses formed in fact little more than a starting-point for the lecturer's excursions in many and various directions. The lectures were less formal and less prepared than any others of his Oxford series, and the free and easy manner which he adopted in them occasionally verged on the grotesque. " In the decorous atmosphere of a University lecture-room," writes the Dean of Durham, " the strangest things befell; for example, in a splendid passage on the Psalms of David he was reminded of an anthem by Mendelssohn, lately rendered in one of the College chapels, in which the solemn dignity of the Psalms was lowered by the frivolous prettiness of the music. It was, 'Oh! for the wings' etc., that he had heard with disgust, and he suddenly began to dance and recite, with the strangest flappings of his M.A. gown, and the oddest look on his excited face. The Oxford musicians were furious, though indeed his criticism was just enough."*

The "Readings in Modern Painters" (Appendix II.) were among the most successful which Ruskin delivered in Oxford. He attached great importance to them himself, and his audience heard him gladly. They were in part autobiographical; the readings from his own magnum opus were magnificently rendered; the lectures were the occasion of his description of the St. Ursula pictures by Carpaccio, which have since become so well known; and he put into this course much of his most earnest and most definitely Christian exhortations. At the first lecture

* Val (fArno (1873) and The ^Esthetic and Mathematic School* of Florence (1874) are in VoL XXIII., with other Florentine matter; the lectures on Birds (1873) and Mountains (1874) were partly incorporated in Love'* Meinie (Vol. XXV.) ana Deucalion (Vol. XXVI.) respectively.

¹ Ruskin in Oxford and Other Studies, by G. W. Kitchin, p. 41. A similar account of the incident is given in "Ruskin as an Oxford Lecturer," by James Manning Bruce, in The Century Magazine, February 1898, p. 693. The passage in the lecture will be found below, p. 497.

of the course he had distinguished visitors, to his no small embarrassment, as he describes to Mrs. Arthur Severn:—

"C. C. C, Oxpohd, "71* Nov., 77. ". . . I've never had such a terrible time. ... I tumbled into the last day of the University Commission, and instead of only Acland in my little private ante-lecture-room, there was Lord Selborne waiting for me, all by himself, and I had to take him in to the lecture, and couldn't get him in! nor myself neither at first, for the room was crammed, and the crowd in actual corridor as at door of a theatre; and poor Eleanor and Mr. Furneaux didn't get in, I believe, for I had to think of everything at once; and Mrs. Acland couldn't get in herself, but begged me to take in somebody else instead of her; and Mrs. Liddell and Alice couldn't get into Wonderland a bit,¹nor the Dean neither. . . . But at last I got Selborne into his place, and then had to invoke Mr. Macdonald from afar, and I was frightened, dreadfully, for I had never thought of a word I was going to say till the day before, and had scrawled it too small, and couldn't read, for it was a dark day and I had no spectacles.

"But I began clearly, and got them interested, and the lecture was as good, I think, as I ever gave, and the audience all as quiet as mice to hear. I got some bits read at last, and it was all right; only then I had to go all over my schools with Lord Selborne and the Commissioners and say, at a shot, what I wanted done, and I didn't know a bit what the Dean wanted me to say, nor Acland, and they both beside me, and it was terrible; and I didn't sleep, and got up at two in the morning, and arranged drawers till four."

The course as a whole was equally successful, and the last lecture as crowded as any of them. "Finished the most important course I have ever yet given in Oxford," he wrote in his diary (December 2, 18T7), " and I am fairly cheerful in sense of remaining power for great tasks, if I am worthy of doing them; the spirit willing enough, and the rest weak." "I gave yesterday," he wrote on the same day to his dear friend, Miss Susan Beever, "the twelfth and last of my course of lectures this term, to a room crowded by six hundred people, two-thirds members of the University, and with its door wedged open by those who could not get in; this interest of theirs being granted to me, I doubt not, because for the first time in Oxford I have been able to speak to them boldly of immortal life. I intended when I began the course only to have read Modern Painters to them; but when I began, some of your favourite bits interested the men so much, and brought so much larger a proportion of undergraduates than usual,

¹ Miss Alice Liddell (Mrs. Hargreaves), for whom "Lewis Carroll" wrote Alice in Wonderland. Eleanor (Mrs. Furneaux) is Mr. Arthur Severn's twin-sister.

that I took pains to reinforce and press them home; and people say I have never given so useful a course yet."¹

The last lecture of the course was published by Ruskin in the following month in the Nmeieenih Century, and is here reprinted. The notes of the other lectures are printed from the author's MS. at Brantwood.

The illustrations in this volume, while including all that have appeared in previous editions of the several books, comprise also many which are new, and will, it is hoped, contribute to the better enjoyment of the text.

The frontispiece is a reduction, by photogravure, of a sketch by Gainsborough, which is at Brantwood, and which Ruskin accounted one of his principal treasures. It is referred to several times in this volume.*

The illustrations in Lectures on Landscape are reduced⁸ from the edition of 1897 in imperial quarto. That edition contained, however, five plates which do not appear in this volume. Of these, four have been given in previous volumes;⁴ and one is reserved for what, in a complete edition of Raskin's Works, is its more appropriate place.⁹One additional plate (VIII.) is introduced—a photogravure of studies by Ruskin of a Greek terra-cotta; this also is referred to several times in his notes and lectures.⁶ The chromo-lithographs of Turner's "Dudley" and "Flint* are made, as in the earlier edition, not from the originals, but from copies by Mr. Arthur Severn. Though the scale is in this volume reduced, a comparison will show, the editors believe, that the results are by no means inferior.

The illustrations in The Eaglets Nest are all new, being taken from examples in the Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford. An engraving of the "Daughter of Roberto Strozzi (XIX.) is No. 42 in the Standard Series; our reproduction, however, is made from a photograph of the original picture, now in the Berlin Gallery. It is mentioned in the text (p. 228), and is of peculiar interest as the only portrait of a child by Titian which we possess. "Were I a painter, I should be in despair," exclaimed the painter's friend Aretino, in a letter dated July 6, 1542; "it deserves the first place among all pictures that have ever been painted, and all that may be produced in the future." But Aretino wrote before the time of Reynolds. " Much more delightful" in Ruskin's eyes is the picture at Windsor of the little Princess Matilda with her Skye terrier. Ruskin placed a mezzotint of it in his

* Except the plate of Turner's " Swans," which is given in the same size. ⁴ For particulars, see the Bibliographical Note, p. 6.

Rudimentary Series (No. 1S5); our plate (XX.) is, again, made from a photograph of the original picture.

The next two plates are examples of Ruskin's drawings of birds. The eagle's head is No. 165 in the Educational Series (see Vol. XXI. p. 89); and the kingfisher, No. 201 in the Rudimentary (ibid., p. 827). The present study was made "with dominant reference to colour*"; another study " with dominant reference to shade" is Plate LVIII. in Vol. XXI.

The plate of "The Twelve Heraldic Ordinaries" (XXIII.) is here reduced from an engraving made by Mr. Allen for the "Oxford Art School Series" (Vol. XXI. p. 314).

The illustrations in Ariadne Fhrentina include all those which have previously appeared in that volume, except that one of the original illustrations has already been given in an improved form in Vol. XX. (see below, p. 406 n.), and three new plates are added. Some explanations about Buskin's illustrations have already been given (p. xxxviii.); it must here be added that the autotypes of early Italian prints given by him were not altogether satisfactory representations of the originals. In one case Ruskin himself substituted in the second edition a better reproduction than had appeared in the first (see Bibliographical Note, p. 297). For this edition photogravures have in all cases been made from fine impressions of the plates in the British Museum; the engravings, hitherto reduced, are now given of their full size. These remarks apply to Plates XXVI.-XXXL, XXXIII., and XXXIV. The woodcut, and the two enlargements from woodcuts, by Bewick (Plate XXV.), have hitherto been given by autotype process; they have now been facsimiled on wood by Mr. H. S. Uhlrich. Michael Angelo'8 Sibyl (XXXII.) is represented by photogravure from a photo* graph of the original. The engraving by Albert Diirer (XXXV.) is reproduced from a fine impression of the plate in the British Museum.

Of the three additional plates, the first is of " Debonnairet£ " (XXIV.). It is a photogravure made, by kind permission of the University authorities, from the drawing in the Douce Collection at Oxford. Particulars are given below the text (p. S14 n.); this figure from the now destroyed Painted Chamber at Westminster will, as now reproduced, enable the reader the better to follow Buskin's long discussion of it. The other plates, showing respectively Holbein's " Erasmus" (XXXVI.) and DiirerY (XXXVII.), are similarly introduced to add interest to Buskin's analysis of the two works. The " Holbein" is from a photograph of the original picture in the Louvre; the Diirer, from an impression of the plate in the British Museum.

The woodcuts from Holbein (Figs. 4, 5, 8, and 9) are printed, as in previous editions of Ariadne, from the facsimiles by Arthur Burgess.

[Bibliographical Nate.—These lectures on Landscape were delivered in the Theatre of the Museum of Oxford in Lent Term, 1871, on the following dates: I. Thursday, January 26; II. Thursday, February 9; III. Thursday, February 23. To the announcement of the lectures in the University Gazette (January 20, 1871) was added an intimation that "The Professor desires also to see Members of the University who wish to study with him in the University Galleries, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, between Two and Three o'clock, commencing on Saturday the 28th inst"

The lectures were reported in the Athenctum of February 4, February 18, and March 4, 1871, under the following titles (none being announced by the lecturer): I. "The Aim and Study of Landscape"; II. "The Relation of Light and Shade to Colour in Landscape"; III. "The Greek and Gothic Schools."

These reports were reprinted in Igdratil, vol. Hi., March 1892, pp. 248-254, and thence in the privately-issued Ruskiniana, part iL, 1892, pp. 218-224.

Twenty-six years after their delivery the lectures were printed from the author's MS. in a volume, which had the title-page as shown on the preceding leaf.

Imperial 4to, pp. 84. Two blank pages; Half-title, p. 8; Title-page, p. 6, with the publisher's imprint; at the foot of the reverse: " Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson A Co. | At the Ballantyne Press." On p. 7 was the following:—

" Thbsb Lectures on Landscape were given at Oxford on January 20l* February 9, and February 23, 1871. They were not public Lectures like Professor Raskin's other courses, but addressed only to undergraduates who had joined his class. They were illustrated by pictures from his collection, of which several are here reproduced, and by others which may be seen in the Oxford University Galleries or in the Raskin Drawing School.

Contents (here p. 9), p. 9 (including "Index"); List of Plates, p. 11; Text of the lectures (with separate fly-title to each), pp. 19-77; Index, pp. 79-64 (printer's imprint repeated at the foot).

Though dated 1897, the volume was not issued till February 4, 1896; in green buckram, with gilt top, lettered across the back, "Lectures | on | Land- | Scape | John | Ruskin | George Allen"; and on the front cover, "Lectures | on | Landscape | John Ruskin" | embossed on a gold panel 1000 copies. Price 42s. (reduced in July 1900 to 80s.), the edition in this form being still current. The plates are also sold separately without the text (26s. the set, or 3s. singly). There were also 160 special copies on unbleached Arnold hand-made paper, with India proofs of the plates, and

borfncr in half-yellam; price 84s. In these special copies the swans' beaks .6n'.lNate VII. were (as in this volume) touched by hand with colour. . '"/The "List of Plates" (p. 11) was as follows, an additional column being

Jtiippo Lippft "Madonna" . . . . Reynolds* *■ Lady with the Brooch ". . . - * " ■■"■ • of the Hee-

Turner's Etobing of "Prooris and Cephalus" . 74 The Watermill [Liber Studiorum), after Turner 74 Grand Chartreuse [Liber Studiorum), after

Nots.—The Photogravures from Liber Studiorum should be eeen with the light falling from the left In order to get the true effect of the raised

In this edition it has heen necessary to reduce all the plates, except that of "Swans, after Turner."

Varim Lectionee.—The edition of 1897 was printed from a fair copy of the MS. which was made in 1871 by the author's servant, Crawley, and revised hy Ruskin himself in that year (see above, Introduction, p. xxx.). Some differences, however, crept into the print. The following is a list of the variations:—

§ 7, line 3, the 1897 edition reads "subjects/' but Ruskin wrote ¹¹ subject"; line 16,1897 edition reads ". . . have humanity in you enough in you to interpret . . . ," following the MS., but Ruskin in inserting the second "in you^N forgot to strike out the first

§ 8, line 2, "The" in 1897 edition is here corrected from the MS. to " Ita."

§ 11, line 18, 1897 edition reads "he gets tired"; the draft MS. has "one gets tired/' which seems better to express the author's meaning, as shown earlier in the section, namely, that in snch detail the ordinary painter gets tired.

§ 14, line 8, 1897 edition, following Crawley's copy, reads " satiated," but "vitiated" in the author's own draft seems the right word.

§ 30, line 7, for a passage which dropped out in the 1897 edition, see p, 32 n.

§ 31, line 5, "black" in the 1897 edition, but "blues" in the MS., which is the right word (see p. 25), and is therefore here followed; line 8, 1897 edition, following Crawley's copy, reads "these,'' but Rusltin corrected the word to "their."

§ 42, line 9, "simply" in the 1897 edition, but "only" in the MS.; line 16, "of" is now inserted by the editors.

8 52, line 6, 1897 edition alters "this" to "the"; "this" shows that Raskin exhibited the example at the lecture.

§ 60, line 12, the 1897 edition reads "dressed neither," but Rusldn wrote "neither dressed."

§ 62, lines 14 and 15, in the 1897 edition : ". . . oppose Gothic passion to Greek temperance; yet Gothic rigidity, ardffit of Ixrrcunf, to Greek action and Afrfcpio." It is so written in Crawley's copy, but the reading does not make sense. A parallel passage in Val <TArno (see below, p. 50 n.) clearly shows that the correct reading is the one now adopted in the text.

§ 64, last lines, the author's text is here restored from the MS., the 1897 edition reading "... against Gothic lucidity of colour and acute-nets of angle; and Greek simplicity and cold veracity against Gothic rapture of trusted vision."

§ 91, line 13, here the 1897 edition reads "displaying" instead of "defining," which is the word in the MS.

§ 93, line 15, "Hesperia" is here corrected to "Hesperie"; line 13, for Ruskin's word "subjects," the 1897 edition reads "landscapes."

§ 96, line 22, the word "clumsy" before "country boys" was omitted in the 1897 edition.]

In my inaugural lecture,² I stated that while holding this professorship I should direct you, in your practical exercises, chiefly to natural history and landscape. And having in the course of the past year laid the foundational elements of art sufficiently before you, I will invite you, now, to enter on real work with me; and accordingly I propose during this and the following term to give you what practical leading I can in elementary study of

¹ [Delivered on January 26, 1871. Among Buskin's MSS. it a sheet labelled "let, I believe, of Lectures on Landscape." It contains the following introductory remarks, not printed in the edition of 1897:—

"I am sure, gentlemen, that you feel I must have had strict reasons for a proceeding so painful to myself as the refusal to-day of the honour hitherto done us by the presence of ladies. I did so because I felt it to be absolutely necessary that you should understand the work you are now to be invited to enter upon as being integrally a part of your University studies, and as requiring for success in it, application as severe and accurate as those branches of them which you take into the schools.

" You were particularly likely to mistake the character of the present course, because landscape sketching has been always thought of as an amusement. I hope that 1 shall not entirely reverse that impression, and make you think it altogether dull; but assuredly you will not only get pleasure from it, as I must direct your practice by severe work, such as I should have no hope of inducing even the most earnest women to undertake. And besides this, it is necessary that if I allow myself in any expression which you may consider speculative or sentimental, you should know that it is not intended to please a girl audience, but is spoken in full trust that such degrees of imagination or of passion as I may appeal to are indeed commonly in the hearts of English gentlemen in their youth. 1 had other more directly practical reasons also. It is impossible to show examples properly to a large audience; and I want now to make my lectures less formal; and to be relieved from the sense that I must always say something, if I can, worth hearing, since so many people have come to hear it If I can say, during the hour, what will be permanently useful to one or two of you, I shall do my duty much better than by saying what is only interest-

landscape, and of a branch of natural history which will form a kind of centre for all the rest—Ichthyology,¹

In the outset I must shortly state to you the position which landscape painting and animal painting hold towards the higher branches of art.

2. Landscape painting is the thoughtful and passionate representation of the physical conditions appointed for human existence.² It imitates the aspects, and records the, phenomena, of the visible things which are dangerous or beneficial to men; and displays the human methods of dealing with these, and of enjoying them or suffering from them, which are either exemplary or deserving of sympathetic contemplation. Animal painting investigates the laws of greater and less nobility of character in organic form, as comparative anatomy examines those of greater and less development in organic structure; and the function of animal painting is to bring into notice the minor and unthought-of conditions of power or beauty, as that of physiology is to ascertain the minor conditions of adaptation.

8. Questions as to the purpose of arrangements or the use of the organs of an animal are, however, no less within the province of the painter than of the physiologist, and are indeed more likely to commend themselves to you through drawing than dissection. For as you dissect an animal you generally assume its form to be necessary, and only examine how it is constructed; but in drawing the outer form itself attentively you are led necessarily to consider the mode of life for which it is disposed, and therefore to be struck by any awkwardness or apparent uselessness in its parts. Alter sketching one day several heads of birds it became a vital matter of interest to me to know the

¹ [For Ruskin's intention in this matter, gee the Introduction, above, pp. xrv.-xxvi. In the MS. book which contains the first draft of the Lectures on Landscape there are several pages of notes on fishes—classifying and discussing various orders in accordance with differences of form and colour, and containing references to plates in Cuvier's Natural History, from which Ruskin's points were to be illustrated. Compare also Vol. XX. pp. 196-197.]

² [Compare Modern Painter*, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. i. § 4 (Vol. VII. p. 255); and Laws of FSsole, ch. viii. § 16 (Vol. XV. p. 438).]

on a dark ground. That decorative purpose of dappling, or Troucikia,¹ is as studiously and deliciously carried out by Turner with the Daedalus side of him, in the inlaying of these white spots on the Indiaman's deck, as if he were working a precious toy in ebony and ivory. But Turner did not paint either of the sea-pieces for the sake of these decorous arrangements; neither did he paint the Scarborough, as a professor of physical science, to show you the level of low tide on the Yorkshire coast; nor the Indiaman to show you the force of impact in a liquid mass of sea-water of given momentum. He painted this to show you the daily course of quiet human work and happiness, and that, to enable you to conceive something of uttermost human misery—both ordered by the power of the great deep.

6. You may easily—you must, perhaps, for a little time —suspect me of exaggeration in this statement. It is so natural to suppose that the main interest of landscape is essentially in rocks and water and sky; and that figures are to be put, like the salt and mustard to a dish, only to give it a flavour.

Put all that out of your heads at once. The interest of a landscape consists wholly in its relation either to figures present—or to figures past—or to human powers conceived. The most splendid drawing of the chain of the Alps, irrespective of their relation to humanity, is no more true landscape than a painting of this bit of stone. For, as natural philosophers, there is no bigness or littleness to you. This stone is just as interesting to you, or ought to be, as if it was a million times as big. There is no more sublimity—per se—in ground sloped at an angle of forty-five, than in ground level; nor in a perpendicular fracture of a rock, than in a horizontal one. The only thing that makes the one more interesting to you in a landscape than the other, is that you could tumble over the perpendicular

have humanity enough in you to interpret the feelings of hedgers and ditchers, and frogs.¹

8. Next, here* is one of the most beautiful landscapes ever painted, the best I have next to the Greta and Tees/ Its subject physically is a mere bank of grass above a stream with some wych-elms and willows. A level-topped bank; the water has cut its way down through the soft alluvion of an elevated plain to the limestone rock at the bottom.

Had this scene been in America, no mortal could have made a landscape of it. It is nothing but a grass bank with some not very pretty trees scattered over it, wholly without grouping. The stream at the bottom is rocky indeed, but its rocks are mean, flat, and of a dull yellow colour. The sky is grey and shapeless. There's absolutely nothing to paint anywhere of essential landscape subject, as commonly understood.

Now see what the landscape consists in, which I have told you is one of the most beautiful ever painted by man. There's first a little bit of it left nearly wild, not quite wild; there's a cart and riders track through it among the copse; and then, standing simply on the wild moss-troopers' ground, the scattered ruins of a great abbey, seen so dimly, that they seem to be fading out of sight, in colour as in time.

These two things together, the wild copse wood and the ruin, take you back into the life of the fourteenth century. The one is the border-riders' kingdom; the other that of peace which has striven against border-riding—how vainly! Both these are remains of the past. But the outhouses and

¹ [The MS. adds " There it is for you/' i.e., the plate of "Hedging- and Ditching" from Tamer's Liber Studiorum (for another reference to it, see Modern Painters, yoL v., Vol. VII. p. 433). Raskin proceeded to compare the plate with some of Claude's. The passage was not, however, written out; the notes in the MS. being "Better than Claude's figures; sympathy in Turner, true ditchers; in Claude's, affected, with Moses."]

¹ ["Egglestone Abbey," here reproduced (Plate III.). For other references to the drawing, see Vol. XIII. pp. 343, 430, 573, 592.1

³ [Presented by Ruskin to his Drawing School at Oxford: Standard Series, No. 2 (see Vol. XXI. p. 11); and for other references to it, see below, pp. 69, 172, 514.]

irrespective of the boldness or minuteness of the work. An insensitive person will daub with a camel's-hair brush and ultramarine; and a passionate one will paint with mortar and a trowel.

10. But far more than common passion is necessary to paint landscape. The physical conditions there are so numerous, and the spiritual ones so occult, that you are sure to be overpowered by the materialism, unless your sentiment is strong. No man is naturally likely to think first of anatomy in painting a pretty woman; but he is very apt to do so in painting a mountain. No man of ordinary sense will take pleasure in features that have no meaning, but he may easily take it in heath, woods or waterfalls, that have no expression. So that it needs much greater strength of heart and intellect to paint landscape than figure:¹ many commonplace persons, bred in good schools, have painted the figure pleasantly or even well; but none but the strongest—John Bellini, Titian, Velasquez, Tintoret, Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli, Carpaccio and Turner—have ever painted a fragment of good landscape.* In missal painting exquisite figure-drawing is frequent, and landscape backgrounds in late works are elaborate; but I only know thoroughly good landscape in one book; and I have examined—I speak deliberately—thousands.⁸

11. For one thing, the passion is necessary for the mere quantity of design. In good art, whether painting or sculpture, I have again and again told you every touch is necessary and beautifully intended.⁴ Now it falls within the compass of ordinary application to place rightly all the folds of drapery or gleams of light on a chain, or ornaments in a pattern; but when it comes to placing every leaf in a tree, the painter gets tired. Here, for instance,

¹ [Compare the lecture on landscape given in 1884, reprinted in a later volume from Studies in Buskin.]

⁸ [The "one book" is the "Grimani Missal^M: see below, § 77, p. 57. For

⁴ [See, for instance, Lectures on Art, § 71, and Aratra Pentelici, § 179 (Vol. XX.

is a little bit of Sandro Botticelli background;¹ I have purposefully sketched it in the slightest way, that you might see how the entire value of it depends on thoughtful placing. There is no texture aimed at, no completion, scarcely any variety of light and shade; but by mere care in the placing the thing is beautiful Well, every leaf, every cloud, every touch is placed with the same care in great work; and when this is done as by John Bellini in the picture of Peter Martyr,² or as it was by Titian in the great Peter Martyr, with every leaf in a wood, one gets tired. I know no other such landscape in the world as that is, or as that was.

12. Perhaps you think on such conditions you never can paint landscape at all. Well, great landscape certainly not; but pleasant and useful landscape, yes; provided only the passion you bring to it be true and pure. The degree of it you cannot command; the genuineness of it you can —yes, and the depth of source also. Tintoret's passion may be like the Reichenbach,⁸ and yours only like a little dripping Holy well, but both equally from deep springs.

18. But though the virtue of all painting (and similarly of sculpture and every other art) is in passion, I must not have you begin by working passionately. The discipline of youth, in all its work, is in cooling and curbing itself, as the discipline of age is in warming and urging itself; you know the Bacchic chorus of old men in Plato's Laws.⁴ To

¹ [Here Ruslrin showed his study of a few leaves in the background of Botticelli's "Spin*": No. 262 in the Educational Series (Vol. XXI. p. 97).]

* [National Gallery, No. 812. For other references to the picture, see §§ 77,94, and The Relation of Michael Angelo and Tintoret, § 13 (below, pp. 57, 66, 86); and for Titian's " Peter Martyr," destroyed by fire, VoL III. p. 28 ».]

* rFor another reference to the Falls of the Reichenbach at Meiringeu, see VoL aVIIL p. xliv. Raskin had placed photographs of Turner's drawings of the fells in the Educational Series: Nos. 279, 280 (Vol. XXL p. 99).]

⁴ [Book ii. 664-666. Of Plato's three choirs, the third was to be "the choir of elder men, who are from thirty to sixty years of age." When a man " has reached forty years, and is feasted at public banquets, he may invite not only the other Gods, but Dionysus above all, to the mystery and festivity of the elder men, making use of the wine which he has given them to be the cure of the sourness of old age; that in age we may renew oar youth, and forget our sorrows; and also in order that the nature of the soul, like iron melted m the fire, may become softer and snore impressible" (Jowett's translation).]

the end of life, indeed, the strength of a man's finest nature is shown in due continence; but that is because the finest natures remain young to the death: and for you the first thing you have to do in art (as in life) is to be quiet and firm—quiet, above everything;¹ and modest, with this most essential modesty, that you must like the landscape you are going to draw better than you expect to like your drawing of it, however well it may succeed. If you would not rather have the real thing than your sketch of it, you are not in a right state of mind for sketching at all. If you only think of the scene, "what a nice sketch this will make!" be assured you will never make a nice sketch of it. You may think you have produced a beautiful work; nay, perhaps the public and many fair judges will agree with you; but I tell you positively, there will be no enduring value in what you have thus done.² Whereas if you think of the scene, " Ah, if I could only get some shadow or scrawl of this to cany away with me, how glad I should be!"—then whatever you do will be, according to your strength, good and progressive: it may be feeble, or much faultful, but it will be vital and essentially precious.

¹ [The first draft of the lecture has here an additional passage, first struck

". . . quiet, above everything. Scholars inside and outside—slow, cool, silent, gentle: in a word, the reverse of everything that most of the influences of the world round you would make you. The type of you, as the world would make you, is a Gennesaret pig;—hurried, hot, squeaking, violent, and in competition—downwards. Reverse all that precisely and scientifically, and grow in everything as a vine grows, upwards and along, not competing with other vines, but at its own grace, in its own time. That was why I quoted the first Psalm at the end of my first lecture. Everything that you do will prosper if you grow as a tree that brings forth its fruit in its season, and not before."

For the reference here, see Lectures on Art, § 30 (Vol. XX. p. 44).] ¹ [In another draft there is an additional passage here:—

". . . I tell you positively it will be bad art, having no one great or vital quality, whatever the skill of it. It may be an elaborate water-colour, all purple and gold, with dextrous crags and aerial clouds, and warm set against cold, and dark against light, and all the rest of it. But I tell you positively, if you like your drawing better than the scene, your drawing must be wholly bad, rotten to the core. But if you think of the scene . . . vital, and essentially good."

The MS. then continues, "Now, story of Crossing the Brook." Ruskin tells the

story in a letter to Professor Norton, dated August 7, 1870 (see a later volume

14. Now, it is not possible for you to command this state of mind, or anything like it, in yourselves at once. Nay, in all probability your eyes are so vitiated by the false popular art surrounding us now on all sides, that you cannot see the delicate reality though you try; but even though you may not care for the truth, you can act as if you did, and tell it.

Now, therefore, observe this following quite plain direction. Whenever you set yourself to draw anything, consider only how best you may give a person who has not seen the place, a true idea of it. Use any means in your power to do that, and don't think of the person for whom you are drawing as a connoisseur, but as a person of ordinary sense and feeling. Don't get artist-like qualities for him: but first give him the pleasant sensation of being at the place, then show him how the land lies, how the water runs, how the wind blows, and so on. Always think of the public as Moli&re of his old woman;¹ you have done nothing really great or good if you can't please her.

15. Now beginning wisely, so as to lose no time or labour, you will learn to paint all the conditions of quiet light and sky, before you attempt those of variable light and cloud. Do not trouble yourselves with or allow yourselves to be tempted by any effects that are brilliant or tremendous; except only that from the beginning I recommend you to watch always for sunrise;² to keep a little diary of the manner of it, and to have beside your window a small sketch-bode, with pencil cut over night, and colours moist The one indulgence which I would have you allow yourselves in fast colouring, for some time, is the endeavour to secure some record at the instant of the colours of morning clouds; while, if they are merely white or grey or blue, you must get an outline of them with penciL You will soon feel by this means what are the real difficulties to

¹ [The reference is to the story that Moliere first reed his plays to his housekeeper, with a view to discovering how an audience would take them.1 ¹ [Compare VoL XXI. p. 106, and the other passages there referred to.]

be encountered in all landscape colouring, and your eyes will be educated to quantity and harmonious action of forms.

But for the rest—learn to paint everything in the quietest and simplest light. First outline your whole subject completely, with delicate sharp pencil line. If you don't get more than that, let your outline be a finished and lovely diagram of the whole.

