JOHN list of limitations. PAPERS. Vol. I. Session 1874-5. Pp. xiand 152. Paperboards. Price Four Shillings. 1875. Contents. John Byrom, the Manchester Stenographer - - J; E. Bailey, F.S.A. The Lancashire Dialect as a Vehicle for Poetry - George Milner. On the Word “Thisne” in Mid. Night’s Dream The Works of Ford Madox Brown - - - - The House Fly - -. Physiological Origin of Metrical Poetry - - Book Rarities of the Manchester Free Library cSSnS^portr^t): I I - ] - F H-‘N°3d | Geo.MUn^ And abstracts of papers by Charles Rowley, jun., John Ilant, F.G.S., Tiaines S. Dawson, William Lawson, E. Sowerbutts, Walter Tomlinson, Richard Newton, J. W. Hunter, Charles Hadfield, and Robert Bruce Wallace. , J. H. Haworth. F. J. Shields. William Hindshaw. Arthur O’Neill. Wm. E. A. Axon. John Mortimer. Very much above the average of such productions manent value, none of them is without interest. volume.—Westminster Review, Oct., 1875. Many of the papers possess a per- We can strongly recommend the PAPERS. Vol. II. Session 1875-6. Pp. vi and 190. Price, in cloth, Six Shillings; paper cover, Five Shillings.1876. Contents. Clubs of Old Manchester.- J. W. Hunter. Circulation of Newspapers and Periodicals in Manchester.J* Nodal and Heywood, jun. The late Chetham Librarian (Thos. Jones, F.S. A.) Wm. E. A. Axon, The Former Costume of the Gypsies - H. T. Crofton. A Holiday in the South : The New Forest - - John Mortimer. The Sonnet..George Milner. On the Cypher of Pepys’ Diary - - -' - - - J. E. Bailey, r.b.A. A Nook of North Lancashire.Edward Kirk. Mr. Emerson on some English Poets - - - ■ J. H. Nodal. Ancient Lancashire Battlefields - - - - - * Charles Hardwick. And abstracts of papers by John Evans, William Lawson, W. H. J. lrarce, Henry T. Robberds, Walter Tomlinson, John Plant, F.G.S., and Morgan Brierley. A volume of varied interest .—British Architect, July 7» 1876. It really would be a task to find another volume that tells so much, so happilyi purchaseable for six shillings.— Manchester Critic, August 4, 1876. A very interesting and instructive volume.— Preston Chronicle, Sep. 30, 1876. The collection contains several good papers, notably .those on the ^circ uJati OTl . periodicals in Manchester, and on Pepys' system of shorthand .—Westminster Rc Vle7o April, 1877. •V>.! -'LJ, . I* •wA'L JOHN RUSKIN BIBLIOGRAPHICAL BIOGRAPHY Bv WILLIAM E. A. AXON, M.R.S.L. [Reprinted from Vol. V. of the Papers of the Manchester i Literary Club.] JOHN RUSKIN: A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL BIOGRAPHY. BY WILLIAM E. A. AXON, M.R.S.L. 'T'HE literary life of John Ruskin may be said to have extended over half a century. The early dawn of his intellectual powers may be recognized from some childish verses written one month before he had arrived at his ninth year. It was “ written on a frosty day, in'Glen Farg, just north of Loch Leven,” on New Year’s Day, 1828 (Queen of the Air , p. 128):— Papa, how pretty those icicles are, That are seen so near, that are seen so far; Those dropping waters that come from the rocks And many a hole, like the haunt of a fox. That silvery stream that runs babbling along, Making a murmuring, dancing song. Those trees that stand waving upon the rock’s side, And men that, like spectres, among them glide. And waterfalls that are heard from far, And come in sight when very near. And the water-wheel that turns slowly round, Grinding the corn that—requires to be ground. And mountains at a distance seen, And rivers winding through the plain. And quarries with their craggy stones, And the wind among them moans. The child is father of the man, though the evidences of the parentage are occasionally somewhat difficult to discover. This 4 JOHN RUSKIN. boyish rhyme contains, however, no uncertain prophecy. Mr. Ruskin himself sees in it “ all that I ever could be, or all that I cannot be.” Verse-writing was not to be the work of Ruskin’s life; but he did not abandon the muses until about 1850, when his poems were collected for private circulation. Some of them had appeared in Friendship's Offering and other annuals. From this very rare volume two pieces may be quoted :— SONG. (^Etat 14.) I weary for the torrent leaping From off the scar’s rough crest; My muse is on the mountain sleeping, My harp is sunk to rest. I weary for the fountain foaming, For shady holm and hill; My mind is on the mountain roaming, My spirit’s voice is still. / I weary for the woodland brook, That wanders through the vale; I weary for the heights that look Adown upon the dale. The crags are lone on Coniston And Loweswater’s dell; And dreary on the mighty one, The cloud enwreathed Scawfell. Oh ! what although the crags be stern, Their mighty peaks that sever, Fresh flies the breeze on mountain fern, And free on mountain heather. 