Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era. John Lord
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particularly as their chief motive was the one the master had always strenuously pled for,–adherence to the simplicity of nature. Their scrupulous attention to detail, characteristic of the Pre-Raphaelites, later on bore good results, even after the Brotherhood fell apart, especially in William Morris's application of their art-principles to household decoration and furnishings. But for the time the movement was loudly mocked and decried, and perhaps all the more because of Ruskin's espousal of the fervid band, his letters of defence in the London "Times," and his discussion in his booklet on "Pre-Raphaelitism." Heedless of the outcry, Ruskin pursued his own self-confident course, and by the year 1860 he had completed his "Modern Painters," and, in spite of objurgation and detraction, had won a great name for himself as a critic and expounder, while expanding himself over almost the whole world of art.
We have said that Pre-Raphaelitism, as a movement in art, was contemporaneously jeered at; while to-day, among superficial or inappreciative students of the period, seriously to mention it or any of its cultured brotherhood is to provoke a smile. Nevertheless, there was not a little high merit in the movement, which Ruskin was keen-eyed and friendly enough to recognize, while much that is worthy afterwards came out of it in the later work of the more notable of its members as well as in that of their unenrolled associates and the admirers of the Pre-Raphaelite method. What the movement owed to Ruskin is now frankly conceded, in the lesson the brotherhood took to heart from his counsellings,–to divest art of conventionality, and to work with scrupulous fidelity and sincerity of purpose. Nor was contemporary art alone the gainer by the movement; it also had its influence on poetry, though this has been obscured–so far as any beneficial influence can be traced at all–by the tendency manifested in some of the more amorous poetic swains of the period, who professed to derive their inspiration from the Brotherhood, to identify themselves with what has been styled the "Fleshly School" of verse. Of the latter number, Swinburne, in his early "Poems and Ballads," was perhaps the greatest sinner, though atoned for in part by the lyrical art and ardor of his verse, and much more by the higher qualities and scholarly characteristics of his later dramatic Work. Nor is Dante Rossetti himself, in some of his poems, free from the same taint, despite the fact of his interesting individuality as the chief inspirer and laborer among the Brotherhood. Yet the movement owed much to both his brush and his pen of other and nobler, because reverential, work, as those will admit who know "The Blessed Damozel," "Sister Helen," and his fine collection of sonnets, "The House of Life," as well as his famous paintings, "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and his Annunciation picture, "Ecce Ancilla Domini." Of the product of other Pre-Raphaelites of note,–such as Ford Madox Brown, Millais, Morris, Woolner the sculptor, Coventry Patmore, and Holman Hunt,–much that is commendable as well as finely imaginative came from their hands, and justified Ruskin in his gallant advocacy of the movement, its founders, and their work.
By this time, of which we have been writing, Ruskin had reached the early meridian of his powers, and, as we have hinted, had wrested from the unwilling many a juster recognition of his amazing industry and genius. To his fond and indulgent parents this was a great source of pride and satisfaction, and the practical evidence of it was the throng of visitors to the family seats of Herne Hill and Denmark Hill, in the then London suburbs, where Ruskin long had his home, and by the attentions and honor paid to their son by universities, academies, and public bodies, as well as by many eminent personages and the intellectual élite of the nation. Among those with whom the young celebrity was then ultimate and reckoned among his admiring correspondents were, besides Turner (who died in 1851) and the chief artists of the time, the Carlyles and the Brownings, Mary Russell Mitford, Charlotte Bronté, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Charles Eliot Norton, Lady Trevelyan (Macaulay's sister), Whewell, Maurice, Kingsley, Dr. John Brown (author of "Rab and his Friends"), Tennyson, and Dean Milman. To these might be added many notable foreigners whom he either met with in his continental travels or who were attracted to him by a lively interest in his writings. In his home, thanks to a wealthy and indulgent father, he was surrounded with every comfort, short of luxury, if we except under the latter the large sums expended on the purchase of "Turners" and many famous foreign pictures, and a vast and increasing collection of favorite books and other treasures and curios.