16. All the objects are then to be painted of their proper colours, matching them as nearly as you can, in the manner that a missal is painted, filling the outlined shapes neatly up to their junctions; reinforcing afterwards when necessary, but as little as possible; but, above all, knowing precisely what the light is, and where it is.*

17. I have brought two old-fashioned coloured engravings,¹ which are a precise type of the style I want you to begin with. Finished from corner to corner, as well as the painter easily could; everything done to good purpose, nothing for vain glory; nothing in haste or affectation, nothing in feverish or morbid excitement. The observation is accurate; the sentiment, though childish, deep and pure;

¹ [Two coloured prints of I sola Bella, from pp. 116, 118 of a Picturesque Tour from Geneva to Milan by Way of the Simplon . . . engraved from designs by J. and J. Lory of Neufchdtel. London: Published by R. Ackermann, at his Repository of Arts, 1820. Ruskin placed these prints in the Educational Series at Oxford (Nos. 103 and 104); for notes upon them, see Vol. XXI. p. 129. An early draft of the passage shows that Ruskin had also in mind another coloured print:—

". . . don't think of the person for whom you are drawing as a connoisseur, but have an ideal Moliere's old woman, who will stand no nonsense, and admit no necessity of anything to the composition. You may imagine your ideal old woman to be a man of science if you like—there's no harm in that—but she must neither be a painter nor pre'cieuse, [only] a person of ordinary sense and feeling; and be sure that such a person will be grateful to you, first of all, if you can make him feel as if be were at the place, and that you ought to do that if you can do nothing more.

" Now you may learn much in this matter from looking at the common coloured prints sold at any popular watering-place, which are bought for reminiscence only. I don't mean, of course, what vulgar people would buy, but what nice people would buy who know little or nothing of art,

and the effect of light, for common work, quite curiously harmonious and deceptive.

They are, in spite of their weaknesses, absolutely the only landscapes I could show you which give you a real idea of the places, or which put your minds into the tone which, if you were happy and at ease, they would take in the air and light of Italy.

I dwell on the necessity of completion especially, because I have lost much time myself from my sympathy with the feverish intensity of the minds of the great engravers; and from always fastening on one or two points of my subject and neglecting the rest.

18. We have seen, then, that every subject is to be taken up first in its terminal lines, then in its light and shade, then in its colour.

I think the examples of shell outline in your copying series^l must already have made you feel, the exact nature of a pure outline, the difficulty of it, and the value.

and want only a picture of places where they have been happy as like as possible. Here, for instance, is one of the Swiss prints coloured by hand which used to be sold in ancient days to meet the demand of a quieter and less mixed order of travellers than now supports the shops of Interlachen. It is the work of a person wholly without genius, and acquainted only with the rudiments of art, but it is entirely unaffected, painstaking, and in those rudiments of art, practised and skilful Especially in the distribution of its tones of aerial perspective, and in its quite precise, yet not vulgarly rigid, methods of etching, it is to be highly praised; and by means of these two qualities, and a sufficient, though uninteresting harmony of colour, it gives you, in a very diluted and feeble way indeed, out still with vitality enough to be reflective, a sense of being on the real spot. There is nothing of the deep beauty of the place or or the terror of its rocks, or purity of its light; nevertheless, somehow you feel as if you were there, and do verily get a better idea of the town of Schwyts as it is, than I could give you even by a photograph, or by any other means in my power."

The coloured print of Schwyts is No. 286 in the Educational Series; for other

may have complex parts, represents an actual limit, accurately to be followed. The outline of a cup, of a shell, or of an animal's limb, has a determinable course, which your pen or pencil line either coincides with or does riot You can say of that line, either it is wrong or right; if right, it is in a measure suggestive, and nobly suggestive of the character of the object. But the greater number of objects in a landscape either have outlines so complex that no

pencil could follow them (as trees in middle distance), or they have no actual outline at all, but a gradated and softened edge; as, for the most part, clouds, foam, and the like. And even in things which have determinate form, the outline of that form is usually quite incapable of expressing their real character.

19. Here is the most ordinary component of a foreground for instance, a pleasantly coloured stone. Any of its pure outlines are not only without beauty, but absolutely powerless to give you any notion of its character, although that character is in itself so interesting, that here

Turner has made a picture of little more than a heap of such stones, with blue water to oppose their colour.¹ In consequence of these difficulties and insufficiencies, most landscape-painters have been tempted to neglect outline altogether, and think only of effects of light or colour on masses more or less obscurely defined. They have thus gradually lost their sense of organic form, their precision of hand, and their respect for limiting law; in a word, for all the safeguards and severe dignities of their art And land* scape-painting has, therefore, more in consequence of this one error than of any other, become weak, frivolous, and justly despised.

20. Now, if any of you have chanced to notice at the end of my Queen of the Air,* my saying that in landscape Turner must be your only guide, you perhaps have thought I said so because of his great power in melting colours or in massing light and shade. Not so. I have always said he is the only great landscape-painter, and to be your only guide, because he is the only landscape-painter who can draw an outline.

His finished works perhaps appear to you more vague than any other master's: no man loses his outlines more constantly. You will be surprised to know that his frankness in losing depends on his certainty of finding if he chooses; and that, while all other landscape-painters study from Nature in shade or in colour, Turner always sketched with the point.

"Always," of course, is a wide word. In your copying series I have put a sketch by Turner in colour from Nature;⁸ some few others of the kind exist, in the National Gallery and elsewhere. But, as a rule, from his boyhood

¹ [Ruskin at this point showed his "St Gothard: Pass of Faido" (here reproduced, Plate IV., p. 32). For a list of the various engravings of it in Modern Painters, see Vol. VI. pp. xxv.-xxvi.; and for other references to it, Vol. XIII. pp. xxiii., xxv., 206, 466, 484. It is the drawing of which Turner used to speak as "that litter of stones" (VoL XIII. p. 485). Ruskin showed also at the lecture an actual stone which he had brought from the scene of Turner's drawing, and which he used often to show to visitors at Denmark Hill and Brantwood.]

to the last day of his life, he sketched only with the fine pencil point, and always the outline, more if he had time, but at least the outline, of every scene that interested him; and in general, outline so subtle and elaborate as to be inexhaustible in examination and uncopiable for delicacy.

Here is a sketch of an English park scene which represents the average character of a study from Nature by Turner;¹ and here the sketch from Nature of Dunblane Abbey for the liber Studiorum,¹ which shows you what he took from Nature, when he had time only to get what was most precious to him.

21. The first thing, therefore, you have to learn in landscape, is to outline; and therefore we must now know precisely what an outline is, how it ought to be represented ; and this it will be • right to define in quite general terms applicable to all subjects.

We saw in the fifth Lecture* that every visible thing consisted of spaces of colour, terminated either by sharp or gradated limits. Whenever they are sharp, the line of separation, followed by the point of your drawing instrument, is the proper outline of your subject, whether it represents the limits of flat spaces or of solid forms.

82. For instance, here is a drawing by Holbein of a lady in a dark dress, with bars of blade velvet round her arm.⁴ Her form is seen everywhere defined against the light by a perfectly sharp linear limit which Holbein can accurately draw with his pen; the patches of velvet are also distinguished from the rest of her dress by a linear limit, which he follows with his pen just as decisively. Here, therefore, is your first great law. Wherever you see one space of colour distinguished from another by a sharp limit, you are to draw that limit firmly; and that is your outline.

• [The pencil sketch on the spot Is No. 145 in the Educational 8eriee; tor the plate in Liber Studiorum, eee below, p. 36 (Plate VL).]

⁴ [The drawing (which belongs to the Oxford University Galleries) is in the Working Series, Cabinet II., No. 43 (Vol. XXI. p. 304).]

28. Also, observe that as your representing this limit by a dark line is a conventionalism, and just as much a conventionalism when the line is subtle as when it is thick, the great masters accept and declare that conventionalism with perfect frankness, and use bold and decisive outline, if any.

Also, observe, that though, when you are master of your art, you may modify your outline by making it dark in some parts, light in others, and even sometimes thick and sometimes slender, a scientifically accurate outline is perfectly equal throughout; and in your first practice I wish you to use always a pen with a blunt point, which will make no hair stroke under any conditions. So that using black ink and only one movement of the pen, not returning to thicken your line, you shall either have your line there, or not there; and that you may not be able to gradate or change it, in any way or degree whatsoever.

24. Now the first question respecting it is: what place is your thick line to have with respect to the limit which it represents—outside of it, or inside, or over it ? Theoretically, it is to be over it; the true limit falling all the way along the centre of your thick line. The contest of Apelles with Protogenes consisted in striking this true limit within each other's lines, more and more finely.¹ And you may always consider your pen line as representing the first incision for sculpture, the true limit being the sharp centre of the incision.

But, practically, when you are outlining a light object defined against a dark one, the line must go outside of it; and when a dark object against a light one, inside of it

In this drawing of Holbein's, the hand being seen against the light, the outline goes inside the contour of the fingers.

¹ [For other reference! to this contest and "the line of Apelles," see Lector— en AH, § 74 (VoL XX. p. 81).]

happen constantly that forms are entirely distinct from each other and separated by true limits, which are yet invisible, or nearly so, to the eye. I place, for instance, one of these eggs in front of the other, and probably to most of you the separation in the light is indiscernible. Is it then to be outlined? In practically combining outline with accomplished light and shade there are cases of this kind in which the outline may with advantage, or even must for truth of effect, be omitted. But the facts of the solid form are of so vital importance, and the perfect command of them so necessary to the dignity and intelligibility of the work, that the greatest artists, even for their finished drawings, like to limit every solid form by a fine line, whether its contour be visible to the eye or not

26. An outline thus perfectly made with absolute decision, and with a wash of one colour above it, is the most masterly of all methods of light and shade study, with limited time, when the forms of the objects to be drawn are clear and unaffected by mist.¹ But without any wash of colour, such an outline is the most valuable of all means for obtaining such memoranda of any scene as may explain to another person, or record for yourself, what is most important in its features.

27. Choose, then, a subject that interests you; and so far as failure of time or materials compels you to finish one part, or express one character, rather than another, of course dwell on the features that interest you most. But beyond this, forget, or even somewhat repress yourself, and make it your first object to give a true idea of the place to other people. You are not to endeavour to express your own feelings about it; if anything, err on the side of concealing them. What is best is not to think of yourself at all, but to state as plainly and simply as you can the whole truth of the thing. What you think unimportant in it may to another person be the most touching part of it:

what you think beautiful may be in truth commonplace and of small value. Quietly complete each part to the best of your power, endeavouring to maintain a steady and dutiful energy, and the tranquil pleasure of a workman.¹

¹ [Among the MS. (in Crawle/s copy) there are the following passages which may have been read at the end of this lecture:—

" The great constant pleasure of life is in the sense of steady and merited advance in power or knowledge. It is not in what you know, but what you discover; not in what you can do, but in doing every day better. And do not think you can snatch any pleasure out of the hand of God; nor any secret out of the heart of Nature. God will give vou as much pleasure as is good for you, if you do what He bids you, quietly; Nature will teach von daily wonderful things out of her heart, if you will love her and listen to her; but if you try to grasp any pleasure hastily or violently, it will become dust in your hand; if you try to find out things impatiently, if you £U688 at them or debate about them instead of working at them, you will find out nothing really worth knowing.

In the first draft of the lecture there is another additional passage here which is

•f interest as referring to examples which are in the Raskin Art Collection, or were

"... of a workman; and avoiding alike all excitement or impatience, and all resentment or mortification in failure.

"Now, there are two distinct ways in which you may give another person an idea of the place.

" One is by collecting for him in your drawing as much information as vou can, without in the least attempting to deceive him into the sense of his being at the place itself.

"The other way is, without caring how much or how little he is informed, to give him the kind of feeling that he would have had at the place itself—the pleasure and thrill of being there. Here, for instance, is a cony of a sketch by Turner of the town of Naples, in which his only object is to store up all the knowledge he can express with his pencil point of the shapes of the houses and rocks: it is simply a map of the scene giving the solid forms instead of the flat spaces; there is no more effort to make you fancy yourself at the place than if he were making a geometrical survey of an estate.

" Here, on the other hand, is a sketch by Richard Wilson of a scene near Rome, in which the whole effort is to give you this feeling of being actually at the place on a summer afternoon—in which he has entirely succeeded, with a few almost shapeless and dim pencil shadows, and without one articulate form.

" Now, you are always to work with the first of these intentions as the main one; but you are to consider your drawing bad or good, in the degree in which you find afterwards that you have obtained also the second object, and given to the patient statement of facts the charm of reality.

"'The charm of reality,' observe; not in general the absolute aspect of reality. With quite consummate and finished painting, as 1 told you before [VoL XX. p. 121], you may reach the very edge or deception; but in all

ordinary work you must be a far way short of that, and yetvou must make tie spectator feel, somehow, as if he were at the place. Tnis sketch of Wilson's is most visibly a pencil study—you don't mistake it for the scene itself, and yet it will make you warm to look at on a cold day. And I would press upon you most earnestly as a vital sign of goodness in your work, that vou nave got that sensation of actuality into it

" I think I can make you feel the character very clearly by two compared examples. Here is a lithographic drawing of the spire and south side of Strasburg Cathedral, which is of very unusual merit as a painstaking effort to render the facts. Nor is it by a nerson without feeling; on the contrary, it is the only drawing of the spire of Strasburg I ever saw which shows thorough understanding and consciousness of its character, and of the meaning of its architect The point of view is chosen with the precise aim of getting the maximum light through the traceries in which the marvel is their penetration. The clouds, the aerial distances, and the shadows of the stone work are completed with the most conscientious care—yet somehow you have no sense of being at the place.

"But in this comparatively rough study of Prout's, though it has not half the lalrour of the other, though it has no sky, no accurate detail, and no attempt at delicacy of texture, somehow or other puts you so thoroughly into Strasburg, that in these railroad days I don t believe if you were really at the place you would feel as strongly that you were there.

"I confess that there is something in this realistic power which I have never been able to analyze, for it exists sometimes in the slightest amateur sketches, as well as in the most accomplished art But certainly the first condition of it is that the objects shall impress themselves upon the eye in their own order and way, that you shall not be forced to look at anything, whether vou like it or not, any more than in the real scene, and that there shall be no sense either of toil or affectation in the work. (Show Abbeville as failure.) Next to this easy harmony of drawing comes the simple diffusion of light, and the feeling of air and sunshine, and these are only to be obtained by a most careful subjection of the colour to chiaroscuro." The merits of Prout's drawing of Strasburg are also discussed in the Note* on Prout and Hunt, No. 10, where the example is reproduced (Vol. XIV., Plate XIV., and pp. 412, 413): see also No. 69 in the Educational Series (Vol. XXI. p. 80). The sketch of Wilson's, called by Ruskin in a note in the MS. "Arch of Peace," is No. 117 in the Reference Series (Vol. XXI. p. 38): see also below, p. 63. The other example was "Ward's copy of Naples. Outline" ; this copy by Mr. William Ward was presented by Ruskin to Whitelands College, Chelsea (see, in a later volume, No. 35 in the Note* on the Ruskin Cabinet, where Ruskin says of Turner's sketch that it contains "the utmost possible quantity of information put into the smallest possible space"). The sketch is No. 333 in the National Gallery. The words "Show Abbeville as failure" refer, as a note in the MS. indicates, to Ruskin's drawing of the Market Place, No. 61 in the Reference Series (Vol. XX. p. 399). The drawing is reproduced in VoL XIX. (Plate VIII. p. 244). so that the reader can judge for himself whether Ruskin's self-criticism is justified.]

28. In my last Lecture⁸ I laid before you evidence that the greatness of the master whom I wished you to follow as your only guide in landscape depended primarily on his studying from Nature always with the point; that is to say, in pencil or pen outline. To-day I wish to show you that his pre-eminence depends secondarily on his perfect rendering of form and distance by light and shade, before he admits a thought of colour.

I say "before" however—observe carefully—only with reference to the construction of any given picture, not with reference to the order in which he learnt his mechanical processes. From the beginning, he worked out of doors with the point, but indoors with the brush; and attains perfect skill in washing flat colour long before he attains anything like skill in delineation of form.

29. Here, for instance, is a drawing, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, of Dover Castle and the Dover Coach;⁸ in which the future love of mystery is exhibited by his studiously showing the way in which the dust rises about the wheels; and an interest in drunken sailors, which materially affected his marine studies, shown not less in the occupants of the hind seat. But what I want you to observe is that, though the trees, coach, horses, and sailors are drawn as any schoolboy would draw them, the sky is washed in so smoothly that few water-colour painters of our day would lightly accept a challenge to match it.

' [This drawing wmt No. 1 in the Bond Street Exhibition of Raskin's collection: see VoL XIII. p. 41&]

And, therefore, it is, among many other reasons, that I put the brush into your hands from the first, and try you with a wash in lampblack, before you enter my working class.¹ But, as regards the composition of his picture, the drawing is always first with Turner, the colour second.

80. Drawing: that is to say, the expression by gradation of light, either of form or space. Again I thus give you a statement wholly adverse to the vulgar opinion of him. You will find that statement early in the first volume of Modern Painters, and repeated now through all my works these twenty-five years, in vain.⁸ Nobody will believe that the main virtue of Turner is in his drawing, and therefore at last we have exhibited in the principal place in the Royal Academy Exhibition of Old Masters a picture without one peculiarity of his belonging to it.⁸ I say "the main virtue of Turner." Splendid though he be as a colourist, he is not unrivalled in colour; nay, in some qualities of colour he has been far surpassed by the Venetians. But no one has ever touched him in exquisiteness of gradation; and no one in landscape in perfect rendering of organic form.

81. I showed you in this drawing,⁴ at last Lecture, how truly he had matched the colour of the iron-stained rocks in the bed of the Ticino; and any of you who care for colour at all cannot but take more or less pleasure in the blues and greens and warm browns opposed throughout. But the essential value of the work is not in these. It is, first, in the expression of enormous scale of mountain and space of air, by gradations of shade in their colours, whatever they may be; and, secondly, in the perfect rounding and cleaving of the masses alike of mountain and stone. I showed you one of the stones themselves, as an example

³ [This passage ("..., and therefore . . . to it") was omitted in the 1897 edition. The reference is to a spurious Turner, No. 40 in the Exhibition of 1871; Ruskin wrote about it to the Times (January 24, 1871); the letter is given in Vol. XIII. p. 679 (where in line 11 of the letter there is a misprint of " unable'' for "able").]

than the mexjvwho change; less, in merely drawing some natural object "without attempt at composition, or greater in knowing-'absolutely beforehand the composition they intend; it may.lje, even so, that what they intend, though better known;*.'is not so good:—but at all events, in this antici-pating^power Tintoret, Holbein and Turner stand, I think, alone as draughtsmen; Tintoret rarely sketching at all, but painting straight at the first blow, while Holbein and .Turner sketch indeed, but it is as with a pen of iron and a point of diamond.

38. You will find in your Educational Series * many drawings illustrative of the method; but I have enlarged here¹ the part that is executed with the pen, out of this smaller drawing, that you may see with what fearless strength Holbein delineates even the most delicate folds of the veil on the head, and of the light muslin on the shoulders, giving them delicacy, not by the thinness of his line, but by its exquisite veracity.

The eye will endure with patience, or even linger with pleasure, on any line that is right, however coarse; while the faintest or finest that is wrong will be forcibly destructive. And again and again I have to recommend you to draw always as if you were engraving, and as if the line could not be changed.

34. The method used by Turner in the Liber Studiorum is precisely analogous to that of Holbein. The lines of these etchings² are to trees, rocks, or buildings, absolutely what these of Holbein are; not suggestions of contingent grace, but determinations of the limits of future form. You will see the explanatory office of such lines by placing this outline over my drawing of the stone, until the lines coincide

¹ [No. 39 in the Standard Series (VoL XXI. p. 25); enlarged from a drawing by Holbein in the University Galleries.]

* [Here, no doubt, Ruskin showed some of the etchings for IAber plates which are in the Oxford Collection, and illustrated his point further as explained in the text; his drawing of the stone being probably of that in " Blair Athol."]

the Tilt — foamed and eddied magnificently through the narrowed channel; and the wild vegetation in the rock crannies was a finished arabesque of living sculpture, of which this study of mine, made on another stream, in Glen-finlas, only a few miles away, will give you a fair idea. Turner has absolutely stripped the rock of its beautiful lichens to bare slate, with one quartz vein running up through it; he has quieted the river into a commonplace stream; he has given, of all the rich vegetation, only one cluster of quite uninteresting leaves and a clump of birches with ragged trunks. Yet, observe, I have told you of it, he has put into one scene the spirit of Scotland.

87. Similarly, those of you who in your long vacations have ever stayed near Dunblane will be, I think, disappointed in no small degree by this study of the abbey, for which I showed you the sketch at last Lecture.¹ You probably know that the oval window in its west end is one of the prettiest pieces of rough thirteenth - century carving in the kingdom; I used it for a chief example in my lectures at Edinburgh;² and you know that the lancet windows, in their fine proportion and rugged masonry, would alone form a study of ruined Gothic masonry of exquisite interest.

Yet you find Turner representing the lancet window by a few bare oval lines like the hoop of a barrel; and indicating the rest of the structure by a monotonous and thin piece of outline, of which I was asked by one of yourselves last term, and quite naturally and rightly, how Turner came to draw it so slightly—or, we may even say, so badly.

38. Whenever you find Turner stopping short, or apparently failing in this way, especially when he does the contrary of what any of us would have been nearly sure to do, then is the time to look for your main lesson from him. You recollect those quiet words of the strongest of all

¹ [The Liber subject is here reproduced (Plate VI.). For the reference to the

with the simplest means; they are essentially thoughtful, and have each their fixed purpose, to which everything else is sacrificed; and that purpose is always imaginative—to get at the heart of the thing, not at its outside."

40. Now, it is true, there are beautiful lichens at Blair Athol, and good building at Dunblane; but there are lovely lichens all over the cold regions of the world, and there is far more interesting architecture in other countries than in Scotland. The essential character of Scotland is that of a wild and thinly inhabited rocky country, not sublimely mountainous, but beautifid in low rock and light streamlet everywhere; with sweet copsewood and rudely growing trees. This wild land possesses a subdued land imperfect school of architecture, and has an infinitely tragic feudal, pastoral, and civic history. And in the events of that history a deep tenderness of sentiment is mingled with a cruel and barren rigidity of habitual character, accurately corresponding to the conditions of climate and earth.

41. Now I want you especially to notice, with respect to these things, Turner's introduction of the ugly square tower high up on the left. Your first instinct would be to exclaim, "How unlucky that was there at all! Why, at least, could not Turner have kept it out of sight?" He has quite gratuitously brought it into sight; gratuitously drawn firmly the three lines of stiff drip-stone which mark its squareness and blankness. It is precisely that blank vacancy of decoration, and setting of the meagre angles against wind and war, which he wants to force on your notice, that he may take you thoroughly out of Italy and Greece, and put you wholly into a barbarous and frost-hardened land; that once having its gloom defined he may show you all the more intensely what pastoral purity and innocence of life, and loveliness of nature, are underneath the banks and braes of Doune, and by every brooklet that feeds the Forth and Clyde.

That is the main purpose of these two studies. How it is obtained by various incidents in the drawing of stones,

and trees, and figures, I will show you another time.¹ The chief element in both is the sadness and depth of their effect of subdued though clear light in sky and stream.

42. The sadness of their effect, I repeat. If you remember anything of the Lectures I gave you through last year, you must be gradually getting accustomed to my definition of the Greek school in art, as one essentially Chiaro-scurist, as opposed to Gothic colour; Realist, as opposed to Gothic imagination; and Despairing, as opposed to Gothic hope.¹ And you are prepared to recognize it by any one of these three conditions. Only, observe, the chiaroscuro is simply the technical result of the two others: a Greek painter likes light and shade, first, because they enable him to realize form solidly, while colour is fiat; and secondly, because light and shade are melancholy, while colour is gay.

So that the defect of colour, and substitution of more or less grey or gloomy effects of rounded gradation, constantly express the two characters: first, [of] Academic or Greek fleshliness and solidity as opposed to Gothic imagination; and secondly, of Greek tragic horror and gloom as opposed to Gothic gladness.

48. In the great French room in the Louvre, if you at all remember the general character of the historical pictures, you will instantly recognize, in thinking generally of them, the rounded fleshly and solid character in the drawing, the grey or greenish and brownish colour, or defect of colour, lurid and moonlight-like, and the gloomy choice of subjects, as the Deluge, the Field of Eylau, the Starvation on the Raft, and the Death of Endymion;³ always melancholy, and usually horrible.

¹ [There is no further reference to the Blair Athol and Dunblane in these lectures, which, it should be remembered, were supplemented by class teaching.]

* [For these three points, see Lectures on Art, (1) §§ 137, 138, 147-151; (2) SS 180-185; and (3) 8 149.]

³ [For Poussin's '^Deluge," see Vol. XII. p. 469. "The Field of Eylau," by Baron Gros (1771-1835), is No. 389; probably this is the picture to which, by a slip, Raskin refers as Vernet's in Vol. XIV. p. 213. "Starvation on the Raft'' is the " Wreck of the Medusa/' by Gericault, referred to in § 18 of the lecture on "Modern Art" (VoL XIX. p. 212). "The Sleep of Endymion" (No. 301), br Anne Louis Girodet de Roucy Trioson (1767-1824), was painted in Rome, and mucn admired at the Paris Salon of 1792.]

The more recent pictures of the painter G£r6me unite all these attributes in a singular degree; above all, the flesh-liness and materialism which make his studies of the nude, in my judgment, altogether inadmissible into the rank of the fine arts.¹

44. Now you observe that I never speak of this Greek school but with a certain dread. And yet I have told you that Turner belongs to it, that all the strongest men in times of developed art belong to it; * but then, remember, so do all the basest. The learning of the Academy is indeed a splendid accessory to original power, in Velasquez, in Titian, or in Reynolds; but the whole world of art is full of a base learning of the Academy, which, when fools possess, they become a tenfold plague of fools.

And again, a stern and more or less hopeless melancholy necessarily is undercurrent in the minds of the greatest men of all ages,—of Homer, Aeschylus, Pindar, or Shakespeare. But an earthy, sensual, and weak despondency is the attribute of the lowest mental and bodily disease; and the imbecilities and lassitudes which follow crime, both in nations and individuals, can only find a last stimulus to their own dying sensation in the fascinated contemplation of completer death.

45. Between these—the highest, and these—the basest, you have every variety and combination of strength and of mistake: the mass of foolish persons dividing themselves always between the two oppositely and equally erroneous faiths, that genius may dispense with law, or that law can create genius. Of the two, there is more excuse for, and less danger in the first than in the second mistake. Genius has sometimes done lovely things without knowledge and without discipline. But all the learning of the Academies has never yet drawn so much as one fair face, or ever set two pleasant colours side by side.

¹ [For other references to GeVome, see Vol. XV. p. 497, and Vol. XX. p. 195 n.]

² [See Lectures on Art, § 185 (Vol. XX. p. 174), and Catalogue of the Standard Seric* (Vol. XXI. p. 11).]

46. Now there is one great Northern painter, of whom I have not spoken till now,¹ probably to your surprise, Rubens; whose power is composed of so many elements, and whose character may be illustrated so completely, and with it the various operation of the counter schools, by one of his pictures now open to your study, that I would press you to set aside one of your brightest Easter afternoons for the study of that one picture in the Exhibition of Old Masters,⁸ the so-called "Juno and Argus," No. 887.

So-called, I say; for it is not a picture either of Argus or of Juno, but the portrait of a Flemish lady " as Juno * (just as Rubens painted his family picture with his wife " as the Virgin " and himself " as St George "⁸): and a good anatomical study of a human body as Argus. In the days of Rubens, you must remember, mythology was thought of as a mere empty form of compliment or fable, and the original meaning of it wholly forgotten. Rubens never dreamed that Argus is the night, or that his eyes are stars; but with the absolutely literal and brutal part of his Dutch nature supposes the head of Argus full of real eyes all over, and represents Hebe cutting them out with a bloody knife and putting one into the hand of the goddess, like an unseemly oyster.

That conception of the action, and the loathsome sprawling of the trunk of Argus under the chariot, are the essential contributions of Rubens' own Netherland personality. Then the rest of the treatment he learned from other schools, but adopted with splendid power.

47. First, I think, you ought to be struck by having two large peacocks painted with scarcely any colour in theml They are nearly black, or black-green, peacocks. Now you know that Rubens is always spoken of as a great colourist, par excellence a colourist; and would you not have expected

* frhe Winter Exhibition of 1871; for references to other pictures in the same exhibition, see pp. 32, 46, 47. The Rubens ("Juno transferring the eyes of Argus to the tail of the peacock") was lent by the Earl of Dudley.]

54. All the other great chiaroscurists whom I named to you¹ — Reynolds, Velasquez, and Titian — approached their shadow also on the safe side—from Venice: they always think of colour first. But Turner had to work his way out of the dark Greek school up to Venice; he always thinks of his shadow first; and it held him in some degree fatally to the end. Those pictures which you all laughed at were not what you fancied, mad endeavours for colour; they were agonizing Greek efforts to get light. He could have got colour easily enough if he had rested in that; which I will show you in next lecture.² Still, he so nearly made himself a Venetian that, as opposed to the Dutch academical chiaroscurists, he is to be considered a Venetian altogether. And now I will show you, in a very simple subject, the exact opposition of the two schools.

55. Here is a study of swans, from a Dutch book of academical instruction in Rubens' time. It is a good and valuable book in many ways, and you are going to have some copies set you from it.⁸ But as a type of academical chiaroscuro it will give you most valuable lessons on the other side—of warning.

* Here, then, is the academical Dutchman's notion of a swan. He has laboriously engraved every feather, and has rounded the bird into a ball; and has thought to himself that never swan has been so engraved before. But he has never with his Dutch eyes perceived two points in a swan which are vital to it: first, that it is white; and, secondly, that it is graceful. He has above all things missed the proportion, and necessarily therefore the bend of its neck.

56. Now take the colourist's view of the matter. To him the first main facts about the swan are that it is a white thing with black spots. Turner takes one brush in his right hand, with a little white in it; another in his left hand, with a little lampblack. He takes a piece of brown

* TOne tucb example is in the Educational Series, No. 164 (Vol. XXI. p. 89); but tbe study of swans was not placed in tbe Oxford Collection.]

paper, wovks for about two minutes with his white brush, passes the black to his right hand, and works half a minute with that, and, there you are I¹

You would like to be able to draw two swans in two minutes and a half yourselves. Perhaps so, and I can show you how; but it will need twenty years⁹ work all day long. First, in the meantime, you must draw them rightly, if it takes two hours instead of two minutes; and, above all, remember that they are black and white.

