John Lord - Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14 - The New Era

With this generous tribute to and appreciation of Ruskin, despite the economic vagaries into which the great critic and teacher of his time fell, we may more confidently approach the busy era of his later and self-sacrificing labors, and with less apology take space to deal–as compactly and intelligently as we can–with some of the more notable of the many books and brochures of the period. Difficult as would be the task, fortunately there is little need to epitomize these works, as many of them are better known, and perhaps more attentively read, than his earlier, bulkier, and more ambitious writings. A few of them lie outside the economic gospel of their apostolic author, and these we will first and briefly deal with. A number of them are instructive and inspiring lay sermons on the mystical union between nature and art, beauty and utility, and their reflex in the reverential homage for the beautiful and the worthy in the mind and character of the English-speaking race. The whole form a great body of fine and thoughtful work, which is as enchaining as its meaning is often profound. The best-known of these lay sermons is: "The Queen of the Air" (1869), a splendid blending of his fancy with the Greek nature-myths of cloud and storm, represented by Athena, goddess of the heavens, of the earth, and of the heart. The parable drawn is that "the air is given us for our life, the rain for our thirst and baptism, the fire for our warmth, the sun for our light, and the earth for our meat and rest." Related to the work is "Ethics of the Dust" (1865), lectures to little housewives on mineralogy and crystallography, nature's work in crystallization being the text for a diatribe against sordid living. "Sesame and Lilies," which belongs also to this period of the writer's work, consists of three addresses, delivered at Manchester and at Dublin, designed specially for young girls, and treating in the main of good and improving literature. The first of them, "Of Kings' Treasuries," deals with the treasures hidden in books, the writings of the world's great men; its sequel, "Of Queens' Gardens," deals with the function and sphere of woman, and, by way of application, with the how and the what to read; the third lecture, on "The Mystery of Life and its Arts," is a discursive but inspiring consideration of what life is and how most successfully to battle with it in the way of our work and of our appointed duty. All three lectures, observes a commentator, "tell men and women of the ideals they should set before them; how to read and to build character under the inspiration of the nobility of the past, fitting one's self for such great society; how to develop noble womanhood; how to bear one's self toward the wonder of life, toward one's work in the world, and toward one's duty to others."

Other lectures and brochures of or about this period are "Hortus Inclusus" (The Enclosed Garden), being "Messages from the Wood to the Garden sent in happy days to two sister ladies," residing at Coniston, and collected in 1887; "Arrows of the Chace," letters on various subjects to newspapers, gathered and edited in 1880; "The Two Paths," lectures on art and its application to Decoration and Manufacture (1859); "Ariadne Florentina" (1873), a monograph on Italian wood and metal engraving; "Aratra Pentelici" (1872), on the elements and principles of sculpture; and "The Eagle's Nest" (1872), on the relation of natural science to art. Still pursuing his delightful methods of interpreting nature and teaching the world instructive lessons, even from the common things of mother earth, we have a series of three eloquent discourses, entitled (1) "Proserpina," studies of Alpine and other wayside flowers, dwelling on the mystery of growth in plants and the tender beauty of their form; (2) "Deucalion," a sort of glorified geological text-book, treating of stones and their life-history, and showing the wearing effect upon them of waves and the action of water; and (3) "Love's Meinie" (1873), a rapture about birds and their feathered plumage, delivered at Eton and at Oxford. This trilogy, dealing with botany, geology, and ornithology, was presented to his audiences with illustrative drawings, representing the flora met with in his travels or found in the neighborhood of his new home in the Lancashire lakes, with sketches of regions, including the characteristics of the soil, in which he had been reared, and talks of the note and habit of all birds that were wont to warble over him their morning song. "The Pleasures of England," the "Harbours of England," and the "Art of England" further treat of his loved native land, the first of these being talks on the pleasures of learning, of faith, and of deed, illustrated by examples drawn from early English history, and the last treating of representative modern English artists, chiefly of the Pre-Raphaelite school. "The Laws of Fésole" (1878) deals with the principles of Florentine draughtsmanship; "St. Mark's Rest," with the art and architecture of Venice; and "Val d'Arno," with early Tuscan art, interspersed with the author's accustomed ethical reflections. "Mornings in Florence," intended for the use of visitors to the art galleries of the beautiful city on the Arno, deals in the true artist-spirit with its famous examples of Christian art, giving prominence here also to the ethical side of the city's history. "In Montibus Sanctis," and "Coeli Enarrant," the one comprising studies of mountain form, and the other of cloud form and their visible causes, though separately published, are only reprints of the author's larger and nobler embodiment of his views on art, in "Modern Painters." "The King of the Golden River," of which we have previously spoken, is a fairy tale of much beauty, which he wrote for the "Fair Maid of Perth" whom he married, and who separated herself from him on the plea of "incompatibility." Playful as is the style of the story, it is not without a moral, on what constitutes true wealth and happiness. "The Crown of Wild Olive" (1866) consists of lectures on work, traffic, and war; the latter lecture, delivered at the Royal Artillery Institution at Woolwich, was also separately published under the title of "The Future of England." The two former, being addressed to working-men, laborers, and traders, discuss economic problems, and set forth tentatively their author's antagonized political ethics, with which, in drawing this essay to a close, we now venture to deal.

After the magnificent work done by Ruskin in art up to his fortieth year, that he should turn, for practically the remainder of his life, to the seemingly vain and profitless task of a social reformer and regenerator of modern society, has to most men been a riddle too elusive and enigmatic to solve. And yet, in his earlier career, had he not himself prepared us for just such a departure as he took in the sixties, for in art was he not equally revolutionary and iconoclastic, as well as personally self-willed, passionate, and impulsive? Moreover, had not Mother Nature endowed him with the gifts of a seer and made him chivalrous as well as intensely sympathetic, while his early training inclined him to be serious, and even ascetic? Nor were the rebuffs he met with throughout his career calculated at this stage to make him court the applause of his fellow-men or be mindful of the world's censure or approval. Nor can one well quarrel with what he had now to say on many a subject, visionary and enthusiast as he always was, and given over to mediaeval views and preachments, and to abounding moral and ethical exhortation. Like Carlyle's, his voice was that of one crying in the wilderness, and yet in the industrial and social condition of Britain at the era there was need of just such appeals for regeneration and reform as Ruskin strenuously uttered, accompanied by indignant rebukes of grossness, vulgarity, and meanness, as manifested in masses of the people. If in his strivings after amelioration he was too denunciatory as well as too radical, we must remember the temper and manner of the man, and recognize how difficult it was in him, or in any iconoclast who scorned modern science as Ruskin scorned it, to reconcile the age of steam and industrial machinery, which he spurned and would have none of, with the views he held of Christianity, morals, and faith. His views on political economy, which he treated neither as an art nor a science, might be perverse and wrong-headed, and his method of adapting prophetic and apostolic principles to the practice of every-day life utterly impracticable; but the virtues he counselled the nation to manifest, and the graces he enjoined of truthfulness, justice, temperance, bravery, and obedience, were qualities needed to be cultivated in his time, with a fuller recognition of and firmer trust in God and His right of sway in the world He had created.