1 long to tread the mountain head, Above the valley swelling ; I long to feel the breezes sped From grey and gaunt Helvellyn. I love the eddying circling sweep, The mantling and the foam Of murmuring waters dark and deep Amid the valleys lone. It is a terror, yet ’tis sweet, Upon some broken brow To look upon the distant sweep Of ocean spread below. JOHN RUSKIN. s There is a thrill of strange delight That passes quivering o’er me, When blue hills rise upon the sight Like summer clouds before me. THE WRECK. (^Etat 19.) Its masts of might, its sails so free, Had borne the scatheless keel Through many a day of darkened sea, And many a storm of steel; When all the winds were calm, it met (With home-returning prore) With the lull Of the waves On a low lee shore. The crest of the conqueror On many a brow was bright; The dew of many an exile’s eye Had dimmed the dancing sight; And for love and for victory, One welcome was in store, In the lull Of the waves On a low lee shore. The voices of the night are mute Beneath the moon’s eclipse ; The silence of the fitful flute Is on the dying lips. The silence of my lonely heart Is kept for evermore In the lull Of the waves On a low lee shore. In 1839, Mr. Ruskin gained the Newdigate prize for the English poem at the University of Oxford. It was entitled Salsette and Elephanta . The quality of his verses are evident. There is, amidst many evidences of juvenility, a command over the music of language, and a rare power of describing the varying impressions of scenery. The boy, reared amidst the glories of hill and lake, and beneath unsullied skies, became a lover of nature. The imagination is as necessary in science as in poetry. It would perhaps not be far wrong to say that every JOHN RUSKIN. 6 great man of science is, if not a singer spoiled, at least a poet in potentiality. Mr. Ruskin’s earliest printed pieces were short articles in Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History , and were written when he was sixteen. It will be best to ppstpone the indication of Mr. Ruskin’s other writings bearing on the study of nature, until we have seen how his attention was for many years diverted from them to other fields. To this period belongs his delightful Legend of Stiria, a fairy tale, called The King of the Golden River , published in 1851, with Mr. Richard Doyle’s illustrations. This was not written for publication, but for the entertainment of a child-friend in 1841. Mr. Ruskin had in a rare measure those powers of observation and of analysis which make a delight of the observation of landscape. The “book of nature” was no commonplace phrase to him, but had a real and an intense meaning. The glory of cloud and sky, of hill and lake, had a special message for him. This delight in the beauty of landscape made him an early admirer of Turner, whose pictures of sea and sky seemed a new heavenly apocalypse. Mr. Ruskin, himself, tells us that the gift of taking pleasure in landscape “ I assuredly possess in a greater degree than most men, it having been the ruling passion of my life, and the reason for the choice of its field of labour.” The genius of Turner, the greatest interpreter the world has ever seen of the subtle and mystic meaning of the beauty of earth and sky, was unrecognized, and the artist himself was assailed in a manner which displayed at once the virulence and the ignorance of the critics. One of these articles, more foolish and more furious than usual, drew forth the indignation of Ruskin, who knew it to be “demonstrable that Turner was right and true, and that his critics were wrong, false, and base.” The projected letter of defence to the journal grew into a pamphlet, and the pamphlet in its revised and enlarged form was the first volume of Modern Painters. The title originally selected was Turner and the Ancients , but the limitations thus implied were soon overpassed. * ‘The title was changed and notes on other living painters added in the first volume, in deference to the advice of friends; probably wise, for unless the change had been made the book might never have been read at all.” Modern Painters was fiercely and somewhat clumsily assailed in JOHN RUSKIN. 