57. But farther: you see how intensely Turner felt precisely what the Fleming did not feel—the bend of the neck. Now this is not because Turner is a colourist, as opposed to the Fleming; but because he is a pure and highly trained Greek, as opposed to the Fleming's low Greek. Both, so far as they are aiming at form, are now working in the Greek school of Phidias; but Turner is true Greek, for he is thinking only of the truth about the swan; and De Wit is pseudo-Greek, for he is thinking not of the swan at all, but of his own Dutch self. And so he has ended in making, with his essentially piggish nature, this sleeping swan's neck as nearly as possible like a leg of pork. •

58. And now 1 will ask you to look carefully at three more pictures in the London Exhibition.

The first, "The Nativity," by Sandro Botticelli¹ It is an early work by him; but a quite perfect example of what the masters of the pure Greek school did in Florence.

One of the Greek main characters, you know, is to be ax/cHMmxof, faceless.⁸ If you look first at the faces in this

¹ [Plate VII. is a reproduction from a copy bv Raskin of Turner's study of swans in the Nations! Gallery (No. 000); for another reference to the study, see Vol. XI1L p. 275.]

* [Now in the National Gallery, No. 1034, It is, however, one of the latest works of Botticelli (who died in 1510), being dated 1500. For another reference to it, see the Introduction (above, p. zzx.>]

⁸ [See Araira PenteHci, § 183, and Appendix vi. (VoL XX. pp. 333, 406); and compare Queen tf the Air, § 167 (Vol. XIX. p. 412). See also below, Michael Angeh and Tintortt, § 21 (p. 04).]

of the debased Greek school in Holland; and the Cima, of the pure colour school of Venice.

The Cima differs from the Rembrandt, by being lovely; from the Botticelli, by being simple and calm. The painter does not desire the excitement of ra£id movement, nor even the passion of beautiful light. But he hates darkness as he does death; and falsehood more than either. He has painted a noble human creature simply in clear daylight; not in rapture, nor yet in agony. He is neither dressed in a rainbow, nor bedraggled with blood. You are neither to be alarmed nor entertained by anything that is likely to happen to him. You are not to be improved by the piety of his expression, nor disgusted by its truculence. But there is more true mastery of light and shade, if your eye is subtle enough to see it, in the hollows and angles of the architecture and folds of the dress, than in all the etchings of Rembrandt put together. The unexciting colour wfll not at first delight you; but its charm will never fail; and from all the works of variously strained and obtrusive power with which it is surrounded, you will find that you never return to it but with a sense of relief and of peace, which can only be given you by the tender skill which is wholly without pretence, without pride, and without error.

61. The distinctions between schools of art which I have so often asked you to observe are, you must be aware, founded only on the excess of certain qualities in one group of painters over another, or the difference in their tendencies; and not in the absolute possession by one group, and absence in the rest, of any given skill But this impossibility of drawing trenchant lines of parting need never interfere with the distinctness of our conception of the opponent principles which balance each other in great minds, or paralyse each other in weak ones; and I cannot too often urge you to keep clearly separate in your thoughts the school which I have called¹ "of Crystal," because its distinctive virtue is seen unaided in the sharp separations and prismatic harmonies of painted glass, and the other, the " School of Clay/' because its distinctive virtue is seen in the qualities of any fine work in uncoloured terra-cotta, and in every drawing which represents them.

62. You know 1 sometimes speak of these generally as the Gothic and Greek schools, sometimes as the colourist and chiaroscurist⁸ All these oppositions are liable to infinite qualification and gradation, as between species of animals; and you must not be troubled, therefore, if sometimes momentary contradictions seem to arise in examining special points. Nay, the modes of opposition in the greatest men are inlaid and complex; difficult to explain, though in themselves clear. Thus you know in your study of sculpture we saw that the essential aim of the Greek art was tranquil

¹ [Delivered on February 23, 1871.1 » [Lecture* on Art, 1870, § 185 (Vol. XX. p. 174).] • [See Ucturtt on Art, § 168 (ibid., p. 168}.] xxn. « d

action;^l the chief aim of Gothic art was passionate rest, a peace, an eternity of intense sentiment As I go into detail, I shall continually therefore have to oppose Gothic" passion, iwraw, to Greek temperance; yet Gothic rigidity, to Greek action and Sk«fcpla} You see how doubly, how intimately, opposed the ideas are; yet how difficult to explain without apparent contradiction.

68. Now, to-day, I must guard you carefully against a misapprehension of this kind. I have told yon that the Greeks as Greeks made real and material what was before indefinite;* they turned the clouds and the lightning of Mount Ithome into the human flesh and eagle upon the extended arm of the Messenian Zeus. And yet, being in all things set upon absolute veracity and realisation, they perceive as they work and think forward that to see in all things truly is to see in all things dimly and through hiding of cloud and fire.

So that the schools of Crystal, visionary, passionate, and fantastic in purpose, are, in method, trenchantly formal and clear; and the schools of Clay, absolutely realistic, temperate, and simple in purpose, are, in method, mysterious and soft; sometimes licentious, sometimes terrific, and always obscure.

64. Look once more at this Greek dancing-girl⁴ which is from a terra-cotta, and therefore intensely of the school of Clay; look at her beside this Madonna of Filippo Lippi's:⁵ Greek motion against Gothic absolute quietness; Greek indifference—dancing careless—against Gothic passion, the mother's—what word can 1 use except phrensy of love; Greek fleshliness against hungry wasting of the self-forgetful body; Greek softness of diffused shadow and

¹ [Compare Val (TArno,% 199 (VoL XXIII. p. 117), where "Greek Stasy" Is contrasted with "Gothic Eo-atasy/' For the misreading of this passage in the previous edition, see above, Bibliographical Note, p. 7.1

⁸ [TWA, p. 348; and for the coin or Messene, see in the same volume Plate XXL and pp. 343-345.]

⁴ [For the former reference, see Vol. XX. p. 406. Plate VIIL here; the stadia* are in the Rudimentary Series, No. 52 (VoL XXI. p. 180).]

⁶ [The edition of 1897 here gave a reproduction or Lippis "Madonna and Child" (No. 1307 in the Uffisi). It is now reserved for reproduction in Arv Obcsjerw among the other "Lesson Photographs" there described.]

laid in little drops or ponds, so that the pigment might crystallize hard at the edge. And one of the chief delights which any one who really enjoys painting finds in that art as distinct from sculpture is in this exquisite inlaying or joiner's work of it, the fitting of edge to edge with a manual skill precisely correspondent to the close application of crowded notes without the least slur, in fine harp or piano playing.

68. In many of the finest works of colour on a large scale there is even some admission of the quality given to a painted window by the dark lead bars between the pieces of glass. Both Tintoret and Veronese, when they paint on dark grounds, continually stop short with their tints just before they touch others, leaving the dark ground showing between in a narrow bar. In the Paul Veronese in the National Gallery,¹ you will every here and there find pieces of outline, like this of Holbein's;¹ which you would suppose were drawn, as that is, with a brown pencil But no! Look close, and you will find they are the dark ground, left between two tints brought close to each other without touching.

69. It follows also from this law of construction that any master who can colour can always do any pane of his window that he likes, separately from the rest. Thus, you see, here is one of Sir Joshua's first sittings:⁸ the head is very nearly done with the first colour; a piece of background is put in round it: his sitter has had a pretty silver brooch on, which Reynolds, having done as much as he chose to the face for that time, paints quietly in its place below, leaving the dress between to be fitted in afterwards ; and he puts a little patch of the yellow gown that is to be, at the side. And it follows also from this law of construction that there must never be any hesitation or

¹ [No. 294: "The Family of Darius." For similar references to technical points in this picture, see Vol. VII. p. 246; Vol. XIII. p. 244 n. ; and Vol. XIV. p. 187.]

' [The example here shown was probably No. 235 in the Educational Series (Vol. XXI. p. 9(5).]

draws the inner edge of the mandible. There are just four touches—fine as the finest penmanship—to do that beak; and yet you will find that in the peculiar parroquettish mumbling and nibbling action of it, and all the character in which this nibbling beak differs from the tearing beak of the eagle, it is impossible to go farther or be more precise. And this is only an incident, remember, in a large picture.

71. Let me notice, in passing, the infinite absurdity of ever hanging Venetian pictures above the line of sight. There are very few persons in the room who will be able to'see the drawing of this bird's beak without a magnifying glass; yet it is ten to one that in any modern gallery such a picture would be hung thirty feet from the ground.

Here, again, is a little bit to show Carpaccio's execution.¹ It is his signature: only a little wall-lizard, holding the paper in its mouth, perfect; yet so small that you can scarcely see its feet, and that I could not, with my finest-pointed brush, copy their stealthy action.

72. And now, I think, the members of my class will more readily pardon the intensely irksome work I put them to, with the compasses and the ruler.⁸ Measurement and precision are, with me, before all things; just because, though myself trained wholly in the chiaroscuro schools, I know the value of colour; and I want you to begin with colour in the very outset, and to see everything as children would see it. For, believe me, the final philosophy of art can only ratify their opinion that the beauty of a cock-robin is to be red, and of a grass-plot to be green; and the best skill of art is in instantly seizing on the manifold deliciousness of light, which you can only seize by precision of instantaneous touch. Of course, I cannot do so myself;

¹ [Now in Frame No. 171 in the Educational Series. For another note on it, see hit Catalogue of the Educational Series, 1878, No. 189 (Vol. XXI. p. 162). Ruakin's sketch is now reproduced in St. Mark's Best, § 183.]

⁸ [See Lectures on Art, § 142 (Vol. XX. p. 133); and Elements of Drawing, §§ 18, 47 (Vol. XV. pp. 38 n., 51); and compare the geometrical exercises in Laws of Fesole (Vol. XV.), and the "Instructions in Elementary Drawing" (Vol. XXI.).]

yet in these sketches of mine, made for the sake of colour, there is enough to show you the nature and the value of the method. They are two pieces of study of the colour of marble architecture, the tints literally " edified," and laid edge to edge as simply on the paper as the stones are on the walls.¹

78. But please note in them one thing especially. The testing rule I gave for good colour in the Elements of Drawing? is that you make the white precious and the black conspicuous. Now you will see in these studies that the moment the white is enclosed properly, and harmonized with the other hues, it becomes somehow more precious and pearly than the white paper; and that I am not afraid to leave a whole field of untreated white paper all round it, being sure that even the little diamonds in the round window will tell as jewels, if they are gradated justly.

Again, there is not a touch of black in any shadow, however deep, of these two studies; so that, if I chose to put a piece of black near them, it would be conspicuous with a vengeance.

But in this vignette, copied from Turner,⁸ you have the two principles brought out perfectly. You have the white of foaming water, of buildings and clouds, brought out brilliantly from a white ground; and though part of the subject is in deep shadow the eye at once catches the one black point admitted in front.

74. Well, the first reason that I gave you these Loire drawings was this of their infallible decision; the second was their extreme modesty in colour. They are, beyond all other works that I know existing, dependent for their effect on low, subdued tones; their favourite choice in time of day being either dawn or twilight, and even their

¹ [The examples referred to are probably No. 68 in the Reference Series and No. 03 in the Educational Series (VoL XXI. pp. 32, 83).]

* [No doubt the *St. Maurice" (enmred in Rogers's Italy, p. 9); No. 205 in the National Gallery. A copy by Mr. William Ward is No. 145 in the Rudimentary Series at Oxford (Vol. XXI. p. 212).]

brightest sunsets produced chiefly out of grey paper. This last, the loveliest of all,¹ gives the warmth of a summer twilight with a tinge of colour on the grey paper so slight that it may be a question with some of you whether any is there. And I must beg you to observe, and receive as a rule without any exception, that whether colour be gay or sad, the value of it depends never on violence, but always on subtlety.² It may be that a great colourist will use his utmost force of colour, as a singer his full power of voice; but, loud or low, the virtue is in both cases always in refinement, never in loudness. The west window of Chartres is bedropped with crimson deeper than blood;⁸ but it is as soft as it is deep, and as quiet as the light of dawn.

75. I say, "whether colour be gay or sad." It must, remember, be one or the other. You know I told you that the pure Gothic school of colour was entirely cheerful;⁴that, as applied to landscape, it assumes that all nature is lovely, and may be clearly seen; that destruction and decay are accidents of our present state, never to be thought of seriously, and, above all things, never to be painted; but that whatever is orderly, healthy, radiant, fruitful and beautiful, is to be loved with all our hearts and painted with all our skill.

76. I told you also⁶ that no complete system of art for either natural history or landscape could be formed on this system; that the wrath of a wild beast, and the tossing of a mountain torrent are equally impossible to a painter of the purist school; that in higher fields of thought increasing knowledge means increasing sorrow, and every art which has complete sympathy with humanity must be chastened by the sight and oppressed by the memory of pain. But there is no reason why your system of study should be a complete one, if it be right and profitable though incomplete.

If you can find it in your hearts to follow out only the Gothic thoughts of landscape, I deeply wish you would, and for many reasons.

77. First, it has never yet received due development; for at the moment when artistic skill and knowledge of effect became sufficient to complete its purposes, the Reformation destroyed the faith in which they might have been accomplished ; for to the whole body of powerftd draughtsmen the Reformation meant the Greek school and the shadow of death. So that of exquisitely developed Gothic landscape you may count the examples on the fingers of your hand: Van Eyck's " Adoration of the Lamb" at Bruges; * another little Van Eyck in the Louvre; the John Bellini lately presented to the National Gallery;² another John Bellini in Rome: and the "St. George" of Carpaccio at Venice, are all that I can name myself of great works.⁸ But there exist some exquisite, though feebler, designs in missal painting; of which, in England, the landscape and flowers in the Psalter of Henry the Sixth⁴ will serve you for a sufficient type; the landscape in the Grimani missal at Venice * being monumentally typical and perfect.

78. Now for your own practice in this, having first acquired the skill of exquisite delineation and laying of

¹ {This work, the central portion of a great altar-piece by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck, is not at Bruges (though it was painted there), but in the Vvdt family chapel in St. Bavon in Ghent For "the little Van Eyck in the Louvre — the "Virgin with Donor"—see Vol. XII. p. 468.]

* [No. 812 : "Landscape, with the Death of St Peter Martyr." For other references to the picture (which was presented in 1870 by Lady Eastlake), see above, § 11, and below, § 04 (pp. 19, 66), and The Relation of Michael Angelo and Tintoret,

L13 (below, p. 85). It is not clear what " Bellini in Rome" Buskin refers to: ' pictures by him now or formerly in Rome, see Crowe and Cavalcaselle's History •/ Painting in North Italy, vol. i. p. 193 n. For Carpaccio's " St George/' see 8L Mark's Rest, § 168.]

" Carpaccio belongs to the Gothic school, and one of his greatest landscapes in Venice has the foreground indeed strewed with corpses; but over all is glorious victory of St George over the dragon; and over every thought of death he is himself so much Victor Carpaccio that he makes his principal series of pictures of the scenes whicn are to end in the martyrdom of Eleven Thousand Virgins."] ⁴ [In the British Museum: see the letter given in VoL XIX. p. 280.]

pure colour, day by day you must draw some lovely natural form or flower or animal without obscurity —as in missal painting; choosing for study, in natural scenes, only what is beautiful and strong in life.

79. I fully anticipated, at the beginning of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, that they would have carried forward this method of work; but they broke themselves to pieces by pursuing dramatic sensation instead of beauty. So that to this day all the loveliest things in the world remain unpainted; and although we have occasionally spasmodic efforts and fits of enthusiasm, and green meadows and apple-blossom to spare,¹ it yet remains a fact that not in all this England, and still less in France, have you a painter who has been able nobly to paint so much as a hedge of wild roses or a forest glade fidl of anemones or wood-sorrel.

80. One reason of this has been the idea that such work was easy, on the part of the young men who attempted it, and the total vulgarity and want of education in the great body of abler artists, rendering them insensitive to qualities of fine delineation; the universal law for them being that they can draw a pig, but not a Venus.² For instance, two landscape-painters of much reputation in England, and one of them in France also—David Cox and John Constable,⁸represent a form of blunt and untrained faculty which in being very frank and simple, apparently powerful, and needing no thought, intelligence or trouble whatever to observe, and being wholly disorderly, slovenly and licentious, and therein meeting with instant sympathy from the disorderly public mind now resentful of every trammel and ignorant of every law—these two men, I say, represent in their intensity the qualities adverse to all accurate science or skill in landscape art; their work being the mere blundering of clever peasants, and deserving no name whatever in any

* [For summaries of references to these painters, see Vol. III. p. 46 n. (Cox), and Vol. III. p. 45 n. (Constable). For a reference to Constable's influence upon the French school, see Vol. XVI. p. 415 and n.]

school of true practice, but consummately mischievous—first, in its easy satisfaction of the painter's own self-complacencies, and then in the pretence of ability which blinds the public to all the virtue of patience and to all the difficulty of precision. There is more real relation to the great schools of art, more fellowship with Bellini and Titian, in the humblest painter of letters on village signboards than in men like these.

Do not, therefore, think that the Gothic school is an easy one. You might more easily fill a house with pictures like Constable's from garret to cellar, than imitate one cluster of leaves by Van Eyck or Giotto; and among all the efforts that have been made to paint our common wild-flowers, I have only once—and that in this very year, just in time to show it to you—seen the thing done rightly.¹

81. But now observe: These flowers, beautiful as they are, are not of the Gothic school. The law of that school is that everything shall be seen clearly, or at least, only in such mist or faintness as shall be delightful; and I have no doubt that the best introduction to it would be the elementary practice of painting every study on a golden ground. This at once compels you to understand that the work is to be imaginative and decorative; that it represents beautiful things in the clearest way, but not under existing conditions; and that, in fact, you are producing jeweller's work, rather than pictures. Then the qualities of grace in design become paramount to every other; and you may afterwards substitute clear sky for the golden background without danger of loss or sacrifice of system: clear sky of golden light, or deep and full blue, for the full blue of Titian is just as much a piece of conventional enamelled background as if it were a plate of gold; that depth of blue in relation to foreground objects being wholly impossible.

¹ [Raskin may here have shown] a study of primroses by Mr. A. Macdonald, which he greatly admired. For some time it was exhibited in the Ruskin Drawing School, but it was afterwards acquired by the late Mr. Talbot, of Barmouth. Or he may have referred to Mr. MacWhirter's studies (see above, p. 33 n.).]

82. There is another immense advantage in this Byzantine and Gothic abstraction of decisive form, when it is joined with a faithful desire of whatever truth can be expressed on narrow conditions. It makes us observe the vital points in which character consists, and educates the eye and mind in the habit of fastening and limiting themselves to essentials. In complete drawing, one is continually liable to be led aside from the main points by picturesque accidents of light and shade; in Gothic drawing you must get the character, if at all, by a keenness of analysis which must be in constant exercise.

83. And here I must beg of you very earnestly, once for all, to clear your minds of any misapprehension of the nature of Gothic art, as if it implied error and weakness, instead of severity. That a style is restrained or severe does not mean that it is also erroneous. Much mischief has been done—endless misapprehension induced in this matter—by the blundering religious painters of Germany, who have become examples of the opposite error from our English painters of the Constable group. Our uneducated men work too bluntly to be ever in the right; but the Germans draw finely and resolutely wrong. Here is a "Riposo" of OverbeckV for instance, which the painter imagined to be elevated in style because he had drawn it without light and shade, and with absolute decision: and so far, indeed, it is Gothic enough; but it is separated everlastingly from Gothic and from all other living work, because the painter was too vain to look at anything he had to paint, and drew every mass of his drapery in lines that were as impossible as they were stiff, and stretched out the limbs of his Madonna in actions as unlikely as they are uncomfortable.

In all early Gothic art, indeed, you will find failure of this kind, especially distortion and rigidity, which are in

¹ [This example was not placed in the Ruskin Art Collection. For references to Overbeck, see Vol. V. p. 60, and VoL XV. p. 157.]

at him in the face—fight him—conquer him with what scathe you may: you need not think to keep out of the way of him. There is Turner's Dragon; there is Michael Angelo's; there, a very little one of Carpaccio's. Every soul of them had to understand the creature, and very earnestly.

87. Not that Michael Angelo understands his dragon as the others do. He was not enough a colourist either to catch the points of the creature's aspect, or to feel the same hatred of them; but I confess myself always amazed in looking at Michael Angelo's work here or elsewhere, at his total carelessness of anatomical character except only in the human body. Mr. Robinson says of this drawing that it is "a finished bistre pen drawing of a couchant dragon, carefully shaded with spirited cross hatching, the forms modelled with admirable truthfulness and sculpturesque relief. The monster is huddled together, its tail folded betwixt its legs, and curled round its long snakelike neck." Well, it¹ is very easy to round a dragon's neck, if the only idea you have of it is that it is virtually no more than a coiled sausage; and, besides, anybody can round anything if you have full scale from white high light to black shadow.

88. But look here at Carpaccio, even in my copy. The colourist says, " First of all, as my delicious parroquet was ruby, so this nasty viper shall be black"; and then is the question, " Can I round him off, even though he is black, and make him slimy, and yet springy, and close down— clotted like a pool of black blood on the earth—all the same ?" Look at him beside Michael Angelo's, and then

Galleries (No. 13 in J. C. Robinson's Critical Account of the Drawing* . . . in ttie University Galleries, Oxford); and (3) the copy of Carpaccio's viper by Ruskin, which was at one time No. 171 in the Educational Series, bat was afterwards removed.]

¹ [The edition of 1897 omitted the citation from Robinson, reading ". . . in the human body. It is very easy . . ." The MS. has " Mr. Robinson says of this drawing that— Well, it is . . ." The passage which Ruskin read from the book (p. 14) is here inserted.]

the Python.*⁹¹ Now here is Raphael/ exactly ~~lid we~~en the two—trees still drawn leaf by feat wholly formal; but beautiful mist coming gradually into the distance. Well, then, last, here is Turner's; Greek-school rtf the highest class; and you define his art, absolutely, as first the displaying intensely, and with the sternest intellect, of natural form as it is, and then the envelopment of it with cloud and fire. Only, there are two sorts of cloud and fire. He knows them both. There's one, and there's another^-the "Dudley" and the "Flint/" That's what the cloud and flame of the dragon mean: now, let me show you what the dragon means himself.

92. I go back to another perfect landscape of the living Gothic school It is only a pencil outline, by Edward Burne-Jones, in illustration of the story of Psyche; it is the introduction of Psyche, after all her troubles, into heaven.⁴

Now in this of Burne-Jones, the landscape is dearly full of light everywhere, colour or glass light: that is, the outline is prepared for modification of colour only. Every plant in the grass is set formally, grows perfectly, and may be realized completely. Exquisite order, and universal, with eternal, life and light, this is the faith and effort of the schools of Crystal; and you may describe and complete their work quite literally by taking any verses of Chaucer in his tender mood, and observing how he insists on the

* [Apollo and the Python being the figure under whioh Ration describes the conquest of Sunshine over Mist: see Modern Fainter*, vol. ▼• (VoL V1L p. 411); end compere below, p. 204.1

' [Here Kuskin showed his study from Raphael's "Madonna of the Tribune" (No. 269 in the Educational Series: see Vol. XXI. p. 144), which was engraved in Modern Petntert. The plate was given in the 1897 edition of Lecture* em Lemieompe: see for it, in this edition, VoL V. p. 994.]

* [Plates X. and XL, reproduced from Mr. Arthur Severn's copies of Turner's Drawings. Both drawings were in Raskin's collection: see Vol. XIII pp. 486 (Dudley), 422 (Flint). Ruskin there describes in the Flint the lovely "play of light" and " purity of colour "; and notes in the Dudley (whioh he names " Work "), " one of Turner's first expressions of hie full understanding of what England was to become."]

< [Plate XII.; from the outline drawing which is No. 828 in the Educational Series (Vol. XXI. p. 96)—one of a series of designs illustrative of Apuleius' story of Psycbe (see Nos. 64-72 in the same series, VoL XXL p. 81).]

04. I just now referred to the landscape by John Bellini in the National Gallery¹ as one of the six best existing of the purist school, being wholly felicitous and enjoyable- In the foreground of it indeed is the martyrdom of Peter Martyr; but John Bellini looks upon that as an entirely cheerful and pleasing incident; it does not disturb or even surprise him, much less displease in the slightest degree.

Now, the next best landscape¹ to this, in the National Gallery, is a Florentine one on the edge of transition to the Greek feeling; and in that the distance is still beautiful, but misty, not clear; the flowers are still beautiful, but— intentionally—of the colour of blood; and in the foreground lies the dead body of Frocris, which disturbs the poor painter greatly; and he has expressed his disturbed mind about it in the figure of a poor little brown—nearly black —Faun, or perhaps the god Faunus himself, who is much puzzled by the death of Frocris, and stoops over her, thinking it a woful thing to find her pretty body lying there breathless, and all spotted with blood on the breast

95. You remember I told you how the earthly power that is necessary in art was shown by the flight of Daedalus to the ipirrrov Minos.' Look for yourselves at the story of Procris as related to Minos⁴ in the fifteenth chapter of the

¹ [See above, §§ 77, 11, where it it named (p. 67) as one of the fine heat examples.]

'be.,' of the Purist school. The picture, No. 096, is "The Heath of Procris" by Pfero di Cosimo.]

s [See Aroira PenUHci, §£ 202, 206 (VoL XX. p. 348), where Raskin says that the work of Daedalus is "the giving of deceptive life, as that of Prometheus, the giving of real life"; and in that connexion refers to the works executed ay Dndalus for Minos, who is figured in Dante under the form of the tpwwrw (tttf.,

⁴ [That is, the story of Procris in her relations with Minos. According to Apollodorus (whose version of the story of Procris and Cephalus differs from tint more commonly given) the faithless Procris, wedded to Cephalus <who, however. was not the son of Aurora, but beloved by her), had fled to Minos, and he had sought to hold her in those embraces, which by the art of Pasiphae, hie angry wife, exposed all who submitted to them to the attacks of wild beasts. But Procris, by aid of some secret simple, avoided the consequences of the bestial power of Minos. Afterwards she returned to Cephalus, who slew her by accident in the these. The myth of Semele desiring to see Zeus, who appeared to her as god of thunder and consumed her in the lightning-fire, is in Apollodorus, iiL 4; and that of Coronis, beloved but slain by Apollo, in the same author, iiL 10. Raskin's thought

dawn—the stream that flows always, and the resting on the cliffs of the clouds that return if they vanish; but of human life, he says, a boy climbing among the trees for his entangled kite, and these white stones in the mountain churchyard, show forth all the strength and all the end.

101. You think that saying of the Greek school—Pindar's summary of it, "ti M to; ti F oS ti?;^wx—a sorrowful and degrading lesson. See at least, then, that you reach the level of such degradation. See that your lives be in nothing worse than a boy's climbing for his entangled kite. It will be well for you if you join not with those who instead of kites fly falcons; who instead of obeying the last words of the great Cloud-Shepherd—to feed his sheep,² live the lives—how much less than vanity!—of the war-wolf and the gier-eagle. Or, do you think it a dishonour to man to say to him that Death is but only Rest? See that when it draws near to you, you may look to it, at least for sweetness of Rest; and that you recognize the Lord of Death coming to you as a Shepherd, gathering you into his Fold for the night

¹ [Pyth. viii. 95: "Things of a day—what are we, and (what • not? Man is a dream of shadows."] * [John xxL 17.]

1. In preceding lectures on sculpture¹ I have included references to the art of painting, so far as it proposes to itself the same object as sculpture (idealization of form); and I have chosen for the subject of our closing inquiry, the works of the two masters who accomplished or implied the unity of these arts. Tintoret entirely conceives his figures as solid statues: sees them in his mind on every side; detaches each from the other by imagined air and light; and foreshortens, interposes, or involves them as if they were pieces of clay in his hand. On the contrary, Michael Angelo conceives his sculpture partly as if it were painted; and using (as I told you formerly⁸) his pen like a chisel, uses also his chisel like a pencil; is sometimes as picturesque as Rembrandt, and sometimes as soft as Correggio.

It is of him chiefly that I shall speak to-day; both because it is part of my duty to the strangers here present to indicate for them some of the points of interest in the drawings forming part of the University collections; but still more, because I must not allow the second year of my professorship to close, without some statement of the mode in which those collections may be useful or dangerous to my pupils. They seem at present little likely to be either; for since I entered on my duties, no student has ever asked me a single question respecting these drawings,

* [See Lectures on AH, § 141 (VoL XX. p. 131), where, it mar be noticed, Ruskin refers to the collection of drawings by Michael Angelo and Raphael in more enthusiastic terms.]

2. There are several causes for this which might be obviated—there is one which cannot be. The collection, as exhibited at present, includes a number of copies which mimic in variously injurious ways the characters of Michael Angelo's own work; and the series, except as material for reference, can be of no practical service until these are withdrawn, and placed by themselves. It includes, besides, a number of original drawings which are indeed of value to any laborious student of Michael Angelo's life and temper; but which owe the greater part of this interest to their being executed in times of sickness or indolence, when the master, however strong, was failing in his purpose, and, however diligent, tired of his work. It will be enough to name, as an example of this class, the sheet of studies for the Medici tombs, No. 48,¹ in which the lowest figure is, strictly speaking, neither a study nor a working drawing, but has either been scrawled in the feverish languor of exhaustion, which cannot escape its subject of thought; or, at best, in idly experimental addition of part to part, beginning with the head, and fitting muscle after muscle, and bone after bone, to it, thinking of their place only, not their proportion, till the head is only about one-twentieth part of the height of the body: finally, something between a face and a mask is blotted in the upper left-hand corner of the paper, indicative, in the weakness and frightfulness of it, simply of mental disorder from overwork; and there are several others of this kind, among even the better drawings of the collection, which ought never to be exhibited to the general public.

