Art and life; a Ruskin anthology

Front matter

Chap..!:-.!.- Copyright No.

i^O o

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Part Ii.-social Philosophy. Page

Chapter I.

Economic Caiious , , .181

Wealth 189

Livbor, li»l

Riches, . 194

Poverty, 214

On Co-operation, 225

Trade, 220

Land 238

Machinerj-, 243

Modern Warfare, 248

A Dream-Parable of War and Wf altli, 256

Government, 25S

Liberty 202

Fiesh Air and Light, .264

Chapter IL

Education, 269

The Education of Children 287

Teacliinpf Science to Children, 29'>

Education in Art, 298

Ruskins Writings in Classified Groups,

Preface To Second Edition

When John Ruskin died the other day on the shores of Coniston water the last of the group of idealistic giants of the Victorian era passed away. One must pity the man or woman who has lived as the contemporary of this man and not had his or her life enriched by his gospel of beauty and justice. He has shown us the world's delicate tent of blue shuttingdown around a splendor of living beauty that makes a mere child's toy of even such a marvellous shrine as that of St. Mark's. Single-handed Ruskin slew the vile and heartless Ricardo and Adam Smith school of political economy, proving it unscientific because treating man as a machine, and ignoring the chief element in the case, — the emotional and moral nature. Even his enemies admit that he has done this. It was a great service. Ruskin has rescued the study of art in England from dilettanteism. His judgments on special works of the old and the modern painters (you can see for yourself when you examine the originals) are often absurdly awry, exaggerated, swayed by his own eccentric personal bias ; but, as has been said of Carlyle, his very foibles are interesting.

His harsh words about America were, like Carlyle's, largely the result of dense ignorance of the best men and things here. Charles Eliot Norton he loved, but he seemed to think Norton the only man America had produced 1 I suppose if I had not availed myself of Professor Norton's kind offices, when writing to get permission from Ruskin to make this volume of selections from his works, I should have fared ill. For, although I wrote ofEering him the copyright proceeds of the work (wliich he kindly refused in my favor),

10 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

the MS. had ah'eady been phiced in the printer's hands.*

Last summer, a year ago, I spent a few hours at Coniston Lake, and took a walk to Brantwood, which is the last house out from Coniston, all beyond it, southward, being an unbroken solitude until the end of the lake is reached, four miles away. A great spongy fell slopes up and away from the estate, which borders the lake. (I got lost up among the mists of one of these gloomy and rainy uplands, or mountain fells, not far from Coniston, yet was smitten witli its grandeur and semi-conscious slumbering life, as of Browning's hills lying with chin on hand.) The road of approach to Brantwood is a public one and runs along the lakeside, the few residences lying between it and the lake. Running streams of pure water descend from the fell, and out of the hillwood, across the road. The terminus of the only railroad that has tried to penetrate the Lake Region is on the opposite side of the water from Brantwood ; yet the infrequent shrieks of the locomotive can be plainly heard there. The master had, willi-nilli, to endure the hated things. On my return, I stopped and chatted with a halo and canny old " wesher-woman," as she called herself, wlio lived on this same Ruskinward road, not very far from Brantwood, and whose lowly cottage door was glorified by a canopy of reddest roses (England seemed to me even more the land of roses than Italy ; every other cottage has a gloire, or some red or white rose clambering to its thatched dormers and about its roof). She said a gentleman and his wife from foreign parts had visited Brantwood that summer. " From America ? " " Yes. I think from America, or some such road," — half apologetically, as if anybody who did not live in Coniston were necessarily a little under suspicion for foolish wandering from the established and ordained center of the world.

W. S. K.

Belmont, Mass., April 4, 1900.