7 Blackwood for October, 1843. One passage, the critic says, “ might have been very excusable in a young curate’s sermon during his first year of probation, and might have won for him more nosegays and favours than golden opinions” (p. 486). The critic resorts to the dictionary for the meaning of the word “ chrysoprase ” (Rev. xxi. 20). This laid him open to Mr. Ruskin’s retort:— We are not insulted with opinions on music from persons ignorant of its notes ; nor with treatises on philology by persons unacquainted with the alphabet; but here is page after page of criticism, which one may read from end to end, looking for something which the writer knows, and finding nothing. Not his own language, for he has to look in his dictionary, by his own confession, for a word occurring in one of the most important chapters of his Bible; not the commonest traditions of the schools, for he does not know why Poussin was called “learned ; ” not the most simple canons of art, for he prefers Lee to Gainsborough; not the most ordinary facts of nature, for we find him puzzled by the epithet “silver,” as applied to the orange-blossom, evidently never having seen anything silvery about an orange in his life, except a spoon,* The critics were not all blind. One of them writing in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1843, whilst evidently startled by the novelty of the doctrines advanced, ends thus :— ' Such is the purpose of this work ; and the boldness of its design is well supported by the diligence and knowledge, and skilfulness displayed in the execution. The author has laid a solid foundation in the broad and philoso¬ phical principles he applies to the art; while, in the very minute, exact, and delicate criticisms he delivers, he shows a practical and artist-like acquaintance with the details of the subject. If his theory is wrong, if his reasonings are incorrect, and his conclusions not warranted, it must arise from other causes than from unacquaintance with his subject, from indolence in the collections of materials, or unskilfulness in using them; for, undoubtedly, he has deeply investigated the laws and principles of the art he discusses—he has dwelt on it with a lover’s fondness, and studied it with a critic’s attention. He is also an eloquent and impressive writer; he has a command of expression adapted to the varying sentiments he wishes to convey, and can describe the captivating beauties of painting in the brilliant colour of poetic diction. The first volume of Modern Painters appeared in 1843; the Second in 1846; the Third and Fourth in 1856; and the Fifth and last in i860. A new and final edition of the work was issued in 1873. * Modern Painters (Preface to Second Edition). 8 JOHN RUSKIN. In Modern Painters it is necessary to discriminate between the accidental form which the work assumed and the permanent truths it enforces and explains. The book was “not written either for fame or for money, or for conscience’ sake, but of necessity,” because injustice was being done and falsehood usurping’ the place of truth. The cardinal principle of Mr. Ruskin’s art criticism may be stated in his own words used in describing Modern Painters: “ It declares the perfectness and eternal beauty of the Work of God, and tests all work of man. by concurrence with or subjection to that.” Apart from its value as a statement of the principles of art and of art criticism, Modern Painters shows extraordinary insight into nature, and power to reproduce the impressions caused by the ceaseless changes of the glory at once evanescent and eternal of shore, and sea, and sky. He who walks humbly with Nature will seldom be in danger of losing sight of Art. He will commonly find in all that is truly great of man’s works something of their original, for which he will regard them with gratitude, and sometimes follow them with respect. While he who takes Art as his authority may entirely lose sight of all that it interprets, and sink at once into the sin of an idolator and the degradation of a slave.