8. It would be easy, however, to separate these, with the acknowledged copies, from the rest; and, doing the same with the drawings of Raphael, among which a larger

¹ [The number is that given in the Critical Account of the Drawing* by Michael Angelo and Raffaelh in the University Galleries, Oxford, by J. C. Robinson, 1870. The collection remains as catalogued by Robinson, who, in his book, indicates the specimens which, in his opinion, are not authentic drawings.]

number are of true value, to form a connected series of deep interest to artists, in illustration of the incipient and experimental methods of design practised by each master.

I say, to artists. Incipient methods of design are not, and ought not to be, subjects of earnest inquiry to other people; and although the re-arrangement of the drawings would materially increase the chance of their gaining due attention, there is a final and fatal reason for the want of interest in them displayed by the younger students;— namely, that these designs have nothing whatever to do with present life, with its passions, or with its religion. What their historic value is, and relation to the life of the past, I will endeavour, so far as time admits, to explain to-day.

4. The course of Art divides itself hitherto, among all nations of the world that have practised it successfully, into three great periods.

The first, that in which their conscience is undeveloped, and their condition of life in many respects savage; but, nevertheless, in harmony with whatever conscience they possess. The most powerful tribes, in this stage of their intellect, usually live by rapine, and under the influence of vivid, but contracted, religious imagination. The early predatory activity of the Normans, and the confused minglings of religious subjects with scenes of hunting, war, and vile grotesque, in their first art, will sufficiently exemplify this state of a people; having, observe, their conscience undeveloped, but keeping their conduct in satisfied harmony with it.

The second stage is that of the formation of conscience by the discovery of the true laws of social order and personal virtue, coupled with sincere effort to live by such laws as they have discovered.

All the Arts advance steadily during this stage of national growth, and are lovely, even in their deficiencies, as the buds of flowers are lovely by their vital force, swift change, and continent beauty.

5. The third stage is that in which the conscience is entirely formed, and the nation, finding it painful to live in obedience to the precepts it has discovered, looks about to discover, also, a compromise for obedience to them. In this condition of mind its first endeavour is nearly always to make its religion pompous, and please the gods by giving them gifts and entertainments, in which it may piously and pleasurably share itself; so that a magnificent display of the powers of art it has gained by sincerity, takes place for a few years, and is then followed by their extinction, rapid and complete exactly in the degree in which the nation resigns itself to hypocrisy.

The works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Tintoret belong to this period of compromise in the career of the greatest nation of the world; and are the most splendid efforts yet made by human creatures to maintain the dignity of states with beautiful colours, and defend the doctrines of theology with anatomical designs.¹

Farther, and as an universal principle, we have to remember that the Arts express not only the moral temper, but the scholarship, of their age; and we have thus to study them under the influence, at the same moment of, it may be, declining probity, and advancing science.

6. Now in this the Arts of Northern and Southern Europe stand exactly opposed. The Northern temper never accepts the Catholic faith with force such as it reached in Italy. Our sincerest thirteenth-century sculpture is cold and formal compared with that of the Pisani; nor can any Northern poet be set for an instant beside Dante, as an exponent of Catholic faith: on the contrary, the Northern temper accepts the scholarship of the Reformation with absolute sincerity, while the Italians seek refuge from it in the partly scientific and completely lascivious enthusiasms

¹ [The passage "The second stage . . ." (§ 4) down to "anatomical designs" was quoted in E. T. Cook's Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, when Ruskin added in a note (p. 9, 1888 edition), that "This analysis of the decline of religious faith does not enough regard the moral and material mischief which accompanied that decline."]

of literature and painting, renewed under classical influence. We therefore, in the north, produce our Shakespeare and Holbein; they their Petrarch and Raphael And it is nearly impossible for you to study Shakespeare or Holbein too much, or Petrarch and Raphael too little.

I do not say this, observe, in opposition to the Catholic faith, or to any other faith, but only to the attempts to support whatsoever the faith may be, by ornament or eloquence, instead of action. Every man who honestly accepts, and acts upon, the knowledge granted to him by the circumstances of his time, has the faith which God intends him to have;—assuredly a good one, whatever the terms or form of it—every man who dishonestly refuses, or interestedly disobeys the knowledge open to him, holds a faith which God does not mean him to hold, and therefore a bad one, however beautiful or traditionally respectable.

7. Do not, therefore, I entreat you, think that I speak with any purpose of defending one system of theology against another; least of all, reformed against Catholic theology. There probably never was a system of religion so destructive to the loveliest arts and the loveliest virtues of men, as the modern Protestantism, which consists in an assured belief in the Divine forgiveness of all your sins, and the Divine correctness of all your opinions. But in the first searching and sincere activities, the doctrines of the Reformation produced the most instructive art, and the grandest literature, yet given to the world; while Italy, in her interested resistance to those doctrines, polluted and exhausted the arts she already possessed. Her iridescence of dying statesmanship—her magnificence of hollow piety,— were represented in the arts of Venice and Florence by two mighty men on either side—Titian and Tintoret,—Michael Angelo and Raphael. Of the calm and brave statesmanship, the modest and faithful religion, which had been her strength, I am content to name one chief representative artist at Venice,—John Bellini.

8. Let me now map out for you roughly the chronological relations of these five men. It is impossible to remember the minor years, in dates; I will give you them broadly in decades, and you can add what finesse afterwards you like.

Recollect, first, the great year 1480. Twice four's eight —you can't mistake it. In that year Michael Angelo was five years old; Titian, three years old; Raphael, within three years of being born.¹

So see how easily it comes. Michael Angelo five years old—and you divide six between Titian ami Raphael,— three on each side of your standard year, 1480.

Then add to 1480, forty years—an easy number to recollect, surely; and you get the exact year of Raphael's death, 1520.

In that forty years all the new effort and deadly catastrophe took place. 1480 to 1520.²

Now, you have only to fasten to those forty years, the life of Bellini, who represents the best art before them, and of Tintoret, who represents the best art after them.

9. I cannot fit you these on with a quite comfortable exactness, but with very slight inexactness I can fit them firmly.

John Bellini was ninety years old when he died. He lived fifty years before the great forty of change, and he saw the forty, and died. Then Tintoret is born; lives eighty* years after the forty, and closes, in dying, the sixteenth century, and the great arts of the world.

* If you like to have it with perfect exactitude, recollect that Bellini died at true ninety,—Tintoret at eighty-two; that Bellini's death was four years before Raphael's, and that Tintoret was born four years before Bellini's death.

¹ [The exact dates (as usually given) are: Bellini, 1426-1516; Michael Angelo, 1475-1564; Titian, 1477-1576; Raphael, 1483-1520; Tintoret, 1519-1594.] * [Compare Ariadne Florentina, § 40 (below, p. 325).]

John Bellini precedes the change, meets, and resists it victoriously to his death. Nothing of flaw or failure is ever to be discerned in him.

Then Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Titian, together, bring about the deadly change, playing into each other's hands—Michael Angelo being the chief captain in evil; Titian, in natural force.

Then Tintoret, himself alone nearly as strong as all the three, stands up for a last fight; for Venice, and the old time. He all but wins it at first; but the three together are too strong for him. Michael Angelo strikes him down; and the arts are ended. " II disegno di Michael Agnolo." ^lThat fatal motto was his death-warrant.

10. And now, having massed out my subject, I can clearly sketch for you the changes that took place from Bellini, through Michael Angelo, to Tintoret

The art of Bellini is centrally represented by two pictures at Venice: one, the Madonna in the Sacristy of the Frari, with two saints beside her, and two angels at her feet; the second, the Madonna with four Saints, over the second altar of San Zaccaria.*

In the first of these, the figures are under life size, and it represents the most perfect kind of picture for rooms; in which, since it is intended to be seen close to the spectator, every right kind of finish possible to the hand may be wisely lavished; yet which is not a miniature, nor in any wise petty, or ignoble.⁸

¹ [The reference is to Tintoret's writing on a wall of his studio that he aimed at "the design of Michael Angelo and the colouring of Titian" (Vasari's Live*, vol. v. p. 61 n., Bohn): compare below, p. 408.1

' [For a note ou Buskin's other selections of the best pictures by Bellini, see Stones of Venice, vol. iii. (Vol. XI. p. 379 n.). In the Catalogue of the Standard Series, he selects yet another—namely, a picture formerly in the Pourtales collection (VoL XXI. p. 13).]

* [In the first draft of the lecture there is an additional passage on Bellini's workmanship:—

" I have just said that the smaller of these two pictures represented the class in which every kind of right finish might be wisely lavished. It is indeed here so lavished that in the painting of the plumes of a single wing of one of the angels there is as much work as Tintoret sometimes employs for an entire group of figures. But this finish is, throughout, painter's work, and complete in the design of every touch. And herein

In the second, the figures are of life size, or a little more, and it represents the class of great pictures in which the boldest execution is used, but all brought to entire completion. These two, having every quality in balance, are as far as my present knowledge extends, and as far as I can trust my judgment, the two best pictures in the world.

First, they are both wrought in entirely consistent and permanent material The gold in them is represented by painting, not laid on with real gold. And the painting is so secure, that four hundred years have produced on it, so far as I can see, no harmful change whatsoever, of any kind.

Secondly, the figures in both are in perfect peace. No action takes place except that the little angels are playing on musical instruments, but with uninterrupted and effortless gesture, as in a dream. A choir of singing angels by La Robbia or Donatello would be intent on their music, or eagerly rapturous in it, as in temporary exertion: ^l in the little choirs of cherubs by Luini in the Adoration of the Shepherds, in the Cathedral of Como, we even feel by their dutiful anxiety that there might be danger of a false note if they were less attentive. But Bellini's angels, even the youngest, sing as calmly as the Fates weave.

12. Let me at once point out to you that this calmness is the attribute of the entirely highest class of art: the introduction of strong or violently emotional incident is at once a confession of inferiority.

let me at once explain to you a distinction of great importance between early German and Italian finish. In the German painting you will continually find the jewels and gold are imitated so skilfully that your pleasure must be in the realization and deception, rather than in the actual painting. You do not see what the touches are which produce the effect But a great painter, however finely he works, makes his touch, or his amp de pinceau, visible, and the form of the touch itself is more delightful than the imitation it accomplishes. Bellini's gold is not quite so like gold as a German's would be, but every atom of paint is laid deliciously, and almost a gem in itself, and its form, selectea and lovely."] * [Compare "Modern Art/' § 10, Vol. XIX. p. 203.]

The greater part of all that these two men did is hastily and incompletely done; and all that they did on a large scale in colour is in the best qualities of it perished.

The figures flying,—falling,—striking,—or biting. Scenes of Judgment,—battle,—martyrdom,—massacre; anything that is in the acme of instantaneous interest and violent gesture. They cannot any more trust their public to care for anything but that.

3rd. Physical instead of mental interest The body, and its anatomy, made the entire subject of interest: the face, shadowed, as in the Duke Lorenzo,* unfinished, as in the Twilight, or entirely foreshortened, backshortened, and despised, among labyrinths of limbs, and mountains of sides and shoulders.

4th. Evil chosen rather than good. On the face itself, instead of joy or virtue, at the best, sadness, probably pride, often sensuality, and always, by preference, vice or agony as the subject of thought. In the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, and the Last Judgment of Tintoret, it is the wrath of the Dies Imb, not its justice, in which they delight; and their only passionate thought of the coming of Christ in the clouds, is that all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him.¹

* Julian, rather. See Mr. Tyrwhitt's notice of the lately discovered error, in his Lectures on Christian Art.²

⁸ ["The tomb of Giuliano de* Medici mistaken for his brother Lorenzo, and named the Duke Lorenzo," p. 41. Sir Edward Poynter accepts this correction (Lectures on Art,y. 248 n.). J. A. Symonds, however, decides that "no doubt now remains that tradition is accurate in identifying the helmeted Duke with Lorenzo" (Life of Michelangelo, vol. ii. p. 22, ed. 1893). It is the figure of Duke Lorenzo (known also as 11 Pensieroso) that Ruskin here refers to; below it are the figures of Dawn and Twilight The figure of Giuliano de' Medici is opposite, surmounting the figures of Day and Night]

Those are the four great changes wrought by Michael Angelo. I repeat them: 111 work for good. Tumult for Peace. The Flesh of Man for his Spirit And the Curse of God for His blessing.

15. Hitherto, I have massed, necessarily, but most unjustly, Michael Angelo and Tintoret together, because of their common relation to the art of others. I shall now proceed to distinguish the qualities of their own. And first as to the general temper of the two men.

Nearly every existing work by Michael Angelo is an attempt to execute something beyond his power, coupled with a fevered desire that his power may be acknowledged.¹He is always matching himself either against the Greeks whom he cannot rival, or against rivals whom he cannot forget. He is proud, yet not proud enough to be at peace; melancholy, yet not deeply enough to be raised above petty pain; and strong beyond all his companion workmen, yet never strong enough to command his temper, or limit his aims.

Tintoret, on the contrary, works in the consciousness of supreme strength, which cannot be wounded by neglect, and is only to be thwarted by time and space. He knows precisely all that art can accomplish under given conditions; determines absolutely how much of what can be ^vdone he will himself for the moment choose to do; and fulfils his purpose with as much ease as if, through his human body, were working the great forces of nature. Not that he is ever satisfied with what he has done, as vulgar and feeble artists are satisfied. He falls short of his ideal, more than any other man; but not more than is necessary; and is content to fall short of it to that degree, as he is content that his figures, however well painted, do not move

* [For Raskin's earlier, and different, reading of Michael Angelo'i character, ate Modern Painter*, rol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 288 and ».).]

nor speak. He is also entirely unconcerned respecting the satisfaction of the public. He neither cares to display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them; when he finishes his work, it is because he is in the humour to do so; and the sketch which a meaner painter would have left incomplete to show how cleverly it was begun, Tintoret simply leaves because he has done as much of it as he likes.

16. Both Raphael and Michael Angelo are thus, in the most vital of all points, separate from the great Venetian. They are always in dramatic attitudes, and always appealing to the public for praise. They are the leading athletes in the gymnasium of the arts, and the crowd of the circus cannot take its eyes away from them; while the Venetian walks or rests with the simplicity of a wild animal; is scarcely noticed in his occasionally swifter motion; when he springs, it is to please himself; and so calmly, that no one thinks of estimating the distance covered.

I do not praise him wholly in this. I praise him only for the well-founded pride, infinitely nobler than Michael Angelo's. You do not hear of Tintoret's putting any one into hell because they had found fault with his work.¹Tintoret would as soon have thought of putting a dog into hell for laying his paws on it. But he is to be blamed in this—that he thinks as little of the pleasure of the public, as of their opinion. A great painter's business is to do what the public ask of him, in the way that shall be helpful and instructive to them. His relation to them is exactly that of a tutor to a child; he is not to defer to their judgment, but he is carefully to form it;—not to consult their pleasure for his own sake, but to consult it much for theirs. It was scarcely, however, possible that this should be the case between Tintoret and his Venetians; he could not paint for the people, and in some respects he was happily protected by his subordination to the Senate.

¹ [The reference is to Vasari's story about Messer Biagio de Cesena, Master of the Ceremonies, who criticised to the Pope the nudity of the figures in Michael Angelo's fresco of the " Last Judgment." The master thereupon drew Biagio's portrait from memory and placed nim in hell as Minos, surrounded by a crowd of devils (Lives of the Painters, vol. v. p. 286, Bohn).]

Raphael and Michael Angelo lived in a world of court intrigue, in which it was impossible to escape petty irritation, or refuse themselves the pleasure of mean victory. But Tintoret and Titian, even at the height of their reputation, practically lived as craftsmen in their workshops, and sent in samples of their wares, not to be praised or cavilled at, but to be either taken or refused.

17* I can clearly and adequately set before you these relations between the great painters of Venice and her Senate—relations which, in monetary matters, are entirely right and exemplary for all time—by reading to you two decrees of the Senate itself, and one petition to it. The first document shall be the decree of the Senate for giving help to John Bellini, in finishing the compartments of the great Council Chamber; granting him three assistants — one of them Victor Carpaccio.

"There having moreover offered his services to this effect our most faithful citizen, Zuan Bellin, according to his agreement employing his skill and all speed and diligence for the completion of this work of the three pictures aforesaid, provided he be assisted by the under-written painters.

"Be it therefore put to the ballot, that besides the aforesaid Zuan Bellin in person, who will assume the superintendence of this work, there be added Master Victor Scarpasa, with a monthly salary of five ducats; Master Victor, son of the late Mathio, at four ducats per month; and the painter, Hieronymo, at two ducats per month; they rendering speedy and diligent assistance to the aforesaid Zuan Bellin for the painting of the pictures aforesaid, so that they be completed well and carefully as speedily as possible. The salaries of the which three master painters aforesaid, with the costs of colours and other necessaries, to be defrayed by our Salt Office with the monies of the great chest

* From the invaluable series of documents relating to Titian and his times, extricated by Mr. Rawdon Brown from the archives of Venice, and arranged and translated by him.¹

¹ [But not published; and it is possible that Ruskin here attributes to Rawdon Brown the privately-issued collection of documents, arranged by Edward Cheney, which is referred to in the Guide to the Academy at Venice (VoL XXIV.). The documents here cited may be read in the following; collection: Momumenti per tercire alia rtoria del Palazzo Ducale di Venexia, by uiambattista Lorensi, Venice. 1868 (a work which is dedicated to Ruskin, and to which be had given financial assistance). The decree translated above is No. 296 (p. 142).

"It being expressly declared that said pensioned painters be tied and bound to work constantly and daily, so that said three pictures may be completed as expeditiously as possible; the artists aforesaid being pensioned at the good pleasure of this Council

This decree is the more interesting to us now, because it is the precedent to which Titian himself refers, when he first offers his services to the Senate.

The petition which I am about to read to you, was read to the Council of Ten, on the last day of May, 1518, and the original draft of it is yet preserved in the Venice archives.¹

"'I, Titian of Serviete de Cadore, having from my boyhood upwards set myself to learn the art of painting, not so much from cupidity of gain as for the sake of endeavouring to acquire some little fame, and of being ranked amongst those who now profess the said art.

"'And altho, heretofore, and likewise at this present, I have been earnestly requested by the Pope and other potentates to go and serve them, nevertheless, being anxious as your Serenity's most faithful subject, for such I am, to leave some memorial in this famous city; my determination is, should the Signory approve, to undertake, so long as I live, to come and paint in the Grand Council with my whole soul and ability; commencing, provided your Serenity think of it, with the battle-piece on the side towards the " Piaza," that being the most difficult; nor down to this time has any one chosen to assume so hard a task.

'"I, most excellent Lords, should be better pleased to receive as re-compence for the work to be done by me, such acknowledgments as may be deemed sufficient, and much less; but because, as already stated by me, I care solely for my honour, and mere livelihood, should your Serenity approve, you will vouchsafe to grant me for my life, the next brokers-patent in the German factory,* by whatever means it may become vacant; notwithstanding other expectancies; with the terms, conditions, obligations,

* Fondaco de' Tedeschi. I saw the last wrecks of Giorgione's frescoes on the outside of it in 1845.²

¹ [No. 337 in Lorenzi's Monumenti (pp. 167-158), followed by the document here translated on p. 91 (No. 338, p. 158).]

⁸ [For other references to these frescoes, see Vol. III. p. 212; Vol. VII, p. 439; and Vol. XI. p. 378.]

and exemptions, as in the case of Messer Zuan Bellini; besides two youths whom I purpose bringing with me as assistants; they to be paid by the Salt Office; as likewise the colours and all other requisites, as conce ded a few months ago by the aforesaid most Illustrious Council to the said Messer Zuan; for I promise to do such work and with so much speed and excellency as shall satisfy your lordships to whom I humbly recommend myself/"

18. "This proposal," Mr. Brown tells us, "in accordance with the petitions presented by Gentil Bellini and Alvise Vivarini, was immediately put to the ballot," and carried thus—the decision of the Grand Council, in favour of Titian, being, observe, by no means unanimous:

Immediately follows on the acceptance of Titian's services, this practical order: x

"We, Chiefs of the most Illustrious Council of Ten, tell and inform you Lords Proveditors for the State; videlicet the one who is cashier of the Great Chest, and his successors, that for the execution of what has been decreed above in the most Illustrious Council aforesaid, you do have prepared all necessaries for the above written Titian according to his petition and demand, and as observed with regard to Juan Bellini, that he may paint ut supra; paying from month to month the two youths whom said Titian shall present to you at the rate of four ducats each per month, as urged by him because of their skill and sufficiency in said art of painting, tho' we do not mean the payment of their salary to com* mence until they begin work; and thus will you do. Given on the 8th of June, 1513."

This is the way, then, the great workmen wish to be paid, and that is the way wise men pay them for their work. The perfect simplicity of such patronage leaves the painter free to do precisely what he thinks best: and a good painter always produces his best, with such license.

19. And now I shall take the four conditions of change in succession, and examine the distinctions between the two masters in their acceptance of, or resistance to, them.

(I.) The change of good and permanent workmanship for bad and insecure workmanship.

You have often heard quoted the saying of Michael Angelo, that oil-painting was only fit for women and children.¹

He said so, simply because he had neither the skill to lay a single touch of good oil-painting, nor the patience to overcome even its elementary difficulties.

And it is one of my reasons for the choice of subject in this concluding lecture on Sculpture, that I may, with direct reference to this much quoted saying of Michael Angelo, make the positive statement to you, that oil-painting is the Art of arts;* that it is sculpture, drawing, and music, all in one, involving the technical dexterities of those three several arts; that is to say—the decision and strength of the stroke of the chisel;—the balanced distribution of appliance of that force necessary for graduation in light and shade;—and the passionate felicity of rightly multiplied actions, all unerring, which on an instrument produce right sound, and on canvas, living colour. There is no other

* I beg that this statement may be observed with attention.² It is of great importance, as in opposition to the views usually held respecting the grave schools of painting.

¹ ["Sebastiano del Piombo was much beloved by Michelangelo, but it is also true that when that part of the chapel whereon is executed the Last Judgment of Buonarroti had to be painted, there did arise some anger between them; Sebastiano having persuaded the Pope to make Michelangelo execute the work in oil, while the latter would do it in no other manner than fresco. But Michelangelo saving neither yes nor no, the waU was prepared after the fashion oi Fra Sebastiano, and Buonarroti suffered it to remain thus for several months, without doing anything to the work. At length, and when pressed on the subject, he declared that he would only do it in fresco, ' oil-painting being an art only fit for women, or idle and leisurely people like Fra Bastiano'" (Vasari, vol. iv. p. 74, Bonn's edition). Sir Edward Poynter lays stress on the context of Michael Angelas remark, which, he argues, "was rather intended as a sarcasm on Sebastian del Piombo's laziness" than as "a sweeping disparagement of oil-painting." The nature of oil-painting, he continues, "allows the work to be dropped and taken up again at will, so making it suitable for women (who may be supposed to be liable to interruption from other occupations) and for idle persons; fresco-painting, on the other hand, requiring continuous and concentrated effort, on account of the limited time during which the plaster remains in fit condition to be worked upon, after which it can never be touched again, except by a different process, which takes from its special character" (Poynter's Lectures on Art, p. 223 ft., ed. 1897).]

human skill so great or so wonderful as the skill of fine oil-painting; and there is no other art whose results are so absolutely permanent. Music is gone as soon as produced—marble discolours,—fresco fades,—glass darkens or decomposes — painting alone, well guarded, is practically everlasting.

Of this splendid art Michael Angelo understood nothing; he understood even fresco, imperfectly. Tintoret understood both perfectly; but he—when no one would pay for his colours (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of wall to paint on¹)—used cheap blue for ultramarine; and he worked so rapidly, and on such huge spaces of canvas, that between damp and dry, his colours must go, for the most part; but any complete oil-painting of his stands as well as one of Bellini's own: while Michael Angelo's fresco is defaced already in every part of it, and Leonardo's oil-painting is all either gone black, or gone to nothing.²

20. (II.) Introduction of dramatic interest for the sake of excitement I have already, in the Stones of Venice* illustrated Tintoret's dramatic power at so great length,* that I will not, to-day, make any farther statement to justify my assertion that it is as much beyond Michael Angelo's as Shakespeare's is beyond Milton's—and somewhat with the same kind of difference in manner. Neither can I speak to-day, time not permitting me, of the abuse of their dramatic power by Venetian or Florentine; one thing only I beg you to note, that with full half of his strength, Tintoret remains faithful to the serenity of the past; and

» [It is just to remember that Michael Angelo's fresco of the " Last Judgment" in the Sistine Chapel has suffered not only from the damp of three centuries, but also from the smoke of candles and incense, as also from neglect On these matters see Poynter's Lectures on Art, pp. 227-229. For another reference to Leonardo in this sense, see VoL XlX. pp. 129-190.]

» [See VoL XI. pp. 400 eeq.; and compare Modern Painters, vol. ii. (VoL IV. pp. 262 eeq.).]

the examples I have given you from his work in S, 50,* are, one, of the most splendid drama, and the other, of the quietest portraiture ever attained by the arts of the Middle Ages.

Note also this respecting his picture of the Judgment,¹that, in spite of all the violence and wildness of the imagined scene, Tintoret has not given, so far as I remember, the spectacle of any one soul under infliction of actual pain. In all previous representations of the Last Judgment there had at least been one division of the picture set apart for the representation of torment; and even the gentle Angelico shrinks from no orthodox detail in this respect; but Tintoret, too vivid and true in imagina tion to be able to endure the common thoughts of hell, represents indeed the wicked in ruin, but not in agony. They are swept down by flood and whirlwind—the place of them shall know them no more,² but not one is seen in more than the natural pain of swift and irrevocable death.

21. (Ill-) I pass to the third condition; the priority of flesh to spirit, and of the body to the face.

In this alone, of the four innovations, Michael Angelo and Tintoret have the Greeks with them;—in this, alone, have they any right to be called classical. The Greeks gave them no excuse for bad workmanship; none for temporary passion; none for the preference of pain. Only in the honour done to the body may be alleged for them the authority of the ancients.

* The upper photograph in S, 50³ is, however, not taken from the great Paradise, which is in too dark a position to be photographed, but from a study of it existing in a private gait cry,⁴ and every way inferior, I have vainly tried to photograph portions of the picture itself

¹ [In the Church of S, Maria dell' Orto r sea the descriptions of the picture in V«l IV, pp. xxivL-xxxvii, 277, and Vol. XL pp. 396-396.] ' [See Psalma cljL 16.]

* [This is a slip. The study for the picture, from which the photograph is taken, is in the l*rado Gallery at Madrid. It was purchased by Velasquez for Thilip IV. of Spaiu, The other photograph in Frame No. 50 of the Standard Series is of the portrait of "Two Senators in the Academy at Venice.]

You remember, I hope, how often in my preceding lectures I had to insist on the fact that Greek sculpture was essentially aTp&rmwot;—independent, not only of the expression, but even of the beauty of the face,¹ Nay, independent of its being so much as seen. The greater number of the finest pieces of it which remain for us to judge by, have had the heads broken away;—we do not seriously miss them either from the Three Fates, the Ilissus, or the Torso of the Vatican.² The face of the Theseus is so far destroyed by time that you can form little ccmception of its former aspect. But it is otherwise in Christian sculpture. Strike the head off even the rudest statue in the porch of Chartres and you will greatly miss it—the harm would be still worse to Donatello's St. George:*—and if you take the heads from a statue of Mino, or a painting of Angelico —very little but drapery will be left;—drapery made redundant in quantity and rigid in fold, that it may conceal the forms, and give a proud or ascetic reserve to the actions, of the bodily frame. Bellini and his school, indeed, rejected at once the false theory, and the easy mannerism, of such religious design; and painted the body without feat or reserve, as, in its subordination, honourable and lovely. But the inner heart and fire of it are by them always first thought of, and no action is given to it merely to show its beauty. Whereas the great culminating masters, and chiefly of these, Tintoret, Correggio, and Michael Angelo, delight in the body for its own sake, and cast it into every conceivable attitude, often in violation of all natural probability, that they may exhibit the action of its skeleton, and the contours of its flesh. The movement of a hand

* [The "Three Fates¹¹ (though the identification is doubtful) are the headless figures from the pediment of the Parthenon, now in the British Museum: for another reference to them, see below, p. 502. Opposite them is the recumbent figure known as the Ilissus; for another reference to it, see Vol. IX. p. 406; and for the Torso of the Vatican, see Vol. III. p. 00a For the Theseus, see VoL IV. p. 119 and Vol. XVI. p. 271.1

* [For this work, see the lecture on "Modern Art," § 10 (Vol. XIX. p. 203); the original work has now been removed to the Bargello, a east being inserted in its niche on Or San Michele.]

with Cima or Bellini expresses mental emotion only; but the clustering and twining of the fingers of Correggio's St. Catherine¹ is enjoyed by the painter just in the same way as' he would enjoy the twining of the branches of a graceful plant, and he compels them into intricacies which have little or no relation to St. Catherine's mind. In the two drawings of Correggio (S. 18 and 14) * it is the rounding of limbs and softness of foot resting on cloud which are principally thought of in the form of the Madonna; and the countenance of St. John is foreshortened into a section, that full prominence may be given to the muscles of his arms and breast.

So in Tintoret's drawing of the Graces (S. 22)/ he has entirely neglected the individual character of the Goddesses, and been content to indicate it merely by attributes of dice or flower, so only that he may sufficiently display varieties of contour in thigh and shoulder.

22. Thus far, then, the Greeks, Correggio, Michael Angelo, Raphael in his latter design, and Tintoret in his scenic design (as opposed to portraiture), are at one. But the Greeks, Correggio, and Tintoret, are also together in this farther point; that they all draw the body for true delight in it, and with knowledge of it living; while Michael Angelo and Raphael draw the body for vanity, and from knowledge of it dead.