* Professor Norton wrote me (April 23, '86): "Mrs. Severn writes (7 April) of Mr. Ruskin and your ' Selections ' : 'As regards the extracts, be says he's pleased Mr. Kennedy has enjoyed his work, and that he's at liberty to publisb tbem,'"

Introduction

John Rtjskin was born in London, February 8th, 1819, at his father's house, number 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square — a locality not far from the British Museum. For the greater part of his boyhood, youth, and manhood, up to 1871, his home was in Camberwell, a rural suburb of London, lying four miles south of the Centre and between Sydenham and Chelsea. His education was of the sternest Puritan kind, it being the purpose of his parents to make a clergyman of him. The decrees respecting toys were of Spartan severity. At first he had none ; when he got older he had a cart, a ball, two boxes of wooden bricks, and a two-arched bridge in blocks ; — that was all. At seven he began Latin with his mother. His first writings were certain compositions and poems printed in imitation of black print in a little red-bound book, four by six inches in dimensions ; the title-page was as follows, (see " Prae terita'') :

"Harry and Lucy Concluded. Being the Last Part of Early Lessons : in four voluitfES. Vol. I. with copper plates. Printed AND Composed by a little boy and also drawn."

His first piece of scientific composition was a mini>.'- alogical dictionary, begun when he was twelve, and written in crystallographic signs that later were unintelligible even to himself. He began to learn drawing proper by carefully copying the maps out of a small, old-fashioned quarto atlas. His first picture was a Dovei Castle, done when he was twelve. Later, his art studies were earned on under the direction of Copley Fielding and J. D. Harding, Of an evening, at Heme Hill, he was usually placed in a little niche by the fireplace, with a table before him to hold his cup and l)]atteror his book, while his father read aloud from Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Don Quixote, or some other classic.

12 R USKLX A NTHOL G Y.

When his mother's tuition was ended he was sent to the school kept by the Rev. Thomas Dale, and thence to Oxford (about 1836). He entered his name as a gentleman commoner on the rolls of Christ Church, and, under Dr. Buckland, laid the foundation of his geological knowledge.

In 18.57 he accepted the Mastership of the Elementary and Landscape School of Drawing, at the Working Men's College, in Great Ormond Street, London, fulfilling the duties of the office without salary. It was for the pupils in this evening school that he wrote his J^Iements of Urau-'tiKj.

In 1867, the Senate of Cambridge University conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and at the same time he was appointed Rede Lecturer at Cambridge. In 1869, Mr. Felix Slade bequeathed a large sum for the founding of Art Professorships in Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Ruskin was thereupon elected Slade Professor of the Fine Arts at Oxford ; (reelected in 1876, resigned in 1878 on account of illness.* resumed his duties in 1883).

In 1871, Professor Ruskin bought, without seeing it, the old estate of Brantwood (" steep wood "), on Coniston Water, in the Lake District, where he had played when a boy of seven years. The fourteen acres of •Brantwood are steep, craggy, and picturesque, containing streams, heather, nut-trees, and wild flowers, and abutting directly on Lake Coniston. Ruskin spent about !i)>oO,000 on the place before he had it to his mind, '1510,000 of this sum going to build a lodge for his pet cousin and her children. He is a famous fellow among boys and girls, and is voted by everybody to be a capital neighbor.

Professor Ruskin is emotional and nervous in manner, his large eye at times soft and genial, and again quizzing and mischievous in its glance, the mouth thin and severe, chin retreating, and forehead prominent. He has an iron-grey beard, wears old-fashioned coats, sky-blue neck cloths, and gold spectacles ; is rather petit, about five feet five in height ; his pronunciation as broad as Dundee Scotch, and at times "as indistinct as

* Thrice has he been at death's door ; i.e. . in the years 1871 . 1878, and 1S85.

INTRODUCTION. 13

Belgravia Cockney." He is one of the most popular lecturers in England, and his influence over the students at Oxford is said to have been such that, at one time, he purposely avoided (in a measure) their society that it might not be thought that he was doing an injustice to his fellow-professors.