* Mr. Ruskin has decided not to republish Modern Painters as a whole; but a selection, called Readings, “ chosen at her pleasure, by the author’s friend, the younger lady of the Thwaite, Coniston,” was issued in 1875 and 1876, under the title of Frondes Agrestes (i.e., the Foliage of the Fields). The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) arose out of memo¬ randa prepared in the composition of one of the sections of the then unpublished third volume of Modern Painters. It was an attempt to raise a noble art from degradation. This is manifest even in the definition : “Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them contributes to his mental health, power, and pleasure.” The “lamps” are the Spirits of Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and Obedience. Mr. Ruskin now turned aside for a moment to controversial divinity. The Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds was issued in 1851, and it came to a second edition in the same year. * Pref. to Second Edition Modern Painters . JOHN RUSKIN. 9 Mr. Hill Burton says that he had been informed “ that this book had a considerable run among the Muirland farmers, whose reception of it was not flattering.” The third edition, which the author calls the second, was issued in 1875, and contains in the preface this characteristic confession: “It amazes me to find on re-reading it, that, so late as 1851, I had only got the length of perceiving the schisms between sects of Protestants to be criminal and ridiculous, while I still sup¬ posed the schisms between Protestants and Catholics to be virtuous and sublime.” In 1851 appeared a tract on Pre-Raphaelitism , which was re¬ printed in 1862. It records his delight at the appearance of a group of men prepared to accept the advice, given at the close of the first volume of Modern Painters , t^ the young artists of Eng¬ land, that they should “go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to penetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.” They had been rewarded by scurrilous abuse, and Mr. Ruskin therefore came forward in their defence “ to point out the kind of merit which, however deficient in some respects, those works possess beyond the possibility of dispute.” The first volume of The Stones of Venice appeared in 1851; the second and third in 1853. As in the Seven La?nps , the ethical aspect occupies largely the mind of the author. It is not only a treatise on the archaeology and history of Venice, but a sermon on the causes of her downfall and decay. To illustrate this work there was issued a sumptuous atlas folio of Exainples of the Architecture of Venice . Giotto and his Works in Padua is an explanatory notice of the wood engravings from paintings of that master issued by the Arundel Society in 1854. It does not profess to be a biography of the artist, though it contains an outline of the artist’s life, and, in particular, a subtle and suggestive criticism on the well-known anecdote of his drawing of the O. For the Arundel Society Ruskin has also written a notice of the Cavalli monument, and of Tintoretto’s paintings of Christ before Pilate and of Christ bearing the Cross. In 1853 Mr. Ruskin gave a series of Lectures on Architecture JOHN RUSKIN. IO and Painting , which were printed in the following year. They , are intended to give a popular exposition of the principles of art and their application. The pamphlet on The Opening of the Crystal Palace, considered in some of its relations to the prospects of art, was occasioned by the re-erection of Paxton’s palace at Sydenham and some of the extravagant utterances occasioned by it. Well, it may be replied, we need our bridges, and have pleasure in our palacesbut we do not want Miltons, nor Michael Angelos. Truly, it seems so; for,’in the year in which the first Crystal Palace was built, there died among us a man whose name, in after ages, will stand with those of the great of all time. Dying, he bequeathed to the nation the whole mass of his most cherished works ; and for these three years, while we have been building this colossal receptacle for casts and copies of the art of other nations, these works of our own greatest painter have been left to decay in a dark room near Cavendish Square, under the custody of an aged servant. This is quite natural. But it is also memorable. > There is another interesting fact connected with the history of the Crystal Palace as it bears on that of the art of Europe, namely, that in the year 1851, when all that glittering roof was built, in order to exhibit the petty arts of oui fashionable luxury—the carved bedsteads of Vienna, and glued toys of Switzerland, and gay jewelry of France—in that very year, I say, the greatest pictures of the Venetian masters were rotting at Venice in the rain, for want of roof to cover them, with holes made by cannon