The Venus of Melos,—Correggio's Venus, (with Mercury teaching Cupid to read),⁴—and Tintoret's Graces, have the forms which their designers truly liked to see in women. They may have been wrong or right in liking those forms, but they carved and painted them for their pleasure, not for vanity.

¹ [One of the figures in the picture known as " II Giorno " in the Parma Gallery : see Vol. IV. p. 197.]

³ [A photograph of " Mercury and the Graces" (the picture in the Ducal Palace): see Vol. XXI. p. 22.]

⁴ [For other references to the Venus of Melos, see Vol. XIX. p. 413 n. ; and for the picture by Correggio (No. 10 in the Natioual Gallery), ibid,, p. 29 n.]

which he delighted to see in women. He gave it her, because he thought it was fine, and that he would be admired for reaching so lofty an ideal.*

28. Again. The Greeks, Correggio, and Tintoret, learn the body from the living body, and delight in its breath, colour, and motion, t

Raphael and Michael Angelo learned it essentially from the corpse, and had no delight in it whatever, but great pride in showing that they knew all its mechanism; they therefore sacrifice its colours, and insist on its muscles, and surrender the breath and fire of it, for what is—not merely carnal,—but osseous, knowing that for one person who can recognize the loveliness of a look, or the purity of a colour, there are a hundred who can calculate the length of a bone.

The boy with the doves, in Raphael's cartoon of the Beautiful Gate of the Temple,¹ is not a child running, but a surgical diagram of a child in a running posture.

Farther, when the Greeks, Correggio, and Tintoret, draw the body active, it is because they rejoice in its force, and when they draw it inactive, it is because they rejoice in its repose. But Michael Angelo and Raphael invent for it ingenious mechanical motion, because they think it uninteresting when it is quiet, and cannot, in their pictures, endure any person's being simple-minded enough to stand upon both his legs at once, nor venture to imagine any

* He had, indeed, other and more solemn thoughts of the Night than Correggio; and these he tried to express by distorting form, and making her partly Medusa-like. In this lecture, as above stated,⁸ I am only dwelling on points hitherto unnoticed of dangerous evil in the too much admired master.*

t Tintoret dissected, and used clay models, in the true academical manner, and produced academical results thereby; but all his fine work is done from life, like that of the Greeks.

¹ [At the South Kensington Museum; for another reference to it, see VoL IX. p. 357.]

* [For Buskin's admiration of the "Night" of Michael Angelo (in the Medici Chapel) elsewhere expressed, see Vol. IV. p. 282, and Vol. V. p. 134; and for his criticism of Correggio's "Notte," Vol. VII. p. 492.]

one's being clear enough in his language to make himself intelligible without pointing.

In all these conditions, the Greek and Venetian¹ treatment of the body is faithful, modest, and natural; but Michael Angelo's dishonest, insolent, and artificial.

24. But between him and Tintoret there is a separation deeper than all these, when we examine their treatment of the face. Michael Angelo's vanity of surgical science rendered it impossible for him ever to treat the body as well as the Greeks treated it; but it left him wholly at liberty to treat the face as ill; and he did: and in some respects very curiously worse.

The Greeks had, in all their work, one type of face for beautiful and honourable persons; and another, much contrary to it, for dishonourable ones; and they were continually setting these in opposition. Their type of beauty lay chiefly in the undisturbed peace and simplicity of all contours; in full roundness of chin; in perfect formation of the lips, showing neither pride nor care; and, most of all, in a straight and firm line from the brow to the end of the nose.

The Greek type of dishonourable persons, especially satyrs, fauns, and sensual powers, consisted in irregular excrescence and decrement of features, especially in flatness of the upper part of the nose, and projection of the end of it into a blunt knob.

By the most grotesque fatality, as if the personal bodily injury he had himself received² had passed with a sickly echo into his mind also, Michael Angelo is always dwelling on this satyric form of countenance;—sometimes violently caricatures it, but never can help drawing it; and all

¹ [On the Venetian rendering of the human body, see Cambridge Inaugural Address, 8 23 (Vol. XVI. p. 198).]

² ["The front view of the forehead is square, the nose a little flattened, not naturally, but because, when he was a boy, one Torrigiano, a brutal and proud fellow, with a blow almost broke the cartilage, so that Michael Angelo was carried home as one dead; for this Torrigiano was banished from Florence, and he came to bad end" (Condivi's Life of Michael Angelo, § 69; p. 91 in Sir Charles Holroyd's translation). Torrigiano's own account of the matter is in Benvenuto Cellini's Life (vol. i. p. 27 of Symonds's translation, ed. 1888).]

the best profiles in this collection at Oxford have what Mr. Robinson calls a "nez retrouss£"; but what is, in reality, the nose of the Greek Bacchic mask, treated as a dignified feature.

25. For the sake of readers who cannot examine the drawings themselves, and lest I should be thought to have exaggerated in any wise the statement of this character, I quote Mr. Robinson's description of the head, No. 9— a celebrated and entirely authentic drawing, on which, I regret to say, my own pencil comment in passing is merely "brutal lower lip, and broken nose":—

"This admirable study was probably made from nature, additional character aad more powerful expression baring been given to it by a slight exaggeration of details, bordering on caricature (observe the protruding lower lip, *nex retrousse,' and overhanging forehead). The head, in profile, turned to the right, is proudly planted on a massive neck and shoulders, and the short tufted hair stands up erect The expression is that of fierce, insolent self-confidence and malevolence; it is engraved in facsimile in Ottley's Italian School of Design, and it is described in that work, p. 33, as 'Finely expressive of scornfulness and pride, and evidently a study from nature.'

"Michel Angelo has made use of the same ferocious-looking model on other occasions—see an instance in the well-known 'Head of Satan' en-

Sived in Woodburn's Lawrence Gallery (No. 16), and now in the Malcolm llection.

"The study on the reverse of the leaf is more lightly executed; it represents a man of powerful frame, carrying a hog or boar in his arms before him, the upper part of his body thrown back to balance the weight, his head hidden by that of the animal, which rests on the man's right shoulder.

"The power displayed in every line and touch of these drawings is inimitable—the head was in truth one of the 'teste divine,' and the hand which executed it the 'mano terribile,' so enthusiastically alluded to by Vasari."*

26, Passing, for the moment, by No. 10, a "young woman of majestic character, marked by a certain expression of brooding melancholy," and "wearing on her head a fantastic cap or turban";—by No. 11, a bearded man, "wearing a conical Phrygian cap, his mouth wide open," and his expression " obstreperously animated" ;—and by

¹ [Critical Account, ate., pp. 10-11. The extracts in §§ 2ft, 27, 28 are from the same book, pp. 11, 12, 13, 40, 41.]

No. 12, "a middle-aged or old man, with a snub nose, high forehead, and thin, scrubby hair," we will go on to the fairer examples of divine heads in No. 82:—

" This splendid sheet of studies is probably one of the ' carte stupendis-sime di teste divine/ which Vasari says (Vita, p. 272) Michel Angelo executed, as presents or lessons for his artistic friends. Not improbably it is actually one of those made for his friend Tommaso dei Cavalieri, who, when young, was desirous of learning to draw/'

But it is one of the chief misfortunes affecting Michael Angelo's reputation, that his ostentatious display of strength and science has a natural attraction for comparatively weak and pedantic persons. And this sheet of Vasari's "teste divine" contains, in fact, not a single drawing of high quality—only one of moderate agreeableness, and two caricatured heads, one of a satyr with hair like the fur of animals, and one of a monstrous and sensual face, such as could only have occurred to the sculptor in a fatigued dream, and which in my own notes I have classed with the vile face in No. 45.

27. Returning, however, to the divine heads above it, I wish you to note "the most conspicuous and important of all," a study for one of the Genii behind the Sibylla Libyca. This Genius, like the young woman of a majestic character, and the man with his mouth open, wears a cap, or turban; opposite to him in the sheet, is a female in profile, "wearing a hood of massive drapery." And, when once your attention is directed to this point, you will perhaps be surprised to find how many of Michael Angelo's figures, intended to be sublime, have their heads bandaged.¹If you have been a student of Michael Angelo chiefly, you may easily have vitiated your taste to the extent, of thinking that this is a dignified costume; but if you study Greek work, instead, you will find that nothing is more

¹ [See, for instance, the Cumaean Sibyl; Plate XXXII. in this volume (below, p. 449).]

important in the system of it than a finished disposition^! the hair;¹ and as soon as you acquaint yourself with tKe execution of carved marbles generally, you will perceive these massy fillets to be merely a cheap means of getting over a difficulty too great for Michael Angelo's patience, and too exigent for his invention. They are not sublime arrangements, but economies of labour, and reliefs from the necessity of design; and if you had proposed to the sculptor of the Venus of Melos, or of the Jupiter of Olympia, to bind the ambrosial locks up in towels, you would most likely have been instantly bound, yourself; and sent to'the nearest temple of JSsculapius.

I need not, surely, tell you,—I need only remind,—how in all these points, the Venetians and Correggio reverse Michael Angelo's evil, and vanquish him in good; how they refuse caricature, rejoice in beauty, and thirst for opportunity of toiL The waves of hair in a single figure of Tintoret's (the Mary Magdalen of the Paradise) contain more intellectual design in themselves alone than all the folds of unseemly linen in the Sistine chapel put together.

28. In the fourth and last place, as Tintoret does not sacrifice, except as he is forced by the exigences of display, the face for the body, so also he does not sacrifice happiness for pain. The chief reason why we all know the "Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo, and not the " Paradise" of Tintoret, is the same love of sensation which makes us read the Inferno of Dante; and not his Paradise;¹ and the choice, believe me, is our fault, not his; some farther evil influence is due to the fact that Michael Angelo has invested all his figures with picturesque and palpable elements of effect, while Tintoret has only made them lovely in themselves and has been content that they should deserve, not demand, your attention.

¹ [On this subject compare Arutra Pcnte&ci, § 120, "Notes on the Educational Series," No. 100 (VoL XXL p, 126V1

Aijgblo sublime—because they are dark, and colossal, and •involved, and mysterious—because, in a word, they look Wmetimes like shadows, and sometimes like mountains, and '.sometimes like spectres, but never like human beings. Believe me, yet once more, in what I told you long since¹ — man can invent nothing nobler than humanity. He cannot raise his form into anything better than God made it, by giving it either the flight of birds or strength of beasts, by enveloping it in mist, or heaping it into multitude. Your pilgrim must look like a pilgrim in a straw hat, or you will not make him into one with cockle and nimbus; an angel must look like an angel on the ground, as well as in the air; and the much-denounced pre-Raphaelite faith that a saint cannot look saintly unless he has thin legs, is not more absurd than Michael Angelo's, that a Sibyl cannot look Sibylline unless she has thick ones.

80. All that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, when you look into it, is mere stage decoration, and that of a vulgar kind. Light is, in reality, more awful than darkness—modesty more majestic than strength; and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, or the sweet virtue of a, maiden, than in the strength of Antaeus,² or thunder-clouds of iEtna.

Now, though in nearly all his greater pictures, Tintoret is entirely carried away by his sympathy with Michael Angelo, and conquers him in his own field;—outflies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him in fancy, and outflames him in rage,—he can be just as gentle as he is strong: and that Paradise, though it is the largest picture in the world, without any question, is also the thoughtfullest, and most precious.

The Thoughtfullest!—it would be saying but little, as far as Michael Angelo is concerned.

your youth up (and all educated persons have heard for three centuries), of this Last Judgment of his, as the most sublime picture in existence.¹

The subject of it is one which should certainly be interesting to you, in one of two ways.

If you never expect to be judged for any of your own doings, and the tradition of the coming of Christ is to you as an idle tale—still, think what a wonderful tale it would be, were it well told. You are at liberty, disbelieving it, to range the fields—Elysian and Tartarean—of all imagination. You may play with it, since it is false; and what a play would it not be, well written? Do you think the tragedy, or the miracle play, or the infinitely Divina Commedia of the Judgment of the astonished living who were dead;—the undeceiving of the sight of every human soul, understanding in an instant all the shallow, and depth of past life and future,—face to face with both,—and with God:—this apocalypse to all intellect, and completion to all passion, this minute and individual drama of the perfected history of separate spirits, and of their finally accomplished affeo-tions!—think you, I say, all this was well told by mere heaps of dark bodies curled and convulsed in space, and fall as of a crowd from a scaffolding, in writhed concretions of muscular pain?

But take it the other way. Suppose you believe, be it never so dimly or feebly, in some kind of Judgment that is to be;—that you admit even the faint contingency of retribution, and can imagine, with vivacity enough to fear, that in this life, at all events, if not in another—there may be for you a Visitation of God, and a questioning—What hast thou done? The picture, if it is a good one, should have a deeper interest, surely on this postulate? Thrilling

¹ [Ruskin himself in his earlier writing*, though he pointed out deficiencies in the work, vet attributed to it a rery high place: see, for instance, Modern Painter*, toL ii. (Vol. IV. pp. 276, 281), and the "Reriew of Lord Lindsay," §§ 69, 60

S^oL XII. p. 230). For other and later references to the " Last Judgment" of Michael ngelo, see Modem Painter; rol. r. (Vol. VII. p. 328); Ariadne Florentine, § 182; Vai eTAmo, § 266; and Mornings in Florence, $ 76 n.)

enough, as a mere imagination of what is never to be— now, as a conjecture of what is to be, held the best that in eighteen centuries of Christianity has for men's eyes been made;—Think of it so!

82. And then, tell me, whether you yourselves, or any one you have known, did ever at any time receive from this picture any, the smallest vital thought, warning, quickening, or help? It may have appalled, or impressed you for a time, as a thunder-cloud might: but has it ever taught you anything—chastised in you anything—confirmed a purpose—fortified a resistance—purified a passion? I know that, for you, it has done none of these things; and I know also that, for others, it has done very different things. In every vain and proud designer who has since lived, that dark carnality of Michael Angelo's has fostered insolent science, and fleshly imagination. Daubers and blockheads think themselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if they know how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men with capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting—landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if they have the full sensuous art-faculty that would have made true painters of them, being taught, from their youth up, to look for and learn the body instead of the spirit, have learned it, and taught it to such purpose, that at this hour, when I speak to you, the rooms of the Royal Academy of England, receiving also what of best can be sent there by the masters of France, contain not one picture honourable to the arts of their age;¹ and contain many which are shameful in their record of its manners.

33. Of that, hereafter.² I will close to-day giving you some brief account of the scheme of Tintoret's Paradise,

¹ [See Preface to Aratra Pentdici, § 3, and the note there added (Vol. XX. p. 195); and compare, below, p. 187.]

⁸ [To the subject of " insolent science and fleshly imagination " and their relation to art, Ruskin returned in The Eagle*8 Nest, being "Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art"]

in justification of my assertion that it is the thoughtfullest as well as mightiest picture in the world.¹

In the highest centre is Christ, leaning on the globe of the earth, which is of dark crystal Christ is crowned with a glory as of the sun, and all the picture is lighted by that glory, descending through circle beneath circle of cloud, and of flying or throned spirits.

The Madonna, beneath Christ, and at some interval from Him, kneels to Him. She is crowned with the Seven stars, and kneels on a cloud of angels, whose wings change into ruby fire, where they are near her.

The three great Archangels, meeting from three sides, fly towards Christ. Michael delivers up his scales and sword. He is followed by the Thrones and Principalities of the Earth; so inscribed—Throni—Principatus. The Spirits of the Thrones bear scales in their hands; and of the Princedoms, shining globes: beneath the wings of the last of these are the four great teachers and lawgivers, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Augustine, and behind St. Augustine stands his mother, watching him, her chief joy in Paradise.

Under the Thrones, are set the Apostles, St Paul separated a little from the rest, and put lowest, yet principal; under St. Paul, is St. Christopher, bearing a massive globe, with a cross upon it; but to mark him as the Christ-bearer, since here in Paradise he cannot have the Child on his shoulders, Tintoret has thrown on the globe a flashing stellar reflection of the sun round the head of Christ.

All this side of the picture is kept in glowing colour, —the four Doctors of the Church have golden mitres and mantles; except the Cardinal, St. Jerome, who is in burning scarlet, his naked breast glowing, warm with noble

¹ (As already stated (Vol. X. o. 466), Hntoret's " Paradise" was in 1903 removed from its place in the Sale del Magsior Consiglio, owing to the discovery of lesions in the wall which sustained it The canvas (which snows some injuries) is now (October 1906) exhibited in full light in the centre of the room, pending the completion of repairs in the Ducal Palace; this, therefore, is the photographer's opportunity, bat it would be impossible on the scale of one of these pages to give any satisfactory reproduction of so huge a picture (72 ft x 23 ft). For soother description of the picture by Raskin, see Stones e/ Venice, voL iii. (VoL XI. p. 372).]

84. Opposite to Michael, Gabriel flies towards the Madonna, having in his hand the Annunciation lily, large, and triple-blossomed. Above him, and above Michael, equally, extends a cloud of white angels, inscribed " Sera-fini"; but the group following Gabriel, and corresponding to the Throni following Michael, is inscribed " Cherubini." Under these are the great prophets, and singers and foretellers of the happiness or of the sorrow of time. David, and Solomon, and Isaiah, and Amos of the herdsmen. David has a colossal golden psaltery laid horizontally across his knees;—two. angels behind him dictate to him as he sings, looking up towards Christ; but one strong angel sweeps down to Solomon from among the cherubs, and opens a book, resting it on the head of Solomon, who looks down earnestly unconscious of it;—to the left of David, separate from the group of prophets, as Paul from the apostles, is Moses, dark-robed; in the full light, withdrawn far behind him, Abraham, embracing Isaac with his left arm, and near him, pale St. Agnes. In front, nearer, dark and colossal, stands the glorious figure of Santa Giustina of Padua; then a little subordinate to her, St. Catherine, and, far on the left, and high, St. Barbara leaning on her tower. In front, nearer, flies Raphael; and under him is the four-square group of the Evangelists. Beneath them, on the left, Noah; on the right, Adam and Eve, both floating unsupported by cloud or angel; Noah buoyed by the Ark, which he holds above him, and it is this into which Solomon gazes down, so earnestly. Eve's face is, perhaps, the most beautiful ever painted by Tintoret—full in light, but dark-eyed. Adam floats beside her, his figure fading into a winged gloom, edged in the outline of fig-leaves. Far down, under these, central in the lowest part of the picture, rises the Angel of the Sea, praying for Venice; for Tintoret conceives his Paradise as existing now, not as in the future. I at first mistook this soft Angel of the Sea for the Magdalen, for

he is sustained by other three angels on either side, as the Magdalen is, in designs of earlier time, because of the verse, " There is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth."¹ But the Magdalen is on the right, behind St. Monica; and on the same side, but lowest of all, Rachel, among the angels of her children, gathered now again to her for ever.*

85. I have no hesitation in asserting this picture to be by far the most precious work of art of any kind whatsoever, now existing in the world; and it is, I believe, on the eve of final destruction; for it is said that the angle of the great council-chamber is soon to be rebuilt;¹ and

* [Among Rutkin's MSS. at Brantwood is a foreign note-book in which Mn. 8evern wrote out at hit dictation a more detailed inventory of the picture. This he need in writing the description in the text. A few additional notes are here given:—

Among the spirits of the Princedoms bearing shining globes, Ruelrin notes " the last of them to the right with vast Drown wings, one of the grandest figures in the picture."

Behind the wheel of St Catherine he notes the figure of "a young priest, very lovely, holding a child with his right arm. The head seen close is curiously beautiful, though only Hntoret's outline and the upper part of the brow is left; the rest is partly canvas from which the paint is broken away, partly retouching but witnout covering Tintoref s work; note that retouching never does harm so that it joins only, without recovering/⁹

" One of the most perfect pieces of slight painting is the adoring Saint in blue, with the Pope in a grey tiara, just under St. Jerome; the Saint lifting her hands clasped, touching St. Jerome's foot, the strong light next her head."

"The difficulty of detaching the near groups which causes the black edges throughout the picture is curiously shown in two places—the drapery round St. Paul's right hand having no sharp edge goes off like a hairbrush into St Agatha behind, and the strong light on the child carrying St. Ambrose confuses that group with the head of the beautiful nun; these two, and the bishop who looks headless under Adam's limb, are almost the only instances of confusion in the picture."

"One of the things which chiefly interferes with the spectator understanding these darknesses is that Tintoret has always assumed that the picture is lighted from above"

"The picture is most delightful where the effect of light becomes unthought of—some of the confined pieces of gold or grey being more beautiful than of the strongly lighted figures, except only the supreme Adam and Eve. The two great flying angels of Solomon and St Jerome, if thev were cut out of the canvas, would be, I suppose, by all acknowledged to be the grandest flying figures in the world."]

* [This reconstruction, long delayed, has, since the mil of the Campanile, been taken in hand, and the work is now in progress (1905): see the note on p. 105.]

that process will involve the destruction of the picture by removal, and, far more, by repainting. I had thought of making some effort to save it by an appeal in London to persons generally interested in the arts; but the recent desolation of Paris has familiarized us with destruction, and I have no doubt the answer to me would be, that Venice must take care of her own. But remember, at least, that I have borne witness to you to-day of the treasures that we forget, while we amuse ourselves with the poor toys, and the petty or vile arts, of our own time.

The years of that time have perhaps come, when we are to be taught to look no more to the dreams of painters, either for knowledge of Judgment, or of Paradise. The anger of Heaven will not longer, I think, be mocked for our amusement; and perhaps its love may not always be despised by our pride. Believe me, all the arts, and all the treasures of men, are fulfilled and preserved to them only, so far as they have chosen first, with their hearts, not the curse of God, but His blessing. Our Earth is now encumbered with ruin, our Heaven is clouded by Death. May we not wisely judge ourselves in some things now, instead of amusing ourselves with the painting of judgments to come?

Thb writer of this book has long been my friend, and in the early days of friendship was my disciple. Bat, of late, I have been his; lor ne has devoted himself earnestly to the study of forms of Christian Art which I have 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 most otherwise hare been a rudely bridged chasm in my teaching at Oxford, I begged him to give these lectures ;^f and to arrange them for press. And this he has done to please me; and now that it is done, 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 by repeating to myself, and endeavouring to think, that he could not have found all this out 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 influences, 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 that pleased me.

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

¹ [See the Prefatory Note, above, p. 76. The discussion of Michael Angelo is in ch. v. of Mr. Tyrwhitt's book (pp. 139-171). Ruikin quotes a passage from it in The ^Esthetic and Malhematic School* of Florence (Vol. XXII.). For other references to Mr. Tyrwhitt's, and to books of his containing contributions by Raskin, see VoL XV. pp. xxx., & This Preface was reprinted in On the Old Road, 1885, voL i. pp. 674-676 (§§ 645-548), and again in the second edition of that book, 1889, vol. ii. pp. 303-006 (§§ 254-257).]

* [The lectures were delivered during the winter of 1871-1872 at Winchester, Bradford, and Hali&x.]

national point of view; and I have striven so earnestly to realise 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 peoples minds, and see with any one's eyes but my own. Even the effort to recover my temporarily waived conviction occasionally fails; and what was once securest 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.

On all the general principles of Art, Mr. Tyrwhitt and I are absolutely at one; but he has often the better of me by 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, which I gave at Oxford, is entirely devoted to examining the modes in which his genius itself 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 traveller 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 in the witness of both.

The notices of Holbein, and of the English whom he painted, (see especially the sketch of Sir Thomas Wyatt in the sixth lecture¹), 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 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.

[flflfiijiaaaicaf 3~efe.--These lectures were defrrered, under tbe title of •The Relation of Natural Science to Art," at Oxford in Lent Tern, 1872; tee titles of tne esTeral lectures as they stand in tee list of contents were announced in tee lutRrvirv Goxette of January 19; tne dates were February 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24, 29, and Merck 2, 7, 9. Later in tne year Raskin published teem under tne title of 71s Anew'* JKeut Of teat book there hare been tke following editions:—

Jfrsc Edition (1872). —This was Tolnme it. in tbe collected " Works" Series. Tbe general title-page reads :—

Otter©, pp. riiL+232. Contents (here pp. 119, 120), pp. ▼., ri.; Preface (here pp. 121, 122), pp. rii., riii.; Text, pp. 1-22. Imprint (at the root of the last page): ''London: Printed by Smith, Elder and Co., Old Bailey, E.C" Headlines, on the left-hand pages, "The Eagle's Nest"; on the righVhand pages, the abbreriated titles of the sereral lectures.

Issued on September 16, 1872, in purple ("Raskin") calf; lettered across the beck, "Rusldn. | Works. | VoL | IV. | The | Eagle's | Nest." 1000 copies. Price 9s. 6d., increased on January 1, 1874, to 18a.

Second Edition (1880).—The text was unaltered, but the volume had new title-pages. The general title-page reeds:—

Imprint (at the foot of the last page) : " Chiswick Press:—C. Whittingham, Took*! Court, Chancery Lane."

TMrd Edition (1890).—The general title-page is the same down to "Kent," and then continues, "and | 8, Bell Yard, Temple Bar, London. | 1890." The particular title-page, after the title, etc., continues, " By | John Raskin, LL.D., | Honorary Student of Christchurch, and Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi | College, Oxford. | Third Edition. | George Allen, | Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent; | and | 8, Bell Yard, Temple Bar, London. | 1890. | [All rights reserved.]" At the foot of the reverse of the title-page, and at the foot of the last page, is the imprint: "Printed by Hazell, Watson A Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury." Otherwise the edition is a reprint of the Second.

Issued in 1900 (600 copies), as before. In March 1893 copies were put up in green cloth, lettered on the back "Ruskin. | VoL IV. | The | Eagle's Nest" Price 9s. 6d. cloth, 16s. calf; reduced in July 1900 to 7s. 6d. cloth, 14s. 6d. calf. This issue is still current

Small crown 8vo, pp. X.+270. Preface, pp. v.-vii.; Contents, pp. ix., x.; Text, pp. 1-270. Imprint (at the foot of the reverse of the title-page, and of the last page): "Printed by Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury." Headlines as before.

Issued in June 1887, both in chocolate and in dark green coloured cloth, lettered across the back, "Ruskin. | The | Eagle's Nest" 2000 copies. Price 6s.

Second Small Edition (1891).—The text remained unchanged. The edition was called " Second Edition " (in fact it was the fifth) on the title-page, and the publisher's imprint was "George Allen | Sunnyside, Orpington | and | 8, Bell Yard, Temple Bar, London | 1891 | [All right* reserved]." The edition was printed by Messrs. Hazell A Co. Issued in February 1891 in the same form, and at the same price as before. 2000 copies.

Third Small Edition (1894).—The text remained unchanged, but an Index (by Mr. Wedderburn) was added, pp. 262-297. Called "Third Edition" on the title-page; the publisher's address now became "156 Charing Cross Road, London," and the edition was printed by Messrs. Ballantyne, Hanson A Co. Issued in May 1894 (2000 copies).

Reissues of the Small Edition, in the form list described, were made in June 1897 (called "Fourth Edition" on the title-page, 1000 copies); October 1899 ("Eleventh Thousand"); December 1900 ("Twelfth Thousand"); and June 1902 ("Thirteenth Thousand": this is still current; the price was reduced in January 1904 to 3s. 6d.).

Pick* £a¥nen (1904).—Tkis is uniform whk etker rolemes in the m edition, already deseriked (see VeL XV. p. 8). The title-page k:—

riinlnl from tke mm plates as tke foreg~~oin~~g +*s»»mp« Isseed in Jvno 1904 (9000coniom_#nminnytko^M8ixteontkTlio«mnd^,,X Rammed m Octeker 1904 (SOOOc^^makiiigtW-EigfetcraUiTlMvaiMl': still cinctt).

An mrfarrima* American (" Brantwood") Mma ta nmmd m 1891 ay Maseru, Cknrles K Merrill A Co, Now York, whk an Introduction ay Cknrles Knot Norton (pp. r.-xELX

A Gorman translation of tke first five of tke lectures wm issued in 1902 whk tko following title-page :—

Crown Sto, pp. riiL + 112L Translator'• promos (explaining tkat tk* tranakv tien m not "skmskly literal"), pp. t., tL ; Conteuta, p. rfi.; Text, pp. 1-112. Price 2 marks 50.

FerMr Isrfmsft.—In tkis edition sn tiioutnsi iss~~uinco~~ in § 7 km kern emitted (me p. 127 o.); in % 23, lino ll_f "to-day oar eoestion" is kere corrected to "for question to-day"; tke Greek accenta in % 78 ksio keen corrected, also tke quotation from Dunte in $ 79; in f 92, lino 8, "Rue" km khnerto keen printed "Ron"; in tko Wading to Lectnre rfi^ tke date is correctly given in tko large ~~editi~~ons, knt is misprinted " rekrnary 9 " in tke small editions; in f 1«, lino 18, «coold " m J~~tilir~~imi in ~~tt-*■■—~~ whk instructions in Raskin's own copy, sod similarly in f 297, line 1, "to yon" is altered to "mr yon"; in $ 201, lino * tke large editions print correctly "* mind to keild h to," knt tke small editions ummrint tko mat word "too."]

February 29, 1872 The Relation to Art of the Sciences of Inorganic Form . 908

The following Lectures have been written, not with less care, but with less pains, than any in former courses, because no labour could have rendered them exhaustive statements of their subjects, and I wished, therefore, to take from them every appearance of pretending to be so: but the assertions I have made are entirely deliberate, though their terms are unstudied; and the one which to the general reader will appear most startling, that the study of anatomy is destructive to art, is instantly necessary in explanation of the system adopted for the direction of my Oxford schools.

