parents to cherish the hope that he would enter the Church, and great was their grief when he decided otherwise. "He might have been a bishop," said his father regretfully in after years. As he was an only son, and as his father had by this time amassed a considerable fortune, it was not necessary for him to enter any profession, and he accordingly gratified his love of art by studying painting under Copley Fielding and J. D. Harding. To a present of Moxon's magnificent edition of Rogers's "Italy," which he received from his father in his youth, is to be attributed much of Ruskin's lifework. Many of the engravings in it were by Turner, and by their means his attention was attracted to the pictures of the greatest of modern landscape-painters, whom he henceforth admired with an intensity approaching to idolatry. Certain articles in a Review condemnatory of Turner's paintings offended him keenly, and he addresssd a letter to the editor of the Review "reprobating the matter and style of these critiques, and pointing out their dangerous tendency," because "he knew it to be demonstrable that Turner was right and true, and that his critics were wrong, false, and base." The letter grew into a book, and the defence of Turner into the most elaborate English treatise upon art. In 1843 appeared the first volume of "Modern Painters: their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters. By a Graduate of Oxford." The "Oxford Graduate," who in this work boldly set aside many of the articles of the orthodox art creed, succeeded at least in attracting attention, though most of the reviews of his book were condemnatory of its doctrines. In 1846 a second volume of "Modern Painters" was issued, to accompany an enlarged and amended edition of the first. By this time the value of the work had become widely recog nised, and Mr. Ruskin was justly regarded as one of the first writers of the day. In 1856 two more volumes were added, and in 1860 the work was completed by the publication of a third volume. On the composition of "Modern Painters" the author bestowed the utmost pains, often rewriting a paragraph several times, till its melody was such as to suit his fastidious

ear. A new and final edition of "Modern Painters" was issued in 1873, since which time the author has steadfastly refused to reprint it, so that it cannot be obtained unless one is prepared to pay a fancy price for it. Mr. Ruskin's reasons for not reprinting it are various. He has modified some of his opinions since it was written, and, in particular, he does not regard the Church of Rome with the same horror. When "Modern Painters" was composed his views were of the kind called "Evangelical;" and while still Protestant in the genuine sense of the word, his language in one of his latest productions, "The Bible of Amiens," regarding the worship of the Virgin, has evoked an indignant protest from a section of the press. A little volume of selections from "Modern Painters" was published in 1876 under the title of "Frondes Agrestes."

During the interval between the publication of the first and the last volume of " Modern Painters," many of Mr. Ruskin's most important works appeared. "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," which did for architecture what "Modern Painters" did for painting, was published in 1849. In 1851 he published a pamphlet advocating Pre-Raphaelitism, then in its infancy, and issued the first volume of his magnificent "Stones of Venice," which was completed by the publication of two more volumes in 1853. Among many by whom this great work was read with admiration, none was more enthusiastic in its praise than Charlotte Brontë, who declared that Mr. Ruskin seemed to her one of the few genuine writers, as distinguished from bookmakers, of this age. "His earnestness even amuses me in certain passages; for I cannot help laughing to think how Utilitarians will fume and fret over his deep, serious, and (as they will think) fanatical reverence for art. That pure and severe mind you ascribed to him speaks in every line. He writes like a consecrated Priest of the

Abstract and Ideal."

"Modern Painters," "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," and the "Stones of Venice" are Mr. Ruskin's most important works, but he has written much besides. "Unto this Last," four essays on the principles of political economy, very much

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435 opposed to the received ones and extremely paradoxical, appeared in 1862, having been previously published in the Cornhill Magazine. "Sesame and Lilies," originally delivered as lectures in Manchester in 1864, gives his views "about books, and the way we read them, and could or should read them;" and also about the education of women. We need not chronicle "the legions of little books with parody-provoking titles" in which of late years Mr. Ruskin has lifted up his voice against our social evils, and told us how we should remove them. Of these, the most characteristic is "Fors Clavigera," a series of letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain, begun in 1871 and carried on for several years. It must not be supposed that Mr. Ruskin has altogether abandoned his art studies; precious productions of this nature still come from his pen, although it is his work as a social reformer which he now estimates most highly. However erroneous and one-sided many of his opinions on the condi tion of society and on modern improvements, however hopelessly unpractical many of his schemes for the regeneration of mankind may be, all must admire his noble purity of heart, his earnest aspirations after better things, and his unflinching devotion to what he believes to be the truth.