Mr. Stopford Brooke rightly speaks of Ruskin as the most original man in England. And the Frenchman, Milsand, means the same thing when he says of his genius that it is fwitasqae et hizarretnent "aeceiitae. " He writes like a consecrated priest of the abstract and ideal," said Charlotte Bronte. And Carlyle wrote to JEmerson, in the last letter he ever sent him, the subjoined words :—

"There is nothing going on among us as notable to me as those fierce lightning-bolts Ruskin is copiously and desperately pouring into the black world of Anarchy all around him. No other man in England that I meet has in him the divine rage against iniquity, falsity, and baseness that Ruskin has, and that every man ought to have."*

Says Ruskin's old enemy, TJie iSpectator (x\utumn of 1384):—

"No other critic ever occupied such a position. He expresses his thoughts on art in words which, in their exquisite collocation, their perfection at once of form and lucidity, have been rivalled, in oi;r generation, only l)y Cardinal Newman. He is one of the best known and most appreciated figures in our generation. His older books are among the treasures of the bibliophile, his later works are purchased like scarce jilates, his opinions are quoted like texts from a Holy Book."

The first thing I note in his make and stamp is that he is Scotch on his father's side, and possibly also on that of his mother. He has Scotch traits — eccentricity, waywardness, paradox, quaint frets and freakish knots in the grain, a sort of stub-twist in the fibre, a Dantesque imagination, and solemn Covenanter zeal in religioc.

It is as a teach «r of the people that he is preeminent. He imparts more than a contagious enthusiasm ;

* Carl^if's roeopnition of Ruskin as a man of genius and prophetpower dales fnini isco, the j-ear of the publication of Unto This Last. (See Froude's Carlyle in London, II. Chap. XXV.)

14 RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY.

he not onl} inspires and uplifts the soul, but clarifies the intellect by his lucid and elegant expositions of abstruse subjects. What severe thought on every page of his books, presented in how graceful and piquant a form ! How many new truths won by hardest toil ! How searchingly he probes, unfibres, unjoints, dissolves, enumerates, classifies ! If his life sufficed, you would hardly be surprised to find him counting twice and thrice and again all the stars of heaven and the grains of sand by the sea. The soft cloudlets of the upper sky, the toppling cumulus, the shambling dance of the no-formed waves (to the slow music of the thunder and the wind), the sprangle and green-shine of their hollow-curving crests, the lustre and coloring of the breast of a dove, the tintings and shadows of mountain rock, the intricate curves of leaf and bough — with all these he is at home, and for their hidden laws he reverently seeks. " Of the facts and aspects of nature," says W. M. Rossetti, " Mr. Ruskin is and must remain a teacher of teachers, an expounder to expounders, and a poetiaer among those who feel and write poetically."

In the power of placing a subject in a new and start- ]ing light by means of a clear, well-chosen illustration or parallelism Ruskin is unsurpassed. He is a verbal antiquary, never satisfied until he has penetrated to the root-meaning of the important words he uses. What new strength and vividness he gives to Bible texts ! No noble or sententious thought so worn by the attrition of ages but he will pluck it fondly forth from its dull obscurity, cleanse it of rust, and set it a-gleara ?£rain in a foil of skilful explanation or glowing eulogy. He reads continually between the lines, and has ahaLH of challenging accepted statements to see if the^'' ring tvie.

He is in part a conservative and in part i radiorc^ . Yet his radicalism is but a backward-working forse he would destroy and change, but only for the pur pose of reviving good old ways and tried customs.; "What our fathers have told us" no one more reverently receives.

His style is impetuou;s and orn?te, his words loaded with meaning. Perhaps the word "intensity"

INTRODUCTION. 15

best describes liis style.* Repressed passion lurks beneath every page. For terrible and cutting irony he is equalled by no other English writer, except it ba Swift. His syllogisms are weapons with long range : he withholds his conclusion ; approaches it cautiously, with subtle concealment and through devious ways; apparently starts off in the opposite direction (note what Scott calls the national — Scotch — indirection), then, with lightning-swift stride and gleam of sword, rushes tlirough a side way directly to his goal.