At the period when engraving might have become to art what printing became to literature, the four greatest point-draughtsmen hitherto known,¹ Mantegna, Sandrq, Botticelli, Diirer, and Holbein, occupied themselves in the new industry. All these four men were as high in intellect and moral sentiment as in art-power; and if they had engraved

¹ [Among Raskin's papers is some printed matter (apparently intended for a continuation of his ^u Instructions in Preliminary Exercises/ see VoL XXL p. 264 n+\ which refers to this passage:—

" In the preface to The Eagle⁹* Nut, you will find I class two other men with Holbein aud Botticelli,—DOrer, namely, and Man terns; and that I call them the four greatest point-draughtsmeu hitherto known. 1 must explain to you exactly this term, 'point-draughtsmen.' Cp to the close of the fifteenth century/all painters of eminence wrought the delicate parts of their pictures exclusively with the point of their brush, so that the moss and flesh were, when you looked close, easily seen to be executed, lust as a drawing or engraving is executed, by a number of crossing or parallel lines. But at the close of the fifteenth century, partly in indolence, partly in consummate skill, the great painters began to paint even the faces with the side or broadside of the brush, instead of the point, or with a flat brush that bad no point; so that, plainly speaking, the faces are painted with a ' series of dabs or scrubs, instead of being drawn with lines. By dabbing and

scrubbing the great masters do more, in a certain sense, than the old ones ever did by drawing. Velasquez and Tintoret, Vandyke and Gainsborough, Reynolds and Hogarth, all of them dab or scrub, never draw.⁹*]

as Giotto painted, with popular and unscientific simplicity, would have left an inexhaustible series of prints, delightful to the most innocent minds, and strengthening to the most noble*

But two of them, Mantegna and Diirer, were so polluted and paralyzed by the study of anatomy that the former's best works (the magnificent mythology of the Vices in the Louvre,¹ for instance) are entirely revolting to all women and children; while Diirer never could draw one beautiful female form or face; and, of his important plates, only four, the Melancholia, St. Jerome in his study, St. Hubert, and The Knight and Death, are of any use for popular instruction, because in these only, the figures being fully draped or armed, he was enabled to think and feel rightly, being delivered from the ghastly toil of bone-delineation.

Botticelli and Holbein studied the face first, and the limbs secondarily; and the works they have left are therefore (without exception) precious; yet saddened and corrupted by the influence which the contemporary masters of body-drawing exercised on them; and at last eclipsed by their false fame. I purpose, therefore, in my next course of lectures,² to explain the relation of these two draughtsmen to other masters of design, and of engraving.

1. The Lectures I hare given hitherto, though, in the matter of them conscientiously addressed to mv under-graduate pupils, yet were greatly modified in method by my feding that this undergraduate class, to which I wished to speak* was indeed a somewhat imaginary one: and that, in truth. I was addressing a mixed audience, in greater part composed of the masters of the University, before whom it was my duty to lay down the principles on which I hoped to conduct* or prepare the way for the conduct o£ these schools, nther than to enter on the immediate work of elementary teaching. But to-day, and henceforward most frequently, we are to be engaged in definite, and, 1 trust, continuous studies; and from this time forward, 1 address myself wholly to my undergraduate pupils; and wish only that my Lectures may be serviceable to them, and, as fax as the subject may admit of it, interesting.

2. And, farther still, I must ask even my younger hearers to pardon me if I treat that subject in a somewhat narrow, and simple way. They have a great deal of hard work to do in other schools: in these, they must not think that I underrate their powers, if I endeavour to make everything

♦ The proper tides of these lectsves, too long lor page-bestfiags, are gfoafe the Cosrtcsrti.

as easy to them as possible. No study that is worth pursuing seriously can be pursued without effort; but we need never make the effort painful merely for the sake of preserving our dignity. Also, I shall make my Lectures shorter than heretofore. What I tell you I wish you to remember; and I do not think it possible for you to remember well much more than I can easily tell you in half-an-hour. I will promise that, at all events, you shall always be released so well within the hour, that you can keep any appointment accurately for the next. You will not think me indolent in doing this; for, in the first place, I can assure you, it sometimes takes me a week to think over what it does not take a minute to say: and, secondly, believe me, the least part of the work of any sound art-teacher must be his talking. Nay, most deeply also, it is to be wished that, with respect to the study which I have to bring before you to-day, in its relation to art, namely, natural philosophy, the teachers of it, up to this present century, had done less work in talking, and more in observing: and it would be well even for the men of this century, pre-eminent and accomplished as they are in accuracy of observation, if they had completely conquered the old habit of considering, with respect to any matter, rather what is to be said, than what is to be known.

8. You will, perhaps, readily admit this with respect to science; and believe my assertion of it with respect to art You will feel the probable mischief, in both these domains of intellect, which must follow on the desire rather to talk than to know, and rather to talk than to do. But the third domain, into the midst of which, here, in Oxford, science and art seem to have thrust themselves hotly, like intrusive rocks, not without grim disturbance of the anciently fruitful plain;—your Kingdom or Princedom of Literature? Can we ^arry our statement into a third parallelism, for that? It is ill for Science, we say, when men desire to talk rather than to know; ill for Art, when they desire to talk rather than to do. Ill for Literature,

when they desire to talk,—is it? and rather than—what else? Perhaps you think that literature means nothing else than talking?—that the triple powers of science, art, and scholarship, mean simply the powers of knowing, doing, and saying. But that is not so in any wise. The faculty of saying or writing anything well, is an art, just as much as any other; and founded on a science as definite as any other. Professor Max Miiller teaches you the science of language; and there are people who will tell you that the only art I can teach you myself, is the art of it.¹ But try your triple parallelism once more, briefly, and see if another idea will not occur to you. In science, you must not talk x\* before you know. In art you must not talk before you do. In literature you must not talk before you—think.

And it is entirely desirable that you should define to yourselves the three great occupations of men in these' following terms:—

4. But now observe. If this division be a just one, we ought to have a word for literature, with the "Letter" left out of it. It is true that, for the most part, the modification of ideal things by our ideal power is not complete till it is expressed; nor even to ourselves delightful, till it is communicated. To letter it and label it—to inscribe and to word it rightly,—this is a great task, and it is the part of literature which can be most distinctly

¹ [Compare 8e*ame and Lilie*, § 97 (Vol. XVIII. p. 146), and Ariadne Ftormtina, I 2 (Vilow, p. 302).]

taught But it is only the formation of its body. And the soul of it can exist without the body; but not at all the body without the soul; for that is true no less of literature than of all else in us or of us—"litera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat."¹

Nevertheless, I must be content to-day with our old word. We cannot say " spiriture " nor " animature," instead of literature; but you must not be content with the vulgar interpretation of the word. Remember always that you come to this University,—or, at least, your fathers came,— not to learn how to say things, but how to think them.

5. "How to think theml but that is only the art of logic," you perhaps would answer. No, again, not at all: logic is a method, not a power; and we have defined literature to be the modification of ideal things by ideal power, not by mechanical method. And you come to the University to get that power, or develop it; not to be taught the mere method of using it.

I say you come to the University for this; and perhaps some of you are much surprised-to hear it I You did not know that you came to the University for any such purpose. Nay, perhaps you did not know that you had come to a University at all? You do not at this instant, some of you, I am well assured, know what a University means. Does it mean, for instance — can you answer me in a moment, whether it means—a place where everybody comes to learn something; or a place where somebody comes to learn everything? It means—or you are trying to make it mean—practically and at present, the first; but it means theoretically, and always, the last; a place where only certain persons come, to learn everything; that is to say, where those who wish to be able to think, come to learn to think: not to think of mathematics only, nor of morals, nor of surgery, nor chemistry, but of everything, rightly.

6. I say you do not all know this; and yet, whether you know it or not,—whether you desire it or not,—to

some extent the everlasting fitness of the matter makes the facts conform to it. For we have at present, observe, schools of three kinds, in operation over the whole of England. We have—I name it first, though, I am sorry to say, it is last in influence—the body consisting of the Royal Academy, with the Institute of Architects, and the schools at Kensington, and their branches; teaching various styles of fine or mechanical art We have, in the second place, the Royal Society, as a central body; and, as its satellites, separate companies of men devoted to each several science: investigating, classing, and describing facts with unwearied industry. And lastly and chiefly, we have the great Universities, with all their subordinate public schools, distinctively occupied in regulating,—as I think you will at once admit,—not the language merely, nor even the language principally, but the modes of philosophical and imaginative thought in which we desire that youth should be disciplined, and age informed and majestic. The methods of language, and its range; the possibilities of its beauty, and the necessities for its precision, are all dependent upon the range and dignity of the unspoken conceptions which it is the function of these great schools of literature to awaken, and to guide.

7. The range and dignity of conceptions! Let us pause a minute or two at these words, and be sure we accept them.

First, what is a conception? What is this separate object of our work, as scholars, distinguished from artists, and from men of science ?

We shall discover this better by taking a simple instance of the three agencies.

Suppose that you were actually on the plain of Paestum, watching the drift of storm-cloud which Turner has here engraved.¹ If you had occupied yourself chiefly in schools

¹ [See Catalogue of the Rudimentary Series, No. 171 (Vol. XXI. p. 222, and Plato XLV.). Previous editions gave here a reference to "Educational Series, No. 8, E." (or 293 in the later numbering); but that example is a water-colour— of a storm-cloud, indeed, but not an engraving, nor of Pastum.]

of science, you would think of the mode in which the electricity was collected; of the influence it had on the shape and motion of the cloud; of the force and duration of its flashes, and of other such material phenomena.¹ If you were an artist, you would be considering how it might be possible, with the means at your disposal, to obtain the brilliancy of the light, or the depth of the gloom. Finally, if you were a scholar, as distinguished from either of these, you would be occupied with the imagination of the state of the temple in former times; and as you watched the thunder-clouds drift past its columns, and the power of the God of the heavens put forth, as it seemed, in scorn of the departed power of the god who was thought by the heathen to shake the earth—the utterance of your mind would become, whether in actual words or not, such as that of the Psalmist: —"Clouds and darkness are round about Him—righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne."² Your thoughts would take that shape, of their own accord, and if they fell also into the language, still your essential scholarship would consist, not in your remembering the verse, still less in your knowing that "judgment" was a Latin word, and "throne" a Greek one; but in your having power enough of conception, and elevation enough of character, to understand the nature of justice, and be appalled before the majesty of dominion.

8. You come, therefore, to this University, I repeat once again, that you may learn how to form conceptions of proper range or grasp, and proper dignity, or worthiness. Keeping then the ideas of a separate school of art, and separate school of science, what have you to learn in these? You would learn in the school of art, the due range and dignity of deeds; or doings—(I prefer the word to "makings," as more general), and in the school of science, you would have to learn the range and dignity of knowledges.

¹ [Compare the passage on "the moral effect of a thunderstorm" in Stones of Venice, vol. iii. (Vol. XI. p. 163).]

² [Psalms xcvii. 2 : quoted also in Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. p. 109).]

Now be quite clear about this: be sure whether you really agree with me or not.

You come to the School of Literature, I say, to learn the range and dignity of conceptions.

Do you agree to that, or not? I will assume that you admit my triple division; but do you think, in opposition to me, that a school of science is still a school of science, whatever sort of knowledge it teaches; and a school of art still a school of art, whatever sort of deed it teaches; and a school of literature still a school of literature, whatever sort of notion it teaches ?

Do you think that? for observe, my statement denies that. My statement is, that a school of literature teaches you to have one sort of conception, not another sort; a school of art to do a particular sort of deed, not another sort; a school of science to possess a particular sort of knowledge, not another sort.

9. I assume that you differ with me on this point;— some of you certainly will. Well then, let me go back a step. You will all go thus far with me, that—now taking the Greek words—the school of literature teaches you to have voih, or conception of things, instead of avota,—no conception of things; that the school of art teaches you rij(yn of things, instead of arexyla; and the school of science erurnuui, instead of ayvoia or " ignorantia." But, you recollect, Aristotle names two other faculties with these three,— <pp6v>)<Tis_f namely, and <ro<f>la. He has altogether five, rex**, iirurrrHJJi, (pp6vrjcr^₉ <ro<f>la, 1/01/9; * that is to say, in simplest English,—art, science, sense, wisdom, and wit. We have got our art, science, and wit, set over their three domains; and we old people send you young ones to those three schools, that you may not remain artless, scienceless, nor

witless. But how of the sense, and the wisdom ? What domains belong to these ? Do you think our trefoil division should become cinquefoil, and that we ought to have two additional schools; one of Philosophia, and one of Philo-phronesia? If Aristotle's division were right it would be so. But his division is wrong, and he presently shows it is; for he tells you in the next page, (in the sentence I have so often quoted to you,) that "the virtue of art is the wisdom which consists in the wit of what is honourable."¹Now that is perfectly true; but it of course vitiates hit division altogether. He divides his entire subject into A, B_f C, D, and E; and then he tells you that the virtue of A is the B which consists in C Now you will continually find, in this way, that Aristotle's assertions are right, but his divisions illogical It is quite true that the virtue of art is the wisdom which consists in the wit of what is honourable; but also the virtue of science is the wit of what is honourable, and in the same sense, the virtue of ww, or wit itself, consists in its being the wit or conception of what is honourable. 2o<£«a, therefore, is not only the apery t^w;?, but, in exactly the same sense, the aprni ex«m}/Aif, and in this sense, it is the iperti vow. And if not governed by <ro<pla_f each school will teach the vicious condition of its own special faculty. As <r<xf>ia is the apmi of all three, so iu*pla will be the kokIu of all three.

10. Now in this, whether you agree with me or not, let me be at least sure you understand me. 2o0«a, I say, is the virtue, pmpia is the vice, of all the three faculties of art, science, and literature. There is for each of them a negative and a positive side, as well as a zero. There is a nescience for zero in science—with wise science on one side, foolish science on the other: arexyta for zero in art, with wise art on one side, foolish art on the other; and avota for zero in mfe with wise row, on one side, foolish iw* on the other.

¹ [See ibid., vi. 7, 5; and compare Aratra Pentelici, § 112 (Vol. XX. p. 276).]

Yet it is, of all foolish things, the commonest and deadliest. We continually complain of men, much more of women, for reasoning ilL But it does not matter how they reason, if they don't conceive basely. Not one person in a hundred is capable of seriously reasoning; the difference between man and man is in the quickness and quality, the aceipi-trine intensity, the olfactory choice, of his vow. Does he hawk at game or carrion ? What you choose to grasp with your mind is the question;—not how you handle it afterwards. What does it matter how you build, if you have bad bricks to build with; or how you reason, if every idea with which you begin is foul or false? And in general all fatal false reasoning proceeds from people's having some one false notion in their hearts, with which they are resolved that their reasoning shaJl comply.

But, for better illustration, I will now take my own special subject out of the three;—ri^yfi. I have said that we have, for its zero, arexv/a, or artlessness — in Latin, " inertia," opposed to " ars." Well, then, we have, from that zero, wise art on the one side, foolish art on the other; and the finer the art, the more it is capable of this living increase, or deadly defect. I will take, for example, first, a very simple art, then a finer one; but both of them arts with which most of you are thoroughly acquainted.

12. One of the simplest pieces of perfect art, which you are yourselves in the habit of practising, is the stroke of an oar given in true time. We have defined art to be the wise modification of matter by the body (substantial things by substantial power, § 3). With a good oar-stroke you displace a certain quantity of water in a wise way. Supposing you missed your stroke, and caught a crab, you would displace a certain quantity of water in a foolish way, not only ineffectually, but in a way the reverse of what you intended. The perfectness of the stroke implies not only absolutely accurate knowledge or science of the mode in which water resists the blade of an oar, but the having in past time met that resistance

repeatedly with greater and greater rightness of adaptation to the end proposed. That end being perfectly simple,—the advance of the boat as far as possible with a given expenditure of strength, you at once recognize the degree in which the art falls short of, or the artlessness negatives, your purpose. But your being "<ro£aj,^w as an oarsman, implies much more than this mere art founded on pure science. The fact of your being able to row in a beautiful manner depends on other things than the knowledge of the force of water, or the repeated practice of certain actions in resistance to it. It implies the practice of those actions under a resolved discipline of the body, involving regulation of the passions. It signifies submission to the authority, and amicable concurrence with the humours, of other persons; and so far as it is beautifully done at last, absolutely signifies therefore a moral and intellectual rightness, to the necessary extent influencing the character honourably and graciously. This is the sophia, or wit, of what is most honourable, which is concerned in rowing, without which it must become no rowing, or the reverse of rowing.

18. Let us next take example in an art which perhaps you will think (though I hope not) much inferior to rowing, but which is in reality a much higher art—dancing. I have just told you (§11) how to test the rank of arts— namely, by their corruptibility, as you judge of the fineness of organic substance. The moria* or folly, of rowing, is only ridiculous, but the moria, or folly, of dancing, is much worse than ridiculous; and, therefore, you may know that its sophia, or wisdom, will be much more beautiful than the wisdom of rowing. Suppose, for instance, a minuet danced by two lovers, both highly bred, both of noble

* If the English reader will pronounce the o in this word as in fold, and in sophia as in sop, but accenting the o, not the i, I need not any more disturb my pages with Greek types.¹

¹ [See, however, many subsequent sections (19, 20, 68, etc.) where Ruskin continued to use the Greek types. Now and again (§§ 25, 26) he remembered this note.}

character, and very much in love with each other. You would see, in that, an art of the most highly finished kind under the government of a sophia which dealt with the strongest passions, and most exquisite perceptions of beauty, possible to humanity.

14. For example of the contrary of these, in the same art, I cannot give you one more definite than that which I saw at, I think, the Gaiety Theatre—but it might have been at any London theatre now,—two years ago.

The supposed scene of the dance was Hell, which was painted in the background with its flames. The dancers were supposed to be demons, and wore black masks, with red tinsel for fiery eyes; the same red light was represented as coming out of their ears also. They began their dance by ascending through the stage on spring trap-doors, which threw them at once ten feet into the air; and its performance consisted in the expression of every kind of evil passion, in frantic excess.

15. You will not, I imagine, be at a loss to understand the sense in which the words sophia and moria are to be rightly used of these two methods of the same art But those of you who are in the habit of accurate thinking will at once perceive that I have introduced a new element into my subject by taking an instance in a higher art The folly of rowing consisted mainly in not being able to row; but this folly of dancing does not consist in not being able to dance, but in dancing well with evil purpose; and the better the dancing, the worse the result

And now I am afraid I must tease you by asking your attention to what you may at first think a vain nicety in analysis, but the nicety is here essential, and I hope throughout this course of Lectures, not to be so trouble* some to you again.

16. The mere negation of the power of art—the zero of it—you say, in rowing, is ridiculous. It is, of course, not less ridiculous in dancing. But what do you mean by ridiculous? You mean contemptible, so as to provoke

laughter. The contempt, in either case, is slight, in ordinary society; because, though a man may neither know how to row, or dance, he may know many other things. But suppose he lived where he could not know many other things? By a stormy sea-coast, where there could be no fresco-painting, in a poor country, where could be ncme of the fine arts connected with wealth, and in a simple, and primitive society, not yet reached by refinements of literature ; but where good rowing was necessary for the support of life, and good dancing, one of the most vivid aids to domestic pleasure. You would then say that inability to row, or to dance, was far worse than ridiculous; that it marked a man for a good-for-nothing fellow, to be regarded with indignation, as well as contempt.

Now, remember, the inertia or zero of art always involves this kind of crime, or at least, pitiableness. The want of opportunity of learning takes away the moral guilt of artlessness; but the want of opportunity of learning such arts as are becoming in given circumstances, may indeed be no crime in an individual, but cannot be alleged in its defence by a nation. National ignorance of decent art is always criminal, unless in earliest conditions of society; and then it is brutal.

17. To that extent, therefore, culpably or otherwise, a kind of moria, or folly, is always indicated by the zero of art-power. But the true folly, or assuredly culpable folly, is in the exertion of our art-power in an evil direction. And here we need the finesse of distinction, which I am afraid will be provoking to you. Observe, first, and simply, that the possession of any art-power at all implies a sophia of some kind. These demon dancers, of whom I have just spoken, were earning their bread by severe and honest labour. The skill they possessed could not have been acquired but by great patience and resolute self-denial; and the very power with which they were able to express, with precision, states of evil passion, indicated that they had been brought up in a society which, in some measure, knew evil from

good, and which had, therefore, some measure of good in the midst of it. Nay, the farther probability is, that if you inquired into the life of these men, you would find that this demon dance had been invented by some one of them with a great imaginative power, and was performed by them not at all in preference of evil, but to meet the demand of a public whose admiration was capable of being excited only by violence of gesture, and vice of emotion.

18. In all cases, therefore, observe, where the opportunity of learning has been given, the existence of the art-power indicates sophia and its absence indicates moria. That great fact I endeavoured to express to you, two years since, in my third introductory Lecture.¹ In the present course I have to show you the action of the final, or higher sophia, which directs the skill of art to the best purposes; and of the final, or lower moria, which misdirects them to the worst. And the two points I shall endeavour to bring before you throughout will be these:—First, that the object of University teaching is to form your conceptions;—not to acquaint you with arts, nor sciences. It is to give you a notion of what is meant by smith's work, for instance;— but not to make you blacksmiths. It is to give you a notion of what is meant by medicine, but not to make you physicians. The proper academy for blacksmiths is a blacksmith's forge; the proper academy for physicians is an hospital⁸ Here you are to be taken away from the forge, out of the hospital, out of all special and limited labour and thought, into the " Universitas " of labour and thought, that you may in peace, in leisure, in calm of disinterested contemplation, be enabled to conceive rightly the laws of nature, and the destinies of Man.

19. Then the second thing I have to show you is that over these three kingdoms of imagination, art, and science, there reigns a virtue or faculty, which from all time, and

¹ [So in Lecturts on Art, Rutkin says that "a youth is sent to our Universities not to be apprenticed to a trade/' but "to be made a gentleman and a scholar" (p. la VoL XX).]

by all great people, has been recognized as the appointed ruler and guide of every method of labour, or passion of soul; and the most glorious recompense of the toil, and crown of the ambition of man. "She is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Lay fast hold upon her; let her not go; keep her, for she is thy life."¹

Are not these, and the innumerable words like to these, which you remember as I read them, strange words, if Aristotle's statement respecting wisdom be true; that it never contemplates anything that can make men happy,

^€t *j fiiv yap <ro<pla ovSev dewpet e£ &v €<rrcu eviaifiwv avQpwwot" ?*

When we next meet, therefore, I purpose to examine what it is which wisdom, by preference, contemplates; what choice she makes among the thoughts and sciences open to her, and to what purpose she employs whatever science she may possess.

And I will briefly tell you, beforehand, that the result of the inquiry will be, that instead of regarding none of the sources of happiness, she regards nothing else; that she measures all worthiness by pure felicity; that we are permitted to conceive her as the cause even of gladness to God—"I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him,"—and that we are commanded to know her as queen of the populous world, "rejoicing in the habitable parts of the Earth, and whose delights are with the sons of Men."¹

¹ [Proverbs iii. 16, iv. 13; quoted alto in A Joy for Ever, § 174, and Time and Tide, § 87 (VoL XVI. _p. 169, Vol. XVII. p. 304).]

⁸ [Proverbs viii. 30, 31: quoted again in § 64 (below, p. 167), and also in Unto thie La$t, § 82, and Ethice of the Duet, § 23 (VoL XVII. p. Ill, VoL XV1IL p. 232).]

20. In my last lecture I asserted the positive and negative powers of literature, art, and science; and endeavoured to show you some of the relations of wise art to foolish art. To-day we are to examine the nature of these positive and negative powers in science; it being the object of every true school to teach the positive or constructive power, and by all means to discourage, reprove, and extinguish the negative power.

It is very possible that you may not often have thought of, or clearly defined to yourselves, this destructive or deadly character of some elements of science. You may indeed have recognized with Pope that a little knowledge was dangerous, and you have therefore striven to drink deep;¹you may have recognized with Bacon, that knowledge might partially become venomous;⁹ and you may have sought, in modesty and sincerity, antidote to the inflating poison. But that there is a ruling spirit or <ro<f>ia, under whose authority you are placed, to determine for you, first the choice, and then the use of all knowledge whatsoever; and that if you do not appeal to that ruler, much more if you disobey her, all science becomes to you ruinous in proportion to its accumulation, and as a net to your soul, fatal in proportion to the fineness of its thread,—this, I imagine, few of you, in the zeal of learning, have suspected, and fewer still have pressed their suspicion so far as to recognize or believe.

For this reference to Bacon, see VoL XI. p. 67, end compere VoL VH. p. 184.]

21. You must have nearly all heard of, many must have seen, the singular paintings—some also may have read the poems—of William Blake.¹ The impression that his drawings once made is fast, and justly, fading away, though they are not without noble merit. But his poems have much more than merit; they are written with absolute sincerity, with infinite tenderness, and, though in the manner of them diseased and wild, are in verity the words of a great and wise mind, disturbed, but not deceived, by its sickness; nay, partly exalted by it, and sometimes giving forth in fiery aphorism some of the most precious words of existing literature. One of these passages I will ask you to remember; it will often be serviceable to you—

It would be impossible to express to you in briefer terms the great truth that there is a different kind of knowledge good for every different creature, and that the glory of the higher creatures is in ignorance of what is known to the lower.

22. And, above all, this is true of man; for every other creature is compelled by its instinct to learn its own appointed lesson, and must centralize its perception in its own being. But man has the choice of stooping in science beneath himself, and striving in science beyond himself; and the "Know thyself"⁸ is, for him, not a law to which he must in peace submit; but a precept which of all others is the most painful to understand, and the most difficult to fulfil. Most painful to understand, and humiliating; and this alike, whether it be held to refer to the knowledge beneath us, or above. For, singularly enough, men are always most conceited of the meanest science:—

For Ruskin's earlier references to Blake, see Vol. XIX. p. 66 n.] Lines prefixed to The Book of Thel.] [See Ethics of the Diut, § 58 (Vol. XVIII. p. 273).]

It is just those who grope with the mole, and ding with the bat, who are vainest of their sight and of their wings.¹

£& " Know thyself;" but can it indeed be sophia,— can it be the noble wisdom, which thus speaks to science? Is not this rather, you will ask, the voice of the lower virtue of prudence, concerning itself with right conduct, Whether for the interests of this world or of the future? Does not sophia regard all that is above and greater than man; and by so much as we are forbidden to bury our* selves in the mole's earth-heap, by so much also, are we not urged to raise ourselves towards the stars?

Indeed, it would at first seem so; nay, in the passage of the Ethics, which I proposed to you * for question to-day, you are distinctly told so. There are, it is said, many different kinds of phronesis, by which every animal recognizes what is for its own good: and man, like any other creature, has his own separate phronesis telling him what he is to seek, and to do, for the preservation of his life: but above all these forms of prudence, the Greek sage telb you, is the sophia of which the objects are unchangeable and eternal, the methods consistent, and the conclusions universal: and this wisdom has no regard whatever to the things in which the happiness of man consists, but acquaints itself only with the things that are most honourable; so that "we call Anaxagoras and Thales, and such others, wise indeed, but not prudent, in that they know nothing of what is for their own advantage, but know surpassing things, marvellous things, difficult things, and divine things."⁸

24. Now here is a question which evidently touches us closely. We profess at this day to be an especially prudent nation;—to regard only the things which are for our own advantage; to leave to other races the knowledge of surpassing things, marvellous things, divine things, or beautiful

¹ [With this passage compare Proserpina, i. ch. ▼.] > [See above, § 19, p. Ida] » [vi. 7, 5.]

things; and in our exceeding prudence we are, at this moment, refusing the purchase of, perhaps, the most interesting picture by Raphael in the world, and, certainly, one of the most beautiful works ever produced by the art-wisdom of man, for five-and-twenty thousand pounds,¹ while we are debating whether we shall not pay three hundred millions to the Americans, as a fine for selling a small frigate to Captain Semmes.* Let me reduce these sums from thousands of pounds, to single pounds; you will thai see the facts more clearly; (there is not one person in a million who knows what a "million" means; and that is one reason the nation is always ready to let its ministers spend a million or two in cannon, if they can show they have saved twopence-halfpenny in tape). These are the facts then, stating pounds for thousands of pounds; you are offered a Nativity, by Raphael, for five-and-twenty pounds, and cannot afford it; but it is thought you may be bullied into paying three hundred thousand pounds, for having sold a ship to Captain Semmes. I do not say you will pay it. Still your present position is one of deprecation and humility, and that is the kind of result which you bring about by acting with what you call " practical common sense/⁹ instead of Divine wisdom.

¹ [The reference is to the " Madonna di Sant' Antonio/' executed in 1607-1508 for the nuns of Sant' Antonio of Padua for their convent in Perugia—sometimes known as the "Colonna Raphael" and the "Ripalda Raphael" (from the names of successive owners). At the time when Ruskin wrote the picture was in the National Gallery on loan from the Duke of Ripalda, " on condition that it shall not be understood as implying any intention on the part of Her Majesty's Government to purchase the picture" (National Gallery Report, 1871, p. 2). The price originally asked had been £40,000, afterwards abated to the sum mentioned by Ruskin. He refers to the matter also in Fore Clavigera, Letter 12. It should be added that artistic, as well as economic, objections were urged against its purchase; see, for instance, a letter in the Timee of January 24, 1872, and an article in the Athaimum of March 2,1872, which latter, "considering its injured and vitiated condition," was "at one with those in authority in considering it by no means a desirable addition to the National Gallery." The reader can now 11905) judge for himself, as the

ficture is once more in the National Gallery, on loan from its present owner, Mr. ierpont Morgan, who is understood to have paid £100,000 for it. The Ansidei Madonna, it should be remembered, was not acquired for the Gallery till 1885.]

⁹ [At the time when Ruskin spoke the huge " indirect claims" preferred by the United States on account of the privateer Alabama (under Captain Semmes) had been brought before the Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration ; the Triounal declared all such claims to be invalid, and they were withdrawn.]

25. Perhaps you think I am losing Aristotle's notion of common sense, by confusing it with our vulgar English one; and that selling ships or ammunition to people whom we have not courage to fight either for or against, would not by Aristotle have been held a phronetic, or prudent proceeding. Be it so; let us be certain then, if we can, what Aristotle does mean. Take the instance I gave you in the last lecture,¹ of the various modes of feeling in which a master of literature, of science, and of art, would severally regard the storm round the temples of Paestum.