shot through their canvas. There is another fact, however, more curious than either of these, which will hereafter be connected with the history of the palace now in building ; namely, that at the very period when Europe is congratulated on the invention of a new style of architecture, because fourteen acres of ground have been covered with glass, the greatest examples in existence of true and noble Christian architecture were being resolutely destroyed ; and destroyed by the effects of the very interest which was slowly beginning to be excited by them. Another passage in this now rare tract foreshadows also the striving of his soul under the burden of the social misery. If, suddenly, in the midst of the enjoyments of the palate and lightnesses of heart of a London dinner-party, the walls of the chamber were parted, and through their gap, the nearest human beings who were famishing, and in misery, were borne into the midst of the company—feasting and fancy-free if, pale with sickness, horrible in destitution, broken by despair, body by body, they were laid upon the soft carpet, one beside the chair of every guest, would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to them—would only a passing glance, a passing thought be vouchsafed to them? Yet the actual facts, the real relations of each Dives and Lazarus, are not altered by the intervention of the house wall between the table and the sick bed—by the few feet of ground (how few !) which are indeed all that separate the merriment from the misery. JOHN RUSKIN. II The pamphlet ended with an earnest plea for the prevention of the desecration and destruction then in progress under the name of restoration, and which has since done such irretrievable mischief. From 1855 to 1859 Mr. Ruskin issued Notes on some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited at the Royal Academy each year. The series was then discontinued, but resumed for the year 1875 only. The Notes o?i the Turner Galle?y at Marlborough House appeared in 1856, and show in a brief and compendious form the views of the greatest of English critics on the greatest of landscape painters. Next year there was a privately-printed Catalogue of Sketches, and two editions of a Catalogue of the Turner Exhibition of 1857-8. Turner’s Drawings of the Harbours of England were engraved by Thomas Lupton, and published in 1856, with an illustrative text, by Mr. Ruskin. This book will always have a deep interest alike for the admirers of Turner and of Ruskin. The intro¬ duction contains a noble prose-poem in praise of the sea. In Frondes Agrestes he notes that he was rather proud of the short sentence in this book, describing a great breaker against rock : “ One moment, a flint cave,—the next, a marble pillar,—the next, a fading cloud” (page 73). The Elements of Drawing, first published in 1857, came to a second edition in the same year. It is interesting as containing his views on the method of art teaching, which should not begin before the age of twelve or fourteen. “I do not think it advisable,” he says, “to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the colour-box may be taken away till it knows better; but as soon as it begins painting red coats on soldiers, striped flags to ships, &c., it should have colours at command ; and without restraining its choice of subject in that imaginative and historical art, of a military tendency, which children delight in (generally quite as valuable, by the way, as any historical art delighted in by their elders), it should be gently led by the parents to try to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things it can see and likes—birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruits. In later years, the indulgence of using the colour should only be granted as a 12 JOHN RUSKIN. reward, after it has shown care and progress in its drawings with pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints should always be within a boy’s reach ; in these days of cheap illustration he can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales without good woodcuts in it, and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind ; but should be firmly restricted to a few prints and to a few books.” Mr. Ruskin’s latest views on the method of art teaching are given in The Laws of Fesole . In 1859 appeared The Elements of Perspective. The Two Paths are lectures on art, and its applica¬ tion to decoration and manufacture, delivered