In studying the art-writings of Kuskin, there are three important dates to be borne in mind ; namely, 1858, 1800, and 1874. Previous to the year 1858 he believed the religious spirit to be necessary to supreme art-power. But during the next sixteen years (1858-1874) his studies of the great Venetians led him to believe that Tintoret and Titian were greater painters than Cimabue, Giotto, or Angelico. In 1874, however, while copying some of Giotto's work at Aijsisi, he discovered, he says {Fors Clavlgera Lxxvi.), that that painter was inferior to the Venetians only in the material sciences of the craft, and that, in the real make-up of hifii, he was after all superior to them, just on account of his religious faith. The third fulcrum date — isCiO — marks the entrance of Ruskin into the field of Social Science, and the consequent partial diversion of his mind from the study of nature_and_art^_ -

The art-teachings of Ruskin may be summed up in a few words: '-AH great art is praise," the expression of man's delight in God's work. The greatest art is born of a noble national morality, and is conditioned upon the moral fibre of the workman. The greatest art is that which copies nature with the most loving fidelity and the most minute finish consistent with noble imaginative invention, or design. The greatest art cannot coexist with smoke, filtli, noise, and mechanism.

The naive and Biblical [)iety of Ruskin gives to his writings a considerable part of their charm. Educated in a narrow sectarianism he has gradually adopted

*Tn one instance {8emmi- and Liliea, 'English edition 1871 ). wishing to lay the utmost possilile stress upon a pathetic account of deatU by stai-vatiou, he prints the wliole narrative iu blooJ-red ink.

16 EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY.

Broad Church views, without giving up the essentials of Christianity, As late as 1H80 he said: "I write as a Christian to Christians, that is to say, to persons who rejoice in the hope of a literal, perpetual life, with a literal, personal, and eternal God." He urges his readers to " confess Christ before men." He believes literally and unmetaphorically in a Devil, a deceiving and evil spirit in nature, the Lord of Lies and the Lord of Pain. " I am always quite serious," he writes, "when I speak of the Devil." For forty-five years he scarcely missed once being at church on Sunday, and never misses the opportunity of talking with I'cligious persons. His well-known lavish benevolence is a legitimate corollary of his creed : it is the Sermon on the Mount put into practice. That he was on the London committee for the victualling of Paris in 18T1, sliows that his reputation for compassionate benevolence had become as well known as in the case of a Geoi'ge Peabody or a Lady Burdett-Coutts. And in truth the purse of no man in England has been more ready to open for the relief of suffering merit or genius. His benefactions for a single year have amounted to over f 70,000 .

The gist, or marrow, of Mr^ Ruskin's political economy, or social philosophy, is that in all economic laws and measures the moral relations and social affections have got to be considered. Political economy, as at present taught, is merely a mercantile system of cut and dried I'ules for getting rich at the expense of somebody else. But political economy, in the large and proper sense, does not mean the art of getting rich, but it teaches how wisely to order the affairs of a state, and produce and distribute the good things of life, especially good men and women. It is not a science at all, but a system of moral conduct; for industry, frugality, and discretion — the tliree foundation-stones of economy — are moral qualities. Surely in its general features his economic teaching is sound and good. It is only on account of the visionary and impracticable nature of certain of its details that the whole system has been received with ridicule. It was because Ruskin saw very clearly the impossibility of getting his favorite

IXTRODUUTION. 17

theories ad(ipted by society in general that he formed the bold scheme ot' establishing in England (and afterward in various other countries) ideal associations — named by him "Guilds of St. George " — around which should gradually cluster all the better elements of society. Scattered through his books called Fors Clavigera you will find the details of this scheme little by little set down ; and, if you make a thorough study of it, it is probable that you will see as much in it to admire as to blame. You will not like his doctrines of coercion and blind obedience, and you may smile af his sumptuary laws and his theory of universal state aid for the poor; but the establishment of museums and libraries, the advocacy of free trade, organization of guarantee trade-guilds for the production and warranting of honest work, the insistence on industry, the emphasis laid on agricultural work, and the attempt to reconcile labor with culture, the reclaiming of waste lands and formation of mountain reservoirs for rain-water, the noble care of the infirm and disabled, lowering of rents in proportion to improvements, avoidance of usury, and formation of a national store of wealth — all this we must emphatically indorse. It is good and only good, and adapted to tlu' mending of broken down civilization. Along such lines as these must England move if she would retain her power.