The man of science, we said, thought of the origin of the electricity; the artist of its light in the clouds, and the scholar, of its relation to the power of Zeus and Poseidon. There you have Episteme; Techne; and Nous; well, now what does Phronesis do?

Phronesis puts up his umbrella, and goes home as fast as he can. Aristotle's Phronesis at least does; having no regard for marvellous things.¹¹ But are you sure that Aristotle's Phronesis is indeed the right sort of Phronesis? May there not be a common-sense, as well as an art, and a science, under the command of sophia? Let us take an instance of a more subtle kind.

26. Suppose that two young ladies, (I assume in my present lectures, that none are present, and that we may say among ourselves what we like; and we do like, do we not, to suppose that young ladies excel us only in prudence, and not in wisdom ?) let us suppose that two young ladies go to the observatory on a winter night, and that one is so anxious to look at the stars that she does not care whether she gives herself cold, or not; but the other is prudent, and takes care, and looks at the stars only as long as she can without catching cold. In Aristotle's mind the first young lady would properly deserve the name of Sophia, and the other that of Prudence. But in order to judge them fairly, we must assume that they are acting

under exactly the same conditions. Assume that they both equally desire to look at the stars; then, the fact that one of them stops when it would be dangerous to look longer, does not show that she is less wise,—less interested, that is to say, in surpassing and marvellous things;—but it shows that she has more self-command, and is able therefore to remember what the other does not think of. She is equally wise, and more sensible. But suppose that the two girls are originally different in disposition; and that the one, having much more imagination than the other, is more interested in these surpassing and marvellous things; so that the self-command, which is enough to stop the other, who cares little for the stars, is not enough to stop her who cares much for them;—you would say, then, that, both the girls being equally sensible, the one that caught cold was the wisest.

27. Let us make a farther supposition. Returning to our first condition, that both the girls desire equally to look at the stars; let us put it now that both have equal self-command, and would therefore, supposing no other motives were in their minds, together go on star-gazing, or together stop star-gazing; but that one of them has greater consideration for her friends than the other, and though she would not mind catching cold for her own part, would mind it much for fear of giving her mother trouble. She will leave the stars first, therefore; but should we be right now in saying that she was only more sensible than her companion, and not more wise? This respect for the feelings of others, this understanding of her duty towards others, is a much higher thing than the love of stars. It is an imaginative knowledge, not of balls of fire or differences of space, but of the feelings of living creatures, and of the forces of duty by which they justly move. This is a knowledge, or perception, therefore, of a thing more surpassing and marvellous than the stars themselves, and the grasp of it is reached by a higher sophia.

28. Will you have patience with me for one supposition more? We may assume the attraction of the spectacle of

the heavens to be equal in degree, and yet, in the minds of the two girls, it may be entirely different in kind. Supposing the one versed somewhat in abstract Science, and more or less acquainted with the laws by which what she now sees may be explained; she will probably take interest chiefly in questions of distance and magnitude, in varieties of orbit, and proportions of light. Supposing the other not versed in any science of this kind, but acquainted with the traditions attached by the religion of dead nations to the figures they discerned in the sky: she will care little for arithmetical or geometrical matters, but will probably re* ceive a much deeper emotion, from witnessing in clearness what has been the amazement of so many eyes long closed; and recognizing the same lights, through the same darkness, with innocent shepherds and husbandmen, who knew only the risings and settings of the immeasurable vault, as its lights shone on their own fields or mountains; yet saw true miracle in them, thankful that none but the Supreme Ruler could bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion.¹ I need not surely tell you, that in this exertion of the intellect and the heart, there would be a far nobler sophia than any concerned with the analysis of matter, or the measurement of space.

29. I will not weary you longer with questions, but simply tell you, what you will find ultimately to be true, that sophia is the form of thought, which makes common sense unselfish,—knowledge unselfish,—art unselfish,—and wit and imagination unselfish. Of all these, by themselves, it is true that they are partly venomous; that, as knowledge puffeth up, so does prudence—so does art—so does wit; but, added to all these, wisdom, or (you may read it as an equivalent word), added to all these—charity, edifieth.*

• [1 Corinthians riii. 1. Ruskin's Term of 1842 (VoL II. p. 212) may bo compared :—

"When first He stretched the signed tone, And heaped the hills, and barred the sea, Then Wisdom sat beside His throne; Bat Hie own word was Charitie.⁰*]

builds securely because on modest and measured foundation, wide, though low, and in the natural and living rock.

Sophia is the faculty which recognizes in all things their bearing upon life, in the entire sum of life that we know, bestial and human; but, which, understanding the appointed objects of that life, concentrates its interest and its power on Humanity, as opposed on the one side to the Animalism which it must rule, and distinguished on the other side from the Divinity which rules it, and which it cannot imagine.

It is as little the part of a wise man to reflect much on the nature of beings above him, as of beings beneath him. It is immodest to suppose that he can conceive the one, and degrading to suppose that he should be busied with the other. To recognize his everlasting inferiority, and his everlasting greatness; to know himself, and his place; to be content to submit to God without understanding Him; and to rule the lower creation with sympathy and kindness, yet neither sharing the passion of the wild beast, nor imitating the science of the Insect;—this you will find is to be modest towards God, gentle to His creatures, and wise for himself.¹

81. I think you will now be able to fasten in your minds, first the idea of unselfishness, and secondly, that of modesty, as component elements of sophia; and having obtained thus much, we will at once make use of our gain, by rendering more clear one or two points respecting its action on art, that we may then see more surely its obscurer function in science.

It is absolutely unselfish, we say, not in the sense of being without desire, or effort to gratify that desire; on the contrary, it longs intensely to see, or know the things it is rightly interested in. But it is not interested specially in itself. In the degree of his wisdom, an artist is unconcerned about his work as his own;—concerned about it only in the degree in which he would be, if it were another man's— recognizing its precise value, or no value, from that outer standpoint. 1 do not think, unless you examine your minds

¹ [This passage is quoted by Raskin in his Preface of 1883 to the second volume of Modern Painter*: see VoL IV. p. 6 ».]

vay attentively, that you can have any conception of the difficulty of doing this. Absolutely to do it is impossible, for we are all intended by nature to be a little unwise, and to derive more pleasure, therefore, from our own success than that of others. But the intense degree of the difference is usually unmeasured by us. In preparing the drawings for you to use as copies in these schools, my assistant and I are often sitting beside each other; and he is at work, usually, on the more important drawing of the two. I so far recognize that greater importance, when it exists, that if I had the power of determining which of us should succeed, and which fail, I should be wise enough to choose his success rather than my own. But the actual effect on my own mind, and comfort, is very different in the two cases. If he fails, I am sorry, but not mortified;—on the contrary, perhaps a little pleased. I tell him, indulgently, "he will do better another time," and go down with great contentment to my lunch. But, if / fail, though I would rather, for the sake of the two drawings, have had it so, the effect on my temper is very different. I say, philosophically, that it was better so—but I can't eat any lunch.

82. Now, just imagine what this inherently selfish passion—unconquerable as you will find it by the most deliberate and maintained efforts—fancy what it becomes, when instead of striving to subdue, we take every means in our power to increase and encourage it; and when all the circumstances around us concur in the deadly cultivation. In all base schools of Art, the craftsman is dependent for his bread on originality; that is to say, on finding in himself some fragment of isolated faculty, by which his work may be recognized as distinct from that of other men. We are ready enough to take delight in our little doings, without any such stimulus;—what must be the effect of the popular applause which continually suggests that the little thing we can separately do is as excellent as it is singular! and what the effect of the bribe, held out to us through the whole of life, to produce—it being also at our peril not to produce —something different from the work of our neighbours?

In all great schools of art these conditions are exactly reversed. An artist is praised in these, not for what is different in him from others, nor for solitary performanoe of singular work; but only for doing most strongly what all are endeavouring; and for contributing, in the measure of his strength, to some great achievement, to be completed by the unity of multitudes, and the sequence of ages.

88. And now, passing from art to science, the unselfishness of sophia¹ is shown by the value it therein attaches to every part of knowledge, new or old, in proportion to its real utility to mankind, or largeness of range in creation. The selfishness which renders sophia impossible, and enlarges the elastic and vaporous kingdom of folly, is shown by our caring for knowledge only so far as we have been concerned in its discovery, or are ourselves skilled and admired in its communication.* If there is an art which "puffeth up,"⁸ even when we are surrounded by magnificence of achievement of past ages, confessedly not by us to be rivalled, how much more must there be a science which puffeth up, when, by the very condition of science, it must be an advance on the attainments of former time, and however slight, or however slow, is still always as the leaf of a pleasant spring compared to the dried branches of years gone by ? And, for the double calamity of the age in which we live, it has chanced that the demand of the vulgar and the dull for originality in Art, is associated with the demand of a sensual economy for originality in science; and the praise which is too readily given always to discoveries that are new, is enhanced by the reward which rapidity of communication now ensures to discoveries that are profitable. What marvel if future time shall reproach us with having destroyed the labours, and betrayed the knowledge of the greatest nations and the wisest men, while

¹ [Here in one of his own copies Ruskin notes: "Unselfishness of *©#&—d^dr* against hatred; meekness of ffo$la=humility against pride/'] * [On this subjsct compare Vol. XVI. p. 374.] ³ [1 Corinthians viii. l.j

we amused ourselves with fantasy in art, and with theory in science: happy, if the one was idle without being vicious, and the other mistaken without being mischievous. Nay, truth, and success, are often to us more deadly than error. Perhaps no progress more triumphant has been made in any science than that of Chemistry; but the practical fact which will remain for the contemplation of the future, is that we have lost the art of painting on glass, and invented gun-cotton and nitro-glycerine. "Can you imagine," the future will say, "those English fools of the nineteenth century, who went about putting up memorials of themselves in glass which they could not paint, and blowing their women and children to pieces with cartridges they would not fight with?"

84. You may well think, gentlemen, that I am unjust and prejudiced in such sayings;—you may imagine that when all our mischievous inventions have done their worst, and the wars they provoked by cowardice have been forgotten in dishonour, our great investigators will be remembered, as men who laid first the foundations of fruitful knowledge, and vindicated the majesty of inviolable law. No, gentlemen; it will not be so. In a little while, the discoveries of which we are now so proud will be familiar to all. The marvel of the future will not be that we should have discerned them, but that our predecessors were blind to them. We may be envied, but shall not be praised, for having been allowed first to perceive and proclaim what could be concealed no longer. But the misuse we made of our discoveries will be remembered against us, in eternal history; our ingenuity in the vindication, or the denial, of species, will be disregarded in the face of the fact that we destroyed, in civilized Europe, every rare bird and secluded flower; our chemistry of agriculture will be taunted with the memories of irremediable famine; and our mechanical contrivance will only make the age of the mitrailleuse more abhorred than that of the guillotine.

and poetical philanthropy; in spite of our almshouses, hospitals, and Sunday-schools; in spite of our missionary endeavours to preach abroad what we cannot get believed at home; and in spite of our wars against slavery, indemnified by the presentation of ingenious bills,—we shall be remembered in history as the most cruel, and therefore the most unwise, generation of men that ever yet troubled the earth:—the most cruel in proportion to their sensibility,—the most unwise in proportion to their science. No people, understanding pain, ever inflicted so much: no people, understanding facts, ever acted on them so little. You execrate the name of Eccelin of Padua,¹ because be slew two thousand innocent persons to maintain his power; and Dante cries out against Pisa that she should be sunk in the sea, because, in revenge for treachery, she put to death, by the slow pangs of starvation, not the traitor only, but his children.² But we men of London, we erf the modern Pisa, slew, a little while since, five hundred thousand men instead of two thousand—(I speak in official terms, and know my numbers)—these we slew, all guiltless; and these we slew, not for defence, nor for revenge, but most literally in cold blood; and these we slew, fathers and children together, by slow starvation—simply because, while we contentedly kill our own children in competition for places in the Civil Service,⁸ we never ask, when once they have got the places, whether the Civil Service is done.

86. That was our missionary work in Orissa, some three or four years ago;⁴—our Christian miracle of the five loaves, assisted as we are in its performance, by steam-engines for the threshing of the corn, and by railroads for

¹ [See the note in Lectures en Architecture and Painting, § 112 (VoL XII. n. 197).]

¹ [inferno, xxziii. 79-87. For other references to the story of Ugolino, Me Poetry of Architecture, § 146 (Vol. I. p. 115), and Val d'Arno, § 234.1

* £Tbe principle of a stringent qualifying examination for the Civil Service had been instituted in 1855, and in 1870 open competition was established. For Raskin's views on competitive examinations, see below, § 177, p. 243; and compare Vol. I. p. 384 fi.]

⁴ [The reference is to the famine in India in 180C : see the note on Semme and Lilies, § 129 (Vol. XVIII. p. 176).]

carrying it, and by proposals from English noblemen to cut down all the trees in England, for better growing it.¹That, I repeat, is what we did, a year or two ago; what are we doing now? Have any of you chanced to hear of the famine in Persia ? * Here, with due science, we arrange the roses in our botanic garden, thoughtless of the country of the rose. With due art of horticulture, we prepare for our harvest of peaches;—it might perhaps seriously alarm us to hear, next autumn, of a coming famine of peaches. But the famine of all things, in the country of the peach —do you know of it, care for it:—quaint famine that it is, in the fruitfullest, fairest, richest of the estates of earth; from which the Magi brought their treasures to the feet of Christ ?

How much of your time, scientific faculty, popular literature, has been given, since this year began, to ascertain what England can do for the great countries under her command, or for the nations that look to her for help; and how much to discuss the chances of a single impostor's getting a few thousands a year?

Gentlemen, if your literature, popular and other; or your art, popular and other; or your science, popular and other, is to be eagle-eyed, remember that question I to-day solemnly put to you—will you hawk at game or carrion?⁸Shall it be only said of the thoughts of the heart of England —"Wheresoever the carcase is, thither shall the eagles be gathered together"?⁴

¹ [The reference may be to the speech of Lord Derby, at a meeting of the Manchester and Liverpool Agricultural Society {Times, September 6, 1871), which is alluded to in Fort Clavigera, Letter 10 (though at that time Ruskin says he had not read it; but see ibid., Letter 46). In this speech Lord Derby, while conceding that "a moderate proportion of our little island might reasonably be preserved for

Eurposes of beauty and enjoyment/' regrets that more land is not brought under ign farming.] * [See the newspaper extract given in Fart Clavigera, Letter 11.] » [See above, § 11, p. 131.1

⁴ [Matthew xxiv. 28. Ruskin quotes from memory; the verse reads " Wheresoever . . . , there will the eagles . . ."]

87. Our task to-day is to examine the relation between art and science, each governed by sophia, and becoming capable, therefore, of consistent and definable relation to each other. Between foolish art and foolish science, there may indeed be all manner of reciprocal mischievous influence; but between wise art and wise science there is essential relation, for each other's help and dignity.

You observe, I hope, that I always use the term " science/' merely as the equivalent of " knowledge." I take the Latin word, rather than the English, to mark that it is

X X knowledge of constant things, not merely of passing events: but you had better lose even that distinction, and receive the word " scientia " as merely the equivalent of our English " knowledge," than fall into the opposite error of supposing that science means systematization or discovery. It is not the arrangement of new systems, nor the discovery of new facts, which constitutes a man of science; but the submission to an eternal system, and the proper grasp of facts already known.

88. And, at first, to-day, I use the word "art" only of that in which it is my special office to instruct you; graphic

*^ imitation; or, as it is commonly called, JFineart. Of course, the arts of construction,—building, carpentering, and the like, are directly dependent on many sciences, but in a manner which needs no discussion, so that we may put that

part of the business out of our way. I mean by art, to-day, only imitative art; and by science, to-day, not the knowledge of general laws, but of existent facts. I do not mean by science, for instance, the knowledge that triangles with equal bases and between parallels, are equal, but the knowledge that the stars in Cassiopeia are in the form of a W.

Now, accepting the terms "science" and "art" under these limitations, wise art is only the reflex or shadow of wise science. Whatever it is really desirable and honourable to know, it is also desirable and honourable to know as completely and as long as possible; therefore, to present, jar re-present, in the most constant manner; and to bring again and again, not only within the thoughts, but before the eyes; describing it, not with vague words, but distinct lines, and true colours, so as to approach always as nearly as may be to the likeness of the thing itself.

89. Can anything be more simple, more evidently or indisputably natural and right, than such connection of the two powers? That you should desire to know what you ought; what is worthy of your nature, and helpful to your life: to know that;—nothing less,—nothing more; and to keep record and definition of such knowledge near you, in the most vivid and explanatory form ?

Nothing, surely, can be more simple than this; yet the sum of art judgment and of art practice is in this. You are to recognize, or know, beautiful and noble things—notable, notabilia, or nobilia;¹ and then you are to give the best possible account of them you can, either for the sake of others, or for the sake of your own forgetful or apathetic self, in the future.

Now as I gave you and asked you to remember without failing, an aphorism which embraced the law of wise knowledge,² so, to-day, I will ask you to remember, without fail, one, which absolutely defines the relation of wise art to it. I have, already, quoted our to-day's aphorism to you, at

¹ rOn the word "noble," see Time and Tide, § 71 (Vol. XVII. p. 377).] ¹ [The lines from Blake quoted in § 21; above, p. 138.]

the end of my fourth lecture on sculpture.¹ Read the few sentences at the end of that lecture now, down to

That is Shakespeare's judgment of his own art. And by strange coincidence, he has put the words into the mouth of the hero whose shadow, or semblance in marble, is admittedly the most ideal and heroic we possess, of man; yet, I need not ask you, whether of the two, if it were granted you to see the statue by Phidias, or the hero Theseus himself, you would choose rather to see the carved stone, or the living King. Do you recollect how Shakespeare's Theseus concludes his sentence, spoken of the poor tradesmen's kindly offered art, in the Midsummer Nigkfs Dream ? *

"The best in this kind are but shadows: and the wont are no worse, if imagination amend them."

It will not burden your memories painfully, I hope, though it may not advance you materially in the class list, if you will learn this entire sentence by heart, being, as it is, a faultless and complete epitome of the laws of mimetic art.

40. "But Shadows!" Make them as beautiful as you can; use them only to enable you to remember and love what they are cast by. If ever you prefer the skill of them to the simplicity of the truth, or the pleasure of them to the power of the truth, you have fallen into that vice of folly, (whether you call her Kaxla or tu*p!a_f) which concludes the subtle description of her given by Prodicus, that she might be seen continually «V Ttjv eavrw o-Kiav axo^XeVe^⁸—to look with love, and exclusive wonder, at her own shadow.

41. There is nothing that I tell you with more eager desire that you should believe—nothing with wider ground in my experience for requiring you to believe, than this,

¹ \Aratra Pentelici, § 142 (Vol. XX. p. 300); and compare below, pp. 221, 485.1 ¹ [Midsummer Nights Dream, v. 1, 213. For other references to tne so-called Theseus of the Parthenon (in the British Museum), see above, p. 95.] ³ [Xenophon : Memorabilia, ii. 1, 22.]

III. WISE ART AND WISE SCIENCE 158 that you never will love art well, till you love what she__y ^ >

It is the^/ widest, as the clearest experience I have to give you; for the beginning of all my own right art work in life, (and it may not be unprofitable that I should tell you this,) depended not on my love of art, but of mountains and sea. All boys with any good in them are fond erf boats, and of course I liked the mountains best when they had lakes at the bottom; and I used to walk always in the middle of the loosest gravel I could find in the roads of the midland counties, that I might hear, as I trod on it, something like the sound of the pebbles on sea-beach. No chance occurred for some time to develop what gift of drawing I had; but I would pass entire days in rambling on the Cumberland hill-sides, or staring at the lines of surf on a low sand; and when I was taken annually to the Water-colour Exhibition, I used to get hold of a catalogue before-hand, mark all the Robsons, which I knew would be of purple mountains, and all the Copley Fieldings, which I knew would be of lakes or sea; and then go deliberately round the room to these, for the sake, observe, not of the pictures, in any wise, but only of the things painted.

And through the whole of following life, whatever power of judgment I have obtained, in art, which I am now confident and happy in using, or communicating, has depended on my steady habit of always looking for the 1 subject principally, and for the art, only as the means of I ^ expressing it.

42. At first, as in youth one is almost sure to be, I was led too far by my certainty of the lightness of this principle: and provoked into its exclusive assertion by the pertinacity with which other writers denied it: so that, in the first volume of Modern Painters, several passages occurred setting the subject or motive of the picture so much above the mode of its expression, that some of my more feebly gifted disciples supposed they were fulfilling my

wishes by choosing exactly the subjects for painting which they were least able to paint.¹ But the principle itself, I maintain, now in advanced life, with more reverence and firmness than in earliest youth: and though I believe that among the teachers who have opposed its assertion, there are few who enjoy the mere artifices of composition or dexterities of handling so much as I, the time which I have given to the investigation of these has only farther assured me that the pictures were noblest which compelled me to forget them.

48. Now, therefore, you see that on this simple theory, you have only to ask what will be the subjects of wise science; these also, will be, so far as they can be imitatively or suggestively represented, the subjects of wise art: and the wisdom of both the science and art will be recognized by their being lofty in their scope, but simple in their language; clear in fancy, but clearer in interpretation; severe in discernment, but delightful in display.

44. For example's sake, since we have just been listening to Shakespeare as a teacher of science and art, we will now examine him as a subject of science and art

Suppose we have the existence and essence of Shakespeare to investigate, and give permanent account of; we shall see that, as the scope and bearing of the science become nobler, art becomes more helpful to it; and at last, in its highest range, even necessary to it; but still only as its minister.

We examine Shakespeare, first, with the science of chemistry, which informs us that Shakespeare consists of about seventy-five parts in the hundred of water, some twelve or fifteen of nitrogen, and the rest, lime, phosphorus, and essential earthy salts.

We next examine him by the science of anatomy, which tells us (with other such matters,) that Shakespeare has seven cervical, twelve dorsal, and five lumbar vertebra; that his

¹ [Ruskin notices this misunderstanding of his teaching in Sesame and Lilies, § 106 (Vol. XVIII. p. 152): see the references there given.J

fore arm has a wide sphere of rotation; and that he differs from other animals of the ape species by being more delicately prehensile in the fingers, and less perfectly prehensile in the toes.

We next approach Shakespeare with the science of natural history, which tells us the colour of his eyes and hair, his habits of life, his temper, and his predilection for poaching.

There ends, as far as this subject is concerned, our possible science of substantial things. Then we take up our science of ideal things: first of passion, then of imagination; and we are told by these that Shakespeare is capable of certain emotions, and of mastering or commanding them in certain modes. Finally, we take up our science of theology, and ascertain that he is in relation, or in supposed relation, with such and such a Being, greater than himself.

45. Now, in all these successive stages of scientific description, we find art become powerful as an aid or record, in proportion to the importance of the inquiry. For chemistry, she can do scarcely anything: merely keep note of a colour, or of the form of a crystal. For anatomy, she can do somewhat more; and for natural history, almost all [ X k things: while in recording passion, and affectionate intellect, she walks hand in hand with the highest science; and to theology, can give nobler aid even than verbal expression of literature.

46. And in considering this power of hers, remember' that the theology of art has only of late been thought deserving of attention: Lord Lindsay, some thirty years ago, was the first to recognize its importance; and when I entered upon the study of the schools of Tuscany in 1845, his "Christian Mythology"¹ was the only guide I could trust. Even as late as 1860, I had to vindicate the true position, in Christian science, of Luini, the despised pupil

¹ [The Sketches tf the History qf Christian Art; not published, howerer, till 1847. See on the subject of Ruskin's obligations to Lord Lindsay, VoL XII. p. zxxix. »., and his reWew of the book, ibid^ pp. 109 see.]

of Leonardo.¹ But only assuming, what with general assent I might assume, that Raphael's Dispute of the Sacrament— (or by its less frequently given, but true name—Raphael's Theologia,)⁸ is the most perfect effort yet made by art to illustrate divine science, I am prepared hereafter⁸ to show you that the most finished efforts of theologic literature, as compared with that piece of pictorial interpretation, have expressed less frilly the condition of wise religious thought; and have been warped more dangerously into unwise religious speculation.

47. Upon these higher fields of inquiry we are not yet to enter. I shall endeavour for some time only to show you the function of modest art, as the handmaid of natural science; and the exponent, first of the beauty of the creatures subject to your own human life; and then of the history of that life in past time; of which one chief source of illustration is to be found in the most brilliant, and in its power on character, hitherto the most practically effective of the arts—Heraldry.

In natural history, I at first intended to begin with the lower types of life;⁴ but as the enlarged schools now give me the means of extending the use of our examples,⁵ we will at once, for the sake of more general service, take up ornithology, of the uses of which, in general culture, I have one or two grave words to say.

¹ [The reference here is to the work done bv Ruskin in 1861 in copying Luini's frescoes and reporting upon them to the Arundel Society (see Vol. XVIII. p. bcxiijL). His earliest printed reference to Luini was in 1865 (Cestus of Aglaia, § 54, VoL XIX p. 103). It is worth noting that in 1864 Wornum (Epochs of Painting, p. 193) referred to the reputation of Luini as "comparatively recent, owing partly to his omission by Vasari, or rather his being cursorily mentioned by the Florentine biographer as Bernardino da Lupino, and partly to the best of his works being attributed to Leonardo himself; as is the case, for instance, in our own National Collection, in which the 'Christ disputing with the Doctors,' bearing the name of Da Vinci, is, according to many critics, a work by Luini." In catalogues of the gallery as late as 1876 the picture was still ascribed to Leonardo. For another passage in which Ruskin refers to his vindication of Luini, see Vol. IV. p. 355 «.]

¹ [For other references to this painting in the Vatican, see Vol. XV. p. 166 is.]

* [To this Ruskin does not return, although in his lectures on The jEstkeUc and Mathematic Schools of Florence (Vol. XXIII.) he describes the scheme of theology in Raphael's "Transfiguration," in preference, perhaps, to the "Dispute"; for which see Ariadne Florentina, § 182 (below, p. 422), and Mornings in Florence, § 75.]

⁴ [As, for instance, with fishes; see Lectures on Landscape, § 1 (above, p. 12).]

48. Perhaps you thought that in the beginning of my lecture to-day I too summarily dismissed the arts of coch struction and action.¹ But it was not in disrespect to them; and I must indeed ask you carefully to note one or two points respecting the arts of which an example is set us by birds;—building, and singing.

The other day, as I was calling on the ornithologist whose collection of birds is, I suppose, altogether unrivalled in Europe, — (at once a monument of unwearied love of science, and an example, in its treatment, of the most delicate and patient art)—Mr. Gould¹—he showed me the nest of a common English bird; a nest which, notwithstanding his knowledge of the dexterous building of birds in all the world, was not without interest even to him, and was altogether amazing and delightful to me. It was a bullfinch's nest,⁸ which had been set in the fork of a sapling tree, where it needed an extended foundation. And the bird had built this first story of her nest with withered stalks of clematis blossom; and with nothing else. These twigs it had interwoven lightly, leaving the branched heads all at the outside, producing an intricate Gothic boss of extreme grace and quaintness, apparently arranged both with triumphant pleasure in the art of basket-making, and with definite purpose of obtaining ornamental form.

49. I fear there is no occasion to tell you that the bird had no purpose of the kind. I say that I fear this, because I would much rather have to undeceive you in attributing too much intellect to the lower animals, than too little. But I suppose the only error which, in the present condition of natural history, you are likely to fall into, is that of supposing that a bullfinch is merely a mechanical arrangement of nervous fibre, covered with feathers by a

¹ [John Gould (1804-1881), F.R.S., published forty-one folios on birds, with 2999 illustrations; for references by Ruskin to them, see VoL XXI. p. 226 and Love's Metnity passim. Some of his collections of birds were bought for the British Museum (Natural History Branch); others were sold for America.]

* [For a reference to the following description, see Raskin's notes (36) to Court-hope's Paradise of Birds, in Love's Meinie, § 123.]

chronic cutaneous eruption; and impelled by a galvanic stimulus to the collection of clematis.

50. You would be in much greater, as well as in a more shameful, error, in supposing this, than if you attributed to the bullfinch the most deliberate rivakhip with Mr. Street's prettiest Gothic designs. The bird has exactly the degree of emotion, the extent of science, and the command of art, which are necessary for its happiness; it had felt the clematis twigs to be lighter and tougher than any others within its reach, and probably found the forked branches of them convenient for reticulation. It had naturally placed these outside, because it wanted a smooth surface for the bottom of its nest; and the beauty of the result was much more dependent on the blossoms than the bird.

51. Nevertheless, I am sure that if you had seen the nest,—much more, if you had stood beside the architect at work upon it,—you would have greatly desired to express your admiration to her; and that if Wordsworth, or any other simple and kindly person, could even wish, for a little flower's sake,

" That to this mountain daisy's self were known The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown On the smooth surface of this naked stone/'¹

much more you would have yearned to inform the bright little nest-builder of your sympathy; and to explain to her, on art principles, what a pretty thing she was making.

52. Does it never occur to you, then, that to some of the best and wisest artists among ourselves, it may not be always possible to explain what pretty things they are making; and that, perhaps, the very perfection of their art is in their knowing so little about it?

¹ [From a piece beginning "So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive": see Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 177), where also the lines are quoted.]

that it is so. The greatest artists, indeed, will condescend, occasionally, to be scientific;—will labour, somewhat systematically, about what they are doing, as vulgar persons do; and are privileged, also, to enjoy what they have made more than birds do; yet seldom, observe you, as being beautiful, but very much in the sort of feeling which we may fancy the bullfinch had also,—that the thing, whether pretty or ugly, could not have been better done;¹ that they could not have made it otherwise, and are thankful it is no worse. And, assuredly, they have nothing like the delight in their own work which it gives to other people.