in 1858-9, and printed in 1859. A new edition appeared in 1878. The subjects of these discourses are the deteriorative power of conventional art over nations, the unity of art, modern manufactures and design, the influence of the imagination in architecture, and the work of iron, in nature, art, and policy. The lectures on the Political Economy of Art , originally delivered in Manchester in 1857, and printed in the same year, mark a fresh development of Mr. Ruskin’s teachings. In his opinion a large number of our so- called merchants are as ignorant of the nature of money as they are reckless, unjust, and unfortunate in its employment. Mr. Ruskin’s views as to the adaptability of Gothic to all the re¬ quirements of modern life are set forth in his two letters to Dr. Acland, printed in 1859, in the volume descriptive of the Oxford Museum. Unto this Last is a volume containing four essays on the first principles of political economy, which originally appeared in the Cornhill Magazine . The first edition appeared in 1862, the second in 1877. It is a protest against the “idea that an advan¬ tageous code of social action may be determined irrespectively of the influence of social affection.” The outcry against them was so great that the editor of the Cornhill , “ with great discom¬ fort to himself,” had to limit their number to four.* For the first time, as he believes, he gives, in plain English, a logical definition of wealth. Subsequent essays-in Eraser's Magazine , in 1862-3, were stopped by the intervention of the orthodox pub¬ lisher of that periodical. This more systematic treatment of the economical problem finally appeared in 1872 under the title of Munera Pulveris . It contains essays on storekeeping, coinkeep¬ ing, commerce, government, and mastership. * Mune 7 'a Pulveris , p. xxii. JOHN RUSKIN. 13 The two greatest living prose writers are undoubtedly Carlyle and Ruskin. They are great by reason of their command of style ; they are great by their influence upon the lives and thoughts of the generation amongst whom their lot has been cast. We are too close to see in accurate vision either of these men. We lack the perspective of time. Giants in literature themselves, they have each uttered admonitory counsels on the uses of books, the dangers and delights of the study of literature, and their bearing on the life that now is. In Sesame and Lilies , which were originally delivered as lectures at Manchester in 1864, we have Mr. Ruskin’s views “ about books; and about the way we read them, and could or should read them; ” as also on the education of women. On books there are many pregnant sentences, as this one which goes to the root of the matter:— You might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough), and remain an utterly “ illiterate” uneducated person ; but that if you . read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter—that is to say with real accuracy—you are for evermore in some measure an educated person. As an example of real reading, he gives that passage from Milton’s Lycidas about “ the pilot of the Galilean lake,” and explains it word by word. He indignantly remarks : “If a man spends lavishly on his library you call him mad—a biblio¬ maniac. But you never call anyone a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books.” It is to be regretted that neither Ruskin nor Carlyle have given lists of the works which they recommend for students. In this respect Emerson has been more systematic, for he has given a long and remark¬ able list of the great books of all ages.* We may perhaps consider Mr. Ruskin’s Bibliotheca Pastorum (1876) as an indica¬ tion of books that he would advise to be read. The two volumes of that series, so far issued, consist of an English translation of The Economist of Xenophon , and of Rock Honeycomb , being selections from Sir Philip Sidney’s Psalter. Each is fitted with an introduction and explanatory notes. Returning to the con¬ tents of Sesame and Lilies , in addition to the lecture on King’s * There is indeed a list at the end of the Elements of Drawing,, among things to be studied, but it appears to be special and not general in its aim. 14 JOHN RUSKIN. Treasuries (/.is pin 11 % HV i toitjs Np itoj» t i P % ftfck siiak iod.it rtieH: Cfe dele: ash olsoft 'ia l: # iai iottoi thek m p Btf is 12* lies. its JOHN RUSKIN. 