It may well be that the framework of Ruskin's Guild will fall to pieces at his death. The great .secular energies of society are perpetually beating against any forced or artificial organism formed within its limits, till it is finally swept away and incorporated in the great catholic movements and life of humanity. But no matter; what is good in the scheme of St. George will survive, Ruskin has blazed a path through the wood, made a little garden in the wilderness, dug wells of purest water of life. The lesson will not fail of its effect, the leaven will work. Is there anything in the life of the English people more significant than the existence of this very Guild? Like a dewy hillcroft or pastoral upland, lifted above the pall of England's smoke ; like sunlight glinting on a troubled sea,

18 RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY.

a swirl of rich colors in an arctic night, an oasis in a boundless desert, a living fountain in a dry and thirsty hind — such, in the midst of the grossness of Anglo- American materialism, seeins to some of us the social idealism of John Ruskin.

Prefatory Note

With a few exceptions, tiie page references throughout this volume are made to the edition of Prof. Ruskin's whole works published by Mr. John B. Alden, (1885-6.) The references are, however, approximately correct for any edition, and may serve as an index to the various topics treated by Ruskin — an index useful both to his old admirers and to new readers \ 'ho wish to know all that he has written on a given subject.' For permission to use the sonnet prefixed to the volume I am indebted to the courtesy of its author, Mr. H. Bellyse Baildon of Scotland. The parchmentcovered, "Round-Table" series in which it originally appeared, contains, besides the study of Ruskin, appreciative essays on the protagonists of our own liter ature — Whitman and Emerson. W. S. K.

Part I. -A R 1\ A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY

PART I. — ART.

Section I. — Cardinal Tenets

Great art [is] the Art of Dreaming. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 384.

All great art is delicate. — Elements of Drawing, p. 8.

The art, or general productive and formative energy, of any country, is an exact exponent of its ethical life. You can have noble art only from ngble persons. — Jjevtiires on Art, p. 22.

I have had but one steady aim in all that I have ever tried to teach, namely — to declare that whatever was great in human art was the expression of man's delight in God's work. — The Two Paths, p. 34.

Thoroughly perfect art is that which proceeds from tlie heart, which involves all the noble emotions ; — associates with these the head, yet as inferior to the lieart ; and the hand, yet as inferior to the heart and head; and thus brings out the whole >man. — IVie Ta'o Paths, p. 38.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts — the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others ; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good fortune ; and its words mighty by the

23 -4 RUSKIX ANTHOLOGY.

genius of a few of its children : but its art, only by the general gifts and common sympathies oi the race. — ■ ;St. Mark's Itest, p. 3.

An artist is a person who has submitted to a law which it was painful to obey, that he may bestow a delight which it isgracious to bestow. — J-'Vrs, III., p. 5H.

Art axd Mechanism. — Almost the whole system and hope of modern life are founded on the notion that you may substitute mechanism for skill, photograph for picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main nineteenth century faith, or infidelity. You think you can get everything by grinding — music, literature, and painting. You will find it grievously not so ; you can get nothing but dust by mere grinding. — Lectures on Art, p. G6.

The Material Conditioxs of Art. — All art which is worth its room in this world, all art which is not a piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot or two of earth which, if unencumbered by it, would have grown corn or violets, or some better thing, is art ii'hicJi 2)roreeds from an individual mind, vorkin^j through instruments 'which assist, but do not sujxrsede,the muscular action of the hu/nan hand, upon them<(teri(ds which most tenderly receive, and most securely retain, the impressions of such honan labor. — Stones <f Yenicc, I., p. 40().

All fine art requires the application of the whole strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is not possible to any sickly person, but involves the action and force of a strong man's arm from the shoulder, as well as the deiicatest touch of his finger : and it is the evidence that this full and fine strength has been spent on it which makes the art executively noble ; so that no instrument must be used, habitually, which is either too heavy to be delicately restrained, or too small and weak to transmit a vigorous impulse ; much less any mechanical aid, such as would render the sensibility of the fingers ineffectual. — Aratra Pentelici, p. 96.