58. But putting the special simplicities of good artists out of question, let me ask you, in the second place, whether it is not possible that the same sort of simplicity might be desirable in the whole race of mankind; and that we ought all to be doing human work which would appear better done to creatures much above us, than it does to ourselves. Why should not our nests be as interesting things to angels,² as bullfinches' nests are to us?

You will, probably, both smile at, and shrink from, such a supposition, as an insolent one. But to my thought, it seems, on the contrary, the only modest one. That we should be able to admire the work of angels seems to me the impertinent idea; not, at all, that they should be able to admire ours.

54. Under existing circumstances, I confess the difficulty. It cannot be imagined that either the back streets of our manufacturing towns, or the designs of our suburban villas, are things which the angels desire to look into;⁸ but it seems to me an inevitable logical conclusion that if we are, indeed, the highest of the brute creation, we should, at

¹ [A reference to Duress saying, frequently quoted by Ruskin : see Vol. XIX. p. 52 n.]

* [Compare Ariadne Florentine, § 189 (below, p. 428), and For* Clavigera, Letter 63.] ³ Tl Peter i. 12. Compare For* Clavigera, Letter 63, where thii passage is referred to.]

least, possess as much unconscious art as the lower brutes; and build nests which shall be, for ourselves, entirely convenient; and may, perhaps, in the eyes of superior beings, appear more beautiful than to our own. \

55. "Which shall be, for ourselves, entirely convenient'' Note the word;—becoming, decorous, harmonious, satisfying. We may not be able to build anything sublime; but, at all events, we should, like other flesh-invested creatures, be able to contrive what was decent, and it should be a human privilege to think that we may be admired in heaven for our contrivance.

I have some difficulty in proceeding with what I want to say, because I know you must partly think I am jesting with you. I feel indeed some disposition to smile myself; not because I jest, but in the sense of contrast between what, logically, it seems, ought to be and what we must confess, not jestingly, to be the facts. How great also,— how quaint, the confusion of sentiment in our minds, as to this matter! We continually talk of honouring God with our buildings; and yet, we dare not say, boldly, that, in His sight, we in the least expect to honour ourselves by them! And admitting, though I by no means feel disposed to admit, that here and there we may, at present, be honouring Him by work that is worthy of the nature He gave us, in how many places, think you, are we offending Him by work that is disgraceful to it?

56. Let me return, yet for an instant, to my bird and her nest. If not actually complacent and exultant in her architecture, we may at least imagine that she, and her mate, and the choir they join with, cannot but be complacent and exultant in their song. I gave you, in a former lecture,¹ the skylark as a type of mastership in music; and remembering—some of you, I suppose, are not likely soon to forget,—the saint to whom yesterday was dedicated, let me read to you to-day some of the prettiest

"{And anone, as I the day cspide, No lenger would I in my bed abide, But unto a wood that was fast by, I went forth alone boldely, And held the way downe by a brook side,

There sat I downe among the faire flours, And saw the birds trip out of hir bours, There as they rested hem all the night, They were so joyfull of the dayes light, They began of May for to done honours.

They coud that service all by rote, There was many a lovely note, Some sang loud, as they had plained, And some in other manner voice yfained, And some all out with the full throte.

They proyned hem and made hem right gay, And daunceden and lepten on the spray, And evermore two and two in fere, Right so as they had chosen hem to yere In Feverere, upon saint Valentines day."

You recollect, perhaps, the dispute that follows between the cuckoo and the nightingale, and the promise which the sweet singer makes to Chaucer for rescuing her.

" And then came the Nightingale to me And said Friend, forsooth I thanke thee That thou hast liked me to rescue, And one avow to Love make I now That all this May I will thy singer be.

I thanked her, and was right well apaied, Yea, quoth she, and be not thou dismaied, Tho' thou have heard the cuckoo erst than me; For, if I live, it shall amended be, The next May, if I be not aflraied."

¹ [The Cuckow and the Nightingale. For other notes on the birds of Chaucer, see Munera Pulverie, § 149 n. (Vol. XVII. p. 273 n.).]

"If I be not affraied." Would she not put the "if* more timidly now, in making the same promise to any of you, or in asking for the judgment between her and her enemy, which was to be passed, do you remember, on this very day of the year, so many years ago, and within eight miles of this very spot ?

"And this shall be without any Nay On the morrow after St. Valentine's day, Under a maple that is faire and green Before the chamber window of the Queen At Woodstoke, upon the greene lawn.

She thanked them, and then her leave took And into an hawthorn by that broke. And there she sate, and sang upon that tree ' Terme of life love hath withheld me' So loud, that I with that song awoke."

57. "Terme of life love hath withheld me!" Alas, how have we men reversed this song of the nightingale! so that our words must be "Terme of life—hatred hath withheld me."

This, then, was the old English science of the song of birds; and perhaps you are indignant with me for bringing any word of it back to you? You have, I doubt not, your new science of song, as of nest-building: and I am happy to think you could all explain to me, or at least you will be able to do so before you pass your natural science examination, how, by the accurate connection of a larynx with a bill, and by the action of heat, originally derived from the sun, upon the muscular fibre, an undu-latory motion is produced in the larynx, and an opening and shutting one in the bill, which is accompanied, necessarily, by a piping sound.

58. 1 will not dispute your statement; still less do I wish to answer for the absolute truth of Chaucer's. You will find that the complete truth embraces great part of both; and that you may study, at your choice, in any singing bird, the action of universal heat on a marvellous mechanism, or of individual life, on a frame capable of

exquisite passion. But the point I wish you to consider is the relation to this lower creature's power, of your own human agencies in the production of sound, where you can best unite in its harmony.

59. I had occasion only the other day to wait for half-an-hour at the bottom of Ludgate Hill. Standing as much out of the way as I could, under the shadow of the railroad bridge, I watched the faces, all eager, many anxious, and some intensely gloomy, of the hurried passers-by; and listened to the ceaseless crashing, whistling, and thundering sounds which mingled with the murmur of their steps and voices. And in the midst of the continuous roar, which differed only from that of the wildest sea in storm by its complexity and its discordance, I was wondering, if the sum of what all these people were doing, or trying to do, in the course of the day, could be made manifest, what it would come to.

60. The sum of it would be, I suppose, that they had all contrived to live through the day in that exceedingly unpleasant manner, and that nothing serious had occurred to prevent them from passing the following day likewise. Nay, I knew also that what appeared in their way of life painful to me, might be agreeable to them; and it chanced, indeed, a little while afterwards, that an active and prosperous man of business, speaking to one of my friends of the disappointment he had felt in a visit to Italy, remarked, especially, that he was not able to endure more than three days at Venice, because there was no noise there.

61. But, granting the contentment of the inhabitants of London in consistently producing these sounds, how shall we say this vocal and instrumental art of theirs may compare, in the scheme of Nature, with the vocal art of lower animals? We may indeed rank the danger-whistle of the engines on the bridge as an excruciating human improvement on that of the marmot; and the trampling of feet and grinding of wheels, as the human accentuation of the sounds produced by insects, by the friction of their wings

or thighs against their sides: but, even in this comparison, it may cause us some humiliation to note that the cicada and the cricket, when pleased to sing in their vibratory manner,¹ have leisure to rest in their delight; and that the flight of the firefly is silent. But how will the sounds we produce compare with the song of birds? This London is the principal nest of men in the world; and I was standing in the centre of it In the shops of Fleet Street and Ludgate HOI, on each side of me, I do not doubt I could have bought any quantity of books for children, which by way of giving them religious, as opposed to secular, instruction, informed them that birds praised God in their songs. Now, though, on the one hand, you may be very certain that birds are not machines, on the other hand it is just as certain that they have not the smallest intention of praising God in their songs; and that we cannot prevent the religious education of our children more utterly than by beginning it in lies. But it might be expected of ourselves that we should do so, in the songs we send up from our principal nest 1 And although, under the dome at the top of Ludgate Hill, some attempt of the kind may be made every seventh day, by a limited number of persons, we may again reflect, with humiliation, that the birds, for better or worse, sing all, and every day; and I could not but ask myself, with momentarily increasing curiosity, as I endeavoured to trace the emotions and occupations of the persons who passed by me, in the expression of their faces—what would be the effect on them, if any creatures of higher order were suddenly to appear in the midst of them with any such message of peace, and invitation to rejoicing, as they had all been professing to commemorate at Christmas. 62. Perhaps you recollect, in the lectures given on landscape during the spring of this year,² my directing your

¹ [Ruskin wrote the present lecture, it is clear, in the winter of 1871, and did not alter this date in delivering or printing them in 1872. The lectures on Landscape were delivered in the spring of 1871.]

attention to a picture of Mantegna's¹ in the loan exhibition, representing a flight of twelve angels in blue sky, singing that Christmas song. I ought to tell you, however, that one of our English artists of good position dissented from my opinion about the picture; and remarked that in England "we wanted good art, and not funny art." Whereas, to me, it is this vocal and architectural art of Ludgate Hill which appears funny art; and not Mantegna's. But I am compelled to admit that could Mantegna's picture have been realized, the result would, in the eyes of most men, have been funnier still. For suppose that over Ludgate Hill the sky had indeed suddenly become blue instead of black; and that a flight of twelve angels, "covered with silver wings, and their feathers with gold,"² had alighted on the cornice of the railroad bridge, as the doves alight on the cornices of St. Mark's at Venice; and had invited the eager men of business below, in the centre of a city confessedly the most prosperous in the world, to join them for five minutes in singing the first five verses of such a psalm as the 103rd—"Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me" (the opportunity now being given for the expression of their most hidden feelings) "all that is within me, bless His holy name, and forget not all His benefits." Do you not even thus, in mere suggestion, feel shocked at the thought, and as if my now reading the words were profane ? And cannot you fancy that the sensation of the crowd at so violent and strange an interruption of traffic, might be somewhat akin to that which I had occasion in my first lecture on sculpture to remind you of,—the feeling attributed by Goethe to Mephistopheles at the song of the angels: "Discord I hear, and intolerable jingling"?'

¹ [A slip of the pen for Botticelli's: No. 1034 in the National Gallery. See Lectures an Landscape, § 58 (above, p. 46).]

* [See Aratra Penteiici, § 12 (Vol. XX. p. 208), where the passage is quoted.]

on, or accomplished by, the great city, were to be forgotten, and if search were made, throughout its confines, into the results of its wealth, might not the literal discord in the words themselves be greater than the felt discord in the sound of them ?

I have here in my hand a cutting from a newspaper, which I took with me three years ago, to a meeting in the interest of social science, held in the rooms of the Society of Arts and under the presidency of the Prime Minister of England.¹ Under the (so called) "classical" paintings of Barry,* representing the philosophy and poetry of the ancients, Mr. Gladstone was in the chair; and in his presence a member of the Society for the Promotion of Social Science propounded and supported the statement, not irrelevant to our present inquiry, that the essential nature of man was that of a beast of prey. Though, at the time, (suddenly called upon by the author of Tom Brown at Oxford,) I feebly endeavoured to contradict that Socially Scientific person, I do not at present desire to do so. I have given you a creature of prey for comparison of knowledge. "Doth the eagle know what is in the pit?"—and in this great nest of ours in London, it would be well if to all our children the virtue of the creature of prey were fulfilled, and that, indeed, the stir and tumult of the city were "as the eagle stirreth up her nest and fluttereth over her young."^s But the slip of paper I had then, and have now, in my hand,* contains information about the state of the nest, inconsistent with such similitude. I am not answerable for the juxtaposition of paragraphs in it. The first is a proposal for the building of a new church in

* [For this meeting, and Raskin's speech at it, see Vol. XVII. pp. 536 seq. The paintings by Barry, representing the progress of civilization! were executed in 1777-1783, in the large hall of the Society of Arts in the Adelphi.l

⁴ [The passages will be found on p. 7 of the issue. The proposal was to erect a memorial church at Oxford to the late Archbishop Longley.J

Oxford, at the cost of twenty thousand pounds; the second is the account of the inquest on a woman and her child who were starved to death in the Isle of Dogs. The bodies were found lying, without covering, on a bed made of heaped rags; and there was no furniture in the room but a wooden stool, on which lay a tract entitled " The Goodness of God.⁹⁹ The husband, who had been out of work for six months, went mad two days afterwards; and being refused entrance at the workhouse because it was " full of mad people," was carried off, the Pall Mall Gazette says not where.

64. Now, gentlemen, the question 1 wish to leave with you to-day is whether the Wisdom which rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth, and whose delights are with the sons of men,¹ can be supposed, under circumstances such as these, to delight herself in that most closely and increasingly inhabited portion of the globe which we ourselves now dwell on; and whether, if she cannot grant us to surpass the art of the swallow or the eagle, she may not require of us at least, to reach the level of their happiness. Or do you seriously think that, either in the life of Ludgate Hill, or death of the Isle of Dogs; in the art of Ludgate Hill, or idleness of the Isle of Dogs; and in the science and sanity of Ludgate Hill, or nescience and insanity of the Isle of Dogs, we have, as matters stand now, any clear encouragement to repeat, in that 108rd psalm, the three verses following the five I named; and to believe in our hearts, as we say with our lips, that we have yet, dwelling among us, unoffended, a God "who forgiveth all our iniquities, who healeth all our diseases; who redeemeth our life from destruction, who crowneth us with loving-kindness and tender mercies, and who satisfieth our mouth with good things, so that our youth is renewed like the eagle's"?

¹ [Proverbs viii. 31; quoted also above, § 19, p. 136; and below, § 77, p. 178.]

65. I believe, gentlemen, that some of you must have been surprised, — and, if I succeeded in making my last lecture clearly intelligible, many ought to have been surprised,—at the limitations I asked you to admit with respect to the idea of science, and the position which I asked you to assign to it. We are so much, by the chances of our time, accustomed to think of science as a process of discovery, that I am sure some of you must have been gravely disconcerted by my requesting, and will to-day be more disconcerted by my firmly recommending, you to use the word, and reserve the thought, of science, for the acquaintance with things long since discovered, and established as true. We have the misfortune to live in an epoch of transition from irrational dulness to irrational excitement; and while once it was the highest courage of science to question anything, it is now an agony to her to leave anything unquestioned. So that, unawares, we come to measure the dignity of a scientific person by the newness of his assertions, and the dexterity of his methods in debate; entirely forgetting that science cannot become perfect, as an occupation of intellect, while anything remains to be discovered; nor wholesome as an instrument of education, while anything is permitted to be debated.

66. It appears, doubtless, a vain idea to you that an end should ever be put to discovery; but remember, such impossibility merely signifies that mortal science must remain imperfect. Nevertheless, in many directions, the limit to practically useful discovery is rapidly being approached;

and you, as students, would do well to suppose that it has been already attained. To take the science of ornithology, for instance: I suppose you would have very little hope of shooting a bird in England, which should be strange to any master of the science, or of shooting one anywhere, which would not fall under some species already described. And although at the risk of life, and by the devotion of many years to observation, some of you might hope to bring home to our museum a titmouse with a spot on its tail which had never before been seen, I strongly advise you not to allow your studies to be disturbed by so dazzling a hope, nor your life exclusively devoted even to so important an object. In astronomy, the fields of the sky have not yet, indeed, been ransacked by the most costly instruments; and it may be in store for some of you to announce the existence, or even to analyse the materials, of some luminous point which may be seen two or three times in the course of a century, by any one who will journey to India for the purpose; and, when there, is favoured by the weather. But, for all practical purposes, the stars already named and numbered are as many as we require to hear of; and if you thoroughly know the visible motions, and clearly conceive the known relations, even of those which can be seen by the naked eye, you will have as much astronomy as is necessary, either for the occupation of thought or the direction of navigation.

67. But, if you were discontented with the limit I proposed for your sciences, much more, 1 imagine, you were doubtful of the ranks I assigned to them. It is not, I know, in your modern system, the general practice to put chemistry, the science of atoms, lowest, and theology, the science of Deity, highest: nay, many of us have ceased to think of theology as a science at all, but rather as a speculative pursuit, in subject, separate from science; and in temper, opposed to her.

Yet it can scarcely be necessary for me to point out to you, in so many terms, that what we call theology, if

true, is a science; and if false, is not theology; or that the distinction even between natural science and theology is illogical: for you might distinguish indeed between natural and unnatural science, but not between natural and spiritual, unless you had determined first that a spirit had no nature. You will find the facts to be, that entirely true ' knowledge is both possible and necessary—first of facts relating to matter, and then of the forces and passions that act on or in matter;—that, of all these forces, the noblest we can know is the energy which either imagines, or perceives, the existence of a living power greater than its own; and that the study of the relations which exist between this energy, and the resultant action of men, are as much subjects of pure science as the curve of a projectile. The effect, for instance, upon your temper, intellect, and conduct during the day, of your going to chapel with or without belief in the efficacy of prayer, is just as much a subject of definite science, as the effect of your breakfast on the coats of your stomach. Which is the higher knowledge, I have, with confidence, told you; and am not afraid of any test to which you may submit my assertion.

68. Assuming such limitation, then, and such rank, for our knowledge; assuming, also, what I have now, perhaps ^ / to your weariness, told you, that jpaphic art is the shadow.

^ or image, of knowledge,—I wish to point out to you to-day the function, with respect to both, of the virtue called by the Greeks " o-axppoovvn" "safeness of mind," corresponding to the " salus" or " sanitas" mentis, of the Latins; " health of heart" is, perhaps, the best English; if we receive the words " mens," " ww," or " <£/w?v," as expressing the passionate soul of the human being, distinguished from the intellectual ; the " mens sana" * being possible to all of us, though the contemplative range of height her wisdom may be above our capacities; so that to each of us Heaven only permits the ambition of being <ro<p6s₉ but commands the resolution to be (ruxfypwv.

69. And, without discussing the use of the word by different writers, I will tell you that the clearest and safest idea of the mental state itself is to be gained from the representations of it by the words of ancient Christian religion, and even from what you may think its superstitions. Without any discussion also as to the personal existence or traditional character of evil spirits, you will find it a practical fact, that external temptations and inevitable trials of temper, have power against you which your health and virtue depend on your resisting; that, if not resisted, the evil energy of them will pass into your own heart, <j>p^v₉ or Mjfw?; and that the ordinary and vulgarized phrase "the Devil, or betraying Spirit, is in him" is the most scientifically accurate which you can apply to any person so influenced.¹ You will find also that, in the compass of literature, the casting out of, or cleansing from, such a state is. best symbolized for you by the image of one who had been wandering wild and naked among tombs, sitting still, clothed, and in his right mind,⁸ and that in whatever literal or figurative sense you receive the Biblical statement of what followed, this is absolutely certain, that the herd of swine hastening to their destruction, in perfect sympathy with each other's fury, is the most accurate symbol ever given, in literature, of consummate human &<ppoovvn. . . • • . * *

(The conditions of insanity,* delighting in scenes of death, which affect at the present time the arts of revolutionary Europe, were illustrated in the sequel of this lecture: but I neither choose to take any permanent notice of the examples I referred to, nor to publish any part of what I said, until I can enter more perfectly into the analysis of the elements of evil passion which always distorted and polluted

* I use this word always meaning it to be understood literally, and in its full force.

¹ [Compare Time and Tide, § 51 (Vol. XVI1. p. 361); and Ariadne Fforentina, § 264 (below, p. 482).]

even the highest arts of Greek and Christian loyal religion; and now occupy in deadly entireness, the chambers of imagination, devastated, and left desolate of joy, by impiety, and disobedience.

In relation to the gloom of grey colour characteristic especially of the modern French revolutionary school,¹ I entered into some examination of the conditions of real temperance and reserve in colour, showing that it consisted not in refusing colour, but in governing it; and that the most pure and bright colours might' be thus perfectly governed, while the most dull were probably also the most violent and intemperate. But it would be useless to print this part of the lecture without the colour-illustrations used.

Passing to the consideration of intemperance and immodesty in the choice even of landscape subjects, 1 referred thus for contrast, to the quietude of Turner's "Greta and Tees."²)

70. If you wish to feel the reserve of this drawing, look, first, into the shops at their display of common chromo-lithotints; see how they are made up of Matterhoms, Monte Rosas, blue glaciers, green lakes, white towers, magnificent banditti, romantic peasantry, or always-successful sportsmen or fishermen in Highland costume; and then see what Turner is content with. No Matterhoms are needful, or even particularly pleasing to him. A bank, some eight or ten feet high, of Yorkshire shale is enough. He would not thank you for giving him all the giant forests of California:—would not be so much interested in them nor half so happy among them, as he is here with a switch of oak sapling, which the Greta has pulled down among the stones, and teased awhile, and which, now that the water is lower, tries to get up again, out of its way.

He does not want any towers or towns. Here you are to be contented with three square windows of a country gentleman's house. He does not want resplendent banditti.

Behold 1 here is a brown cow and a white one: what would you have more? And this scarcely-falling rapid of the Tees—here pausing to circle round a pool, and there laughing as it trips over a ledge of rock, six or seven inches high, is more to him—infinitely more—than would be the whole colossal drainage of Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, which Carlyle has justly taken for a type of the Niagara of our national precipitous afypoovvti.¹

71. I need not point out to you the true temperance of colour in this drawing—how slightly green the trees are, how softly blue the sky.

Well, why is that good, this bad? Simply because if you think, and work, and discipline yourselves nobly, you will come to like the Greta and Tees; if not, you will come to like this. The one is what a strong man likes; the other what a weak one likes: that is modest, full of true cu&5>9,² noble restraint, noble reverence;—this has no alii*, no fear, no measure;—not even purpose, except, by accumulation of whatever it can see or snatch, to move the vile apathy of the public a<ppo<rvyn into sensation.

72. The apathy of fypoovvri—note the expression I You might think that it was oraxfrpoovwj, which was apathetic, and that intemperance was full of passion. No; the exact contrary is the fact. It is death in ourselves which seeks the exaggerated external stimulus. I must return for a moment to the art of modern France.

The most complete rest and refreshment I can get, when I am overworked, in London (for if I try to rest in the fields, I find them turned into villas in the course of the week before) is in seeing a French play. But the French act so perfectly that I am obliged to make sure beforehand that all is to end well, or it is as bad as being helplessly present at some real misery.

¹ [" Shooting Niagara: and After ?" first published in Macmillani Magazine for August 1867; now included in the seventh volume of the MUcellanie*.] ¹ [On this word, see For* Clavigera, Letter 9.]

I was beguiled the other day, by seeing it announced as a "Com&iie," into going to see "Frou-Frou."¹ Most of you probably know that the three first of its five acts are comedy, or at least playful drama, and that it plunges down, in the two last, to the sorrowfullest catastrophe of all conceivable—though too frequent in daily life—in which irretrievable grief is brought about by the passion of a moment, and the ruin of all that she loves, caused by the heroic error of an entirely good and unselfish person. The sight of it made me thoroughly ill, and I was not myself again for a week.

But, some time afterwards, I was speaking of it to a lady who knew French character well; and asked her how it was possible for a people so quick in feeling to endure the action before them of a sorrow so poignant. She said, "It is because they have not sympathy enough: they are interested only by the external scene, and are, in truth, at present, dull, not quick in feeling. My own French maid went the other evening to see that very play: when she came home, and I asked her what she thought of it, she said 'it was charming, and she had amused herself immensely.' ' Amused! but is not the story very sad ?' ' Oh, yes, mademoiselle, it is bien triste, but it is charming; and then, how pretty Frou-Frou looks in her silk dress!'"

73. Gentlemen, the French maid's mode of regarding the tragedy is, if you think of it, a most true image of the way in which fashionable society regards the world-suffering, in the midst of which, so long as it can amuse itself, all seems to it well. If the ball-room is bright, and the dresses pretty, what matter how much horror is beneath or around ?² Nay, this apathy, checks us in our highest spheres of thought, and chills our most solemn

¹ ["At French play last night/' wrote Ruskin in his diary (January 26, 1872), " saw the dreadful Frou-Frou (the best view of Venice I ever saw on the stage). Gives me much to think of." And again (January 28), "Yesterday wretched all day from memory of French play."]

² [Compare Vol. V. p. 213, where Ruskin quotes to the like effect " Casimir de la Vigne's terrible ballad, ' La Toilette de Constance.'"]

purposes. You know that I never join in the common outcries against Ritualism; yet it is too painfully manifest to me that the English Church itself has withdrawn her eyes from the tragedy of all churches, to perk herself up anew with casement and vestment, and say of herself, complacently, in her sacred iroucikla,¹ "How pretty Frou-Frou is, in her silk dress!"

74. We recognize, however, without difficulty, the peril of insatiableness and immodesty in the pleasures of Art. Less recognized, but therefore more perilous, the insatiableness and immodesty of Science tempt us through our very virtues. The fatallest furies of scientific cufrpoovvq are consistent with the most noble powers of self-restraint and self-sacrifice. It is not the lower passions, but the loftier hopes and most honourable desires which become deadliest when the charm of them is exalted by the vanity of science. The patience of the wisest of Greek heroes never fails, when the trial is by danger or pain; but do you recollect that, before his trial by the song of the Sirens, the sea becomes calm?² And in the few words which Homer has told you of their song, you have not perhaps yet with enough care observed that the form of temptation is precisely that to which a man victorious over every fleshly trial would be likely to yield. The promise is not that his body shall be gratified, but that his soul shall rise into rapture; he is not urged, as by the subtlety of Comus,^s to disdain the precepts of wisdom, but invited, on the contrary, to learn,—as you are all now invited by the a<f>poovwi of your age,—better wisdom from the wise.

"For we know all" (they say) "that was done in Troy according to the will of the gods, and we know everything that is upon the all-nourishing earth."⁴

* [Odyssey, xii. 168. For another reference to the Song of the Sirens, see Munera Pulveris, § 92 (Vol. XVII. p. 214).] ³ [See Milton's Comus, 706 seq.j « [Odyssey, xii. 189-191.]

All heavenly and earthly knowledge, you see. I will read you Pope's expansion of the verses; for Pope never alters idly, but always illustrates when he expands.¹

Ulysses, stay, Oh cease thy course, and listen to our lay. Blest is the man ordained our voice to hear, The song instructs the soul, and charms the ear. Approach ! Thy soul shall into raptures rise; Approach! and learn new wisdom from the wise. We know whate'er the kings of mighty name Achieved at Ilion in the field of Fame, Whate'er beneath the Sun's bright journey lies. Oh, stay, and learn new wisdom from the wise."

Is it not singular that so long ago the danger of this novelty of wisdom should have been completely discerned ? Is it not stranger still that three thousand years have passed by, and we have not yet been able to learn the lesson, but are still eager to add to our knowledge, rather than to use it; and every day more passionate in discovering,— more violent in competition,—are every day more cold in admiration, and more dull in reverence?

75. But, gentlemen, Homer's Ulysses, bound to the mast, survives. Dante's Ulysses is bound to the mast in another fashion. He, notwithstanding the protection of Athena, and after all his victories over fate, is still restless under the temptation to seek new wisdom. He goes forth past the Pillars of Hercules, cheers his crew amidst the uncompassed solitudes of the Atlantic, and perishes in sudden Charybdis of the infinite sea. In hell, the restless

¹ [See, however, Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V. p. 207), and a letter to the Critic, October 27, 1860, reprinted from Arrow* of the Ghace, ii. 246 (in a later volume of this edition), in both of which places Rusk in takes a less favourable view of expansions by Pope. See also The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, p. 86 (ed. 1884).]

flame in which he is wrapt continually, among the advisers of evil, is seen, from the rocks above, like the firefly's flitting to and fro; and the waving garment of torture, which quivers as he speaks, and aspires as he moves, condemns him to be led in eternal temptation, and to be delivered from evil nevermore.¹

* [fytrno, zxvi. 94-99: compare Munera PuiverU, § 93 (VoL XVII. p. 214).]

77. You have not often heard me use that word "independence." And, in the sense in which of late it has been accepted, you have never heard me use it but with contempt. For the true strength of every human soul is to be dependent on as many nobler as it can discern, and to be depended upon, by as many inferior as it can reach.

But to-day I use the word in a widely different sense. I think you must have felt, in what amplification I was able to give you of the idea of wisdom as an unselfish influence in Art and Science, how the highest skill and knowledge were founded in human tenderness, and that the kindly Art-wisdom which rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth,¹ is only another form of the lofty Scientific charity, which rejoices "in the truth."² And as the first

order of Wisdom is to know thyself—though the least creature that can be known—so the first order of Charity is to be sufficient for thyself, though the least creature that can be sufficed; and thus contented and appeased, to be girded and strong for the ministry to others. If sufficient to thy day is the evil thereof,¹ how much more should be the good!

78. 1 have asked you to recollect one aphorism respecting Science, one respecting Art; let me—and I will ask no more at this time of asking—press you to learn, further, by heart, those lines of the Song of the Sirens: six lines of Homer, I trust, will not be a weariness to you—

vplv y fjfAtuiv fAtkiyTjpvv dirb oTopdriav Ar aicotxnu, dAA,* o vc Ttprpdfjxvos vcirat #ceu vXtiova c&cfc. i&pcv yip toi wavfl*, for ivl Tpoly €vp€tg 'Apj€ioi T/MKf re $*&v ionrjTi poyifrav iS/icv $* Sacra yivrjrai cirl \6ovl wov\vfioT€ipQ.

"No one ever rowed past this way in his black ship, before he had listened to the honey-sweet singing of our lips. But he stays pleased, though he may know much. For we know all things which the Greeks and Trojans did in the wide Trojan plain, by the will of the gods, and we know what things take place in the much nourishing earth.⁹' And this, remember, is absolutely true. No man ever went past in the black ship,—obeying the grave and sad law of life by which it is appointed for mortals to be victors on the ocean,—but he was tempted, as he drew near that deadly island, wise as he might be, (*a* wXelova «'&»?,) by the voices of those who told him that they knew everything which had been done by the will of God, and everything which took place in earth for the service of man.

79. Now observe these two great temptations. You are to know everything that has been done by the will of God:

" B volta nottim poppa ncl mattino, De* rend fcrnnmo all al folk v«rio^M*—