21 The epilogue, left incomplete through the writer’s illness, contains much interesting matter respecting his early acquisition of Turner’s drawings. A very sumptuous edition of these notes, with illus¬ trations in photogravure, has also appeared. How sadly falls the sound of the words with which Mr. Ruskin closes his preface :— Morning breaks as I write, along those Coniston Fells, and the level mists, motionless and grey beneath the rose of the moorlands, veil the lower woods, and the sleeping village, and the long lawns by the lake-shore. Oh, that some one had but told me, in my youth, when all my heart seemed to be set on these colours and clouds, that appear for a little while then vanish away, how little my love of them would serve me, when the silence of lawn and wood, in the dews of morning, should be completed ; and all my thoughts be of those whom, by neither, I was to meet more ! This lengthy list by no means represents the full extent of Mr. Ruskin’s literary activity. What have been named are his prin¬ cipal works, but in addition he has contributed to the Archi¬ tectural Magazine , Quarterly Review , the Contemporary , the Nineteenth Century , and other reviews, to the Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects, of the Geological and of the Meteorological Societies. In Fors (No. lxxv., Dec., 1875) he states that he had seven books in the press at once— “ and any one of them enough to take up the remainder of my life.” We have his own testimony that he has also collections for other works. In the preface to Deucalion (1875) he says:— Of these materials, I have now enough by me for a more interesting (in my own opinion) history of fifteenth-century Florentine art, in six octavo volumes; an analysis of the Attic art of the fifth century B.C., in three volumes; an exhaustive history of northern thirteenth-century art, in ten volumes; a life of Turner, with analysis of modern landscape art, in four volumes; a life of Walter Scott, with analysis of epic art, in seven volumes; a life of Xenophon, with analysis of the general principles of Education, in ten volumes ; a com¬ mentary on Hesiod, with final analysis of the principles of Political Economy, in nine volumes ; and a general description of the geology and botany of the Alps, in twenty-four volumes. What, then, is the teaching of Ruskin,—taught with so much passion and fervour, with such wealth of illustration, with such power and melody of language. It is that Art should be true to Nature, and that Man should be true to God. When Art loses its faith in Nature, it ceases to possess utility. When Man ceases to work Righteousness, there follow disorders and social perils of 4 22 JOHN RUSKIN. every kind. Ruskin beholds in our modern society an aristocracy which has abdicated its functions, a middle class largely given up to greed, a working class struggling in the dark, but dimly conscious of injustice. He sees the fair fields replaced by “jerry-built” houses, the lechery, the drunkenness, the brutality that disgrace our towns and degrade men and women below the level of the beasts, and put them on a par with the fiends of the pit. He says we want Reverence, Obedience, and Organization, to grapple with these evils. He not only denounces the wrong, but has a method for its redress. Even if it prove impracticable, we still owe him a debt of gratitude. He has taught us, perhaps more than any man, the glory of the visible universe. He has taught us also that it is an ill return for God's gift of delight in beauty and order to leave our brethren festering in misery and despair. Note. -The preparation of this paper has been helped by the well stored library and scholarly courtesy of Mr. J. E. Bailey, F.S.A. Free use has also been made of the almost complete series of Mr. Ruskin’s works in the Manchester Free Library. LIST OF PUBLICATIONS. PAPERS. Vol. III. Session 1876-7. Pp. vi and 308. Price, doth, Seven Shillings and Six- pence ..1877. A Moorland Student - - . J''' 1 s - Rohert Browning’s Ghilde Roland ' W A O’Conor R A The Three Quests : The Sangrail, Childe Roland, ' ' ' ° ° ’ KA ' and Childe Harold. T _i ,, .. English Almanacs and their Authors .... Abel Hmyood^iim 0h ° ' Shelley and Ihe Skylark.SENSES ’jX. K*e, Morgan Brierley, J. H. Nodal, Wm. E. A. Axon, Coleridge in Manchester.. H^Nodai^ 1 * ^ others - Samuel Butler, Tragedian.. J^n Evans The Rev. John Whitaker, the Historian of Man* J Chester. t k Bailev f q a The Folk of a North Lancashire Nook- - - - Edward Kirk With abstracts of papers by the Rev. R. Henry Gibson, B