John Ruskin - Paperback

JOHN RUSKIN - PREFACE TO RUSKINS BIBLE OF AMIENS. CONTENTS. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION 11. MODERN PAINTERS THE FIRST VOLUME 111. MODERN PAINTERS THE SECOND VOLUME . IV. MODERN PAINTERS THE THIRD AND FOURTH VOLUMES V. MODERN PAINTERS THE FIFTH VOLUME VI. THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE VII. THE STONES OF VENICE VXII. PRE-RAPHAELITISM IX. LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING . X. ELEMENTS OF DRAWING . XI. T H E POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART XII. THE TWO PATHS . XIII. UNTO THIS LAST XIV. SESAME AND LILIES XV. THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE . . PAGE i ... Vlll CONTENTS. XVI. TIME AND TIDE BY WEARE AND TYNE XVII. THE QUEEN OF THE AIR XVIII. LECTURES ON ART . . XIX. ARATRA PENTELICI . D XX. THE EAGLES NEST XXI. ARIADNE FLORENTINA . a XXII. VAL DARNO XXIII. DEUCALION XXIV. PROSERPINA XXV. GUIDE-BOOKS MORNINGS IN FLORENCE - ST MARKS REST - THE BIBLE OF AMIENS XXVI. FORS CLAVIGERA . . XXVII. PRETERITA CHRONOLOGY 293 IKDEX . 298 J O H N R U S K I N . CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. JOHN RUSKIN l S if e was not only centred, but limited, by the places where he was born and taught, and by the things he loved. The London suburb and the English lake-side for his homes, Oxford for his place first of study and then of teaching, usually one beaten road by France, Switzerland, and Italy for his annual journeys-these closed the scene of his dwellings and travellings. There was a water-colour drawing by his father that interested him when he was a little boy in muslin and a sash as Northcote painted him, with his own chosen blue hills for a background, and this drawing hung over his bed when he died the evenings of his last days were passed in the chair wherein he preached in play a sermon before he could well pronounce it. Thenursery lessons and the household ways of the home on Herne Hill partly remained with him, reverend and unquestionable, to his last day. And yet the student of the work done in this quiet life of repetitions is somewhat shaken from the steadfastness of study by two things-multitude and movement. The multitude is in the thoughts of this great and original mind, and the movement is the worlds. Ruskins enormous work has never had steady auditors or spectators it may be likened to a sidereal sky beheld from an earth upon the wing. Many, innumerable, are the points that seem to shift and journey, to the shifting eye. Partly it was he himself who altered his readers and partly they changed with the long change of a nation and partly they altered with successive and recurrent moods. John Ruskin wrote first for his contemporaries, young men fifty years later he wrote for the same readers fifty years older, as well as for their sons. And hardly has a mob of Shakespeares shown more sudden, unanimous, or clamorous versions and reversions of opinion than those that have acclaimed and rejected, derided and divided, his work, once to ban and bless, and a second time to bless and ban...