Of the author's home-life we get many delightful reminiscences in "Praeterita," with entertaining talks of his childhood days, his youthful companions, his toys and animate pets, his early playful adventures in authorship, and other garrulities with which, late in life when the work, as it remains, was incompletely put together, he beguiled the weariness and feebleness of old age. But we are anticipating, for we are writing of Ruskin when his hand was yet on the plough, and the plough was still in the furrow, and half a long life's arduous work was yet before him. At this era, no brain could well have been more active or fuller of philanthropies than his, for we approach the second period of his life's grand activities,–the era of a new departure in the interests that occupied him and the herculean tasks he set himself to do.
Before recording some of the achievements of this time and glancing at the inciting causes of the transition which marks the era we have now reached, let us note the demands made upon Mr. Ruskin's thought and labor by universities and public institutions, whose audiences desired to have him appear before them in person and address them upon topics in which he and they were interested. These appearances on the lecture platform were now numerous, since many throughout the kingdom were eager to see and know the man whose art criticisms, principles that govern the beautiful, and stimulating thought on all subjects, had made so deep an impression on the reflecting minds of the age. His earliest appearance on the rostrum was at Edinburgh, where he delivered four lectures before the Philosophical Institution, chiefly on landscape-painters and on Christian art, with a plea for the use of Gothic in domestic architecture. Subsequent appearances were at Manchester, where he spoke on the Political Economy of Art and the relation of art to manufactures; at the South Kensington Museum, London, which had just been opened; and later at Oxford, where further on in his career he became Slade Professor of Art in his own University. From the accounts of these public lectures we get opinions as to the personal appearance of Ruskin at the period which add to our knowledge of him from paintings, drawings, and photographs, though not a few of these accounts vary from those given us in books, chiefly sketched by his lady friends and correspondents. The more trusty of the contemporary pictures speak of him as having "light, sand-colored hair; his face more red than pale; the mouth well cut, with a good deal of decision in its curve, though somewhat wanting in sustained dignity and strength; an aquiline nose; his forehead by no means broad or massive, but the brows full and well bound together; the eye [says the observer from whom we are quoting] we could not see, in consequence of the shadows that fell upon his [Ruskin's] countenance from the lights overhead, but we are sure that the poetry and passion we looked for almost in vain in other features must be concentrated here." Miss Mitford speaks of him at this time as "eloquent and distinguished-looking, fair and slender, with a gentle playfulness, and a sort of pretty waywardness that was quite charming." Another, a visitor at his London home, characterizes him as "emotional and nervous, with a soft, genial eye, a mouth thin and severe, and a voice that, though rich and sweet, yet had a tendency to sink into a plaintive and hopeless tone." Later on in years we have this verbal portrait from a disciple of the great art-teacher, occurring in an inaugural address delivered before the Ruskin Society of Glasgow: "That spare, stooping figure, the rough-hewn, kindly face, with its mobile, sensitive mouth, and clear deep eyes, so sweet and honest in repose, so keen and earnest and eloquent in debate!"
When the fifth and last volume of "Modern Painters" was finally off his hands, Mr. Ruskin not only engaged, as we have seen, in occasional lecturing, but began (1861) to add a prolific series of brochures--many of them with quaint but significant titles–to his already stupendous mass of writing. Their subjects were not alone aesthetics, but now treated of ethical, social, and political questions, the prophetic declarations and earnest appeals of a man of wide and varied culture, deep thought, and large experience. The attempted alliance of political economy with art was a novel undertaking in that sixth lustrum of the past century, even by a man of Mr. Ruskin's eminence and fame in the world of letters. But Mr. Ruskin was a bold and earnest man, as well as a genius; and he had too much to tell his heedless, laissez-faire age to keep silent on themes, remote as they were from those he had hitherto taught, and of which he desired to deliver his soul, whatever ridicule it might provoke and however adverse the criticism levelled against him. His humanity and