A., John Evans, William Goldthorpe, Walter Tomlinson, and Charles Madeley; and an Appendix containing Notabilia of the Chetham Library, a List of Lanca- shire and Cheshire Publications in 1876, and an Index to the first Three Volumes of the Club Papers. Ihe third volume of the Papers of the Manchester Literary Club is fully as interesting as the preceding volumes ; the number of subjects, copiously or briefly treated shows in wfat various fi ni dS ° f llterat ', ire ' ar chaeoWy, and art, the members of the club are gathering frnm ik nlc lhere are g i° 0< ? exa “P Ies ?T nervo V s style in the book, nor is humour discarded from its pages. . . . Just now intending tourists ate hunting their shelves or persecuting he booksellers for nice reading “by the sad sea waves,” or, on a rainy day, fn S lodgings; and, to. our thinking,- one of the likeliest books to take would be thisvoLSo the Manchester Literary Club Papers .—Manchester Critic , August 24, 1877. PAPERS. Vol. IV. Session 1877-8. With Illustrations from original drawings, by R. G. Somerset, William Meredith, Christopher Blacklock, Walter Tomlinson, and Elias Bancroft; portrait of Butterworth, the mathematician ; and two views of Clayton Old Hall. Price, cloth, Seven Shillings and Sixpence. ------ 1878. Contents : Lancashire Mathematicians -.Morgan Brierley. Tennyson’s Palace of Art.Rev. W. A. O’Conor, B.A. Six Half-Centuries of Epitaphs.R. M. Newton. Baptismal Names in Lancashire and Yorkshire - Rev. C. W. Bardsley, M.A. Canon Parkinson: a biographical sketch - - - John Evans. Ceist.Henry Franks. The Provincial Mind.George J. Plolyoake. Hamlet.Rev. W. A. O’Conor, B.A. Armscott and George Fox.Walter Tomlinson. John Owens.Joseph C. Lockhart. A Trip to Lewis.Arthur O’Neill. Christmas in Wales.John Mortimer. Dryden as Lyrist.George Milner. And other papers by J. H. Nodal, William Lawson, Charles Rowley, jun., Rev. R. H. Gibson, B.A., Charles Hardwick, Abel Heywood, jun., Leonard D. Ardill, Edward Kirk, M. J. Lyons, Edward Williams, William Hindshaw, Alfred Owen Legge, and R. J. Udall. MBfc LIST OF PUBLICATIONS. GLOSSARY of the LANCASHIRE DIALECT. By ]. H. Nodal and George Milner. With Etymological "Notes and Illustrative Passages from Anglo-Saxon and Middle English Authors and from writers in the Dialect. Part I. containing words from A to E. Price Three Shillings and Sixpence ; Large Paper, Seven Shillings and € Sixpence - A very important and valuable work. . . . A most important contribution to philo¬ logical literature.— Scotsman, March 31, 187b. Not merely a collection of words, but illustrations of them placed in chronological order, ranging from Old English down to the present day. The work"thits becomes not merely a scientific history of the English language, but throws the greatest light upon many passages of our older authors.— Westminster Review, April, .1876. It is carefully executed, and may take its place beside the well-known glossaries of Atkinson, Forby, Miss Baker, Barnes' and the rest. . . . The most valuable part lies in the illustrations from books written in the dialect and from colloquial usage.— Academy, jj July 1, 1876. ' BIBLIOGRAPHY of LANCASHIRE and CHESHIRE. The publications of the two Counties during 1876. Pp. vii and 38. Price One Shilling.1877. This important record. Nothing so suggestive and so really useful to the general book- trade as this Bibliography of Lancashire and Cheshire has hitherto been published in the provinces.— Bookseller , September, 1877. LANCASHIRE AUTHORS. A List, with Brief Biogra¬ phical and Bibliographical Notes. Edited by Charles William Sutton. Pp. viiUand 164. Price Ten Shil¬ lings, cloth - - - - \ ------- - 1876. The rigid accuracy which has been attempted will be very serviceable. We congratulate Mr. Sutton on the successful issue of his enterprise .—Manchester Guardian, Jan. 15, 1877. This excellent manual. It will save the librarian and the student an incalculable amount of research among out-of-the-way and little known authorities and documents, to say nothing of the fresh information, chiefly about living writers, which is here published for the first time. We congratulate Mr. Sutton and his colleagues of the Manchester Literary Club upon the successful and thoroughly-satisfactory accomplishment of an arduous undertaking. Manchester City Nenvs. $ui)Iisf)rrg to tfje # 5 aitcf)fster Htterarg <*TIut>: ABEL HEYWOOD & SON, Oldham Street, Manchester; and Catherine Street, Strand, London.