Great Art Not to be Taught bv Rules. — Do you fancy a Greek workman ever made a vase by measureix.ent I He dashed it from his hand on the wheel, and it was beautiful : and a Venetian glass-blower swept you a curve of crystal f roiii the end of his pipe ; and Reynolds or Tintoret swept a curve of color from their pencils, as a musician the cadence of a note, unerrini;, and to be measured, if you please, afterwards, with tlie exactitude of Divine law. — Etajle's Kest, p. 88.

Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be given. Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and from given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture ; and it is, of the two procedures, rather less rational (because more easy) to copy capitals or mouldings from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than to copy heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves painters. — t<tO)i<is of Venice, II., p. 175.

The labor of the whole Geological Society, for the last fifty years, has but now arrived at the ascertainment of those truths respecting mountain form which Turner saw and expressed with a few strokes of a camel's hair pencil fifty years ago, when he was a boy. The knowledge of all the laws of the planetary system, and of all the curves of the motion of projectiles, would never enal)le the man of science to draw a waterfall or a wave ; and all the members of Surgeons' Hall helping each other could not at this moment see, or represent, the natural movement of a human body in viforous action, as Tintoret, a poor dyer's son, did two hundred years ago. — ^to)ie>i of Venice, III., p. 41.

CoNDiTioN3 OF A ScHooL OF Art. — Nothing may ever be made of iron that can as effectually lie made of wood or stone; and nothing moved by steam that can be as effectually moved by natural "forces. And observe, that for all mechanical effort required in social life, and in cities, water power is infinitely more than enough ; for anchored mills on the large rivers, and jiills m.oved by sluices from reservoirs filled by the tide, will give you command of any quantity of constant motive power you need.

Agriculture by the hand, then, and absolute refusal or banishment of unnecessary igneous force, are the first conditions of a school of art in any country. And until you do this, be it soon or late, things will continue in that triumphant state to which, for want of finer art, your mechanism has brought them ; — that, though England is deafened with spinning wheels, her people have not clothes — though she is black with digging of Cuel, they die of cold — and though she has sold her soul for gain, they die of hunger. Stay in that triumph, if you choose ; but be assured of this, it is not one which the fine arts v/ill ever share with you. — Lectures OH, Art, p. 80.

European Youth. — It is certain that the general body of modern European youth have their minds occupied more seriously by the sculpture and painting of the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all the divinest work;nrianship and passionate imagination of Greece, Rome, and Mediaeval Christendom. — Aratr(t Pente- Ucl, p. 48.

Fine Ak:" and Sweet Nature. — Whatever you can afford to spend for education in art, give to good masters, and lea'^e them to do the best they can for you : and what you <ian afford to spend for the splendor of your city, buy grass, flowers, sea, and sky with. No art of man is possib.'e without those primal Treasures of the art of God. — F'ors, IV., p. 71.

Verona. — If I were aske(f to lay my finger, in a map of the world, on the spot -of the world's surface which contained at this moment th*^. most singular concentration of art-teaching and art-treasure, I should by it on the name of the town of Verona. — A Jotj Voi Ever, p. 50.

Art Rooted in the Moral Nature. — In these books of mine, their distinctive character, as essays on art, is their liringing everything to a root in human passion or human hope. Arising first not in any desire to explain the principles of art, but in the endeavor to defend an individual painter from injustice, they have been colored throughout — nay, continually altered in shape, and even warped and broken, by digressions respecting social questions, which had for me an in terest tenfold greater than the work I had been forced into undertaking. Every principle of painting which I have stated is traeinl to some vital or spiritual fact ; and in itiy works on architecture the preference accorded finally to one school over another, is founded on a comparison of their influences on the life of the workman — a question by all other writers on the subject of architecture wholly forgotten or despised. — Modern Paiuters, V., p. 217.