We have mentioned the care with which "Modern Painters" was written. This care has had its reward. The ease and grace of Mr. Ruskin's style, his appropriateness of expression, his splendour of imaginative effect, the harmonious roll of his sentences, and the beautiful thoughts sustained in them, make the study of his great works one of the highest intellectual. pleasures. And they are works which none can study without learning much and benefiting greatly. Yet it is to be feared. that to a very large number of readers Ruskin is a name and nothing besides. While the various editions of the works of Tennyson, the greatest poet of the day, are selling by hundreds of thousands, Ruskin, the greatest living prose writer, is known to most only by the paragraphs of true or false gossip regarding him that appear from time to time in the newspapers. The cause of this is not far to seek. In accordance with one

of his peculiar theories, Mr. Ruskin has chosen to sell his books only through a provincial bookseller, to sell them at the same price to the trade as to the public, and, last but not least, to sell them at such a price as places them almost quite beyond the reach of people of moderate means. Moreover, some of them are out of print, and not to be procured save for a sum which would seem a small fortune to many a working man. Hence arises the fact, probably unique in literary history, of the writings of a man universally admitted to be one of the greatest geniuses of his time, being very little known to the reading public at large, and being absent from the bookshelves of many of the most assiduous collectors of modern literature.

The greatest living critic and one of the greatest living poets is Matthew Arnold, son of the famous Dr. Arnold of Rugby, who revolutionised the discipline of our great public schools, and who occupies no mean rank as an historian. Mr. Arnold, who was born in 1822, was educated at Rugby, on leaving which he was elected to a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford. The following passage from a poem by Principal Shairp, himself a distinguished critic, describes how Mr. Arnold at Oxford—

"Wide-welcomed for a father's fame,

Entered with free, bold step, that seemed to claim
Fame for himself, nor on another lean;

So full of power, yet blithe and debonair,

Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay,

Or half a-dream, chaunting with jaunty air
Great words of Goethe, scrap of Béranger.

We see the banter sparkle in his prose,

But knew not then the undertone that flows,
So calmly sad through all his stately lay."

During his undergraduate career, Mr. Arnold, like Mr. Ruskin, obtained the Newdigate prize for English verse. He graduated with second-class honours; and was, in 1845, elected to a Fellowship at Oriel. In 1847 he was appointed private secretary to the late Lord Landsowne, which office he retained till his marriage in 1851, when he became an

Matthew Arnold.

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inspector of schools, a position he still holds. His first volume, "The Strayed Reveller, and other Poems, by A.," appeared in 1849; the second, "Empedocles on Etna, and other Poems, by A.," in 1852. In 1853 he published a volume of poems under his own name, consisting of selections from the two previously published volumes, along with some new pieces. Another volume followed in 1855. In 1858, "Merope," a tragedy in the Greek manner, was published, and in 1867 "New Poems," in which "Empedocles," only scraps of which had been reprinted since 1852, was republished in entirety, at the request of Mr. Robert Browning. Mr. Arnold belongs to the classical school of poetry, regarding the Greeks, with their strength and simplicity of phrase and their perfect. sense of form, as his masters. To the imaginative power of a true poet, he adds a delicacy and refinement of taste, and a purity and severity of phrase which uncultivated readers often mistake for boldness. Nowhere in his poems do we find those hackneyed commonplaces, decked out with gaudy and ungraceful ornament, which pass for poetry with many people. His fault rather is that he is too exclusively the poet of culture. Many of his verses will always seem flat and insipid to those who have not received a classical education, while, on the other hand, students of Greek literature will be disposed to praise certain of his pieces more highly than their intrinsic merit demands. Yet it may be doubted whether some of his work as a poet will not stand the ordeal of time better than that of any contemporary poet, Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning excepted. There are few poems which show such a refined sense of beauty, such dignity and self-restraint, such admirable adaptation of the form to the subject, as, to give one or two examples, Mr. Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustum," "Tristram and Iseult," and the "Forsaken Merman." On the last of these, Mr. Swinburne's eloquent and enthusiastic criticism may be quoted. "The song is a piece of the sea-wind, a stray breath of the air and bloom of the bays and hills. Its mixture of mortal sorrow with the strange wild sense of a life that is not after mortal law, the child-like moan after lost love mingling with the pure