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Ruskin says, "That which is born of evil begets evil; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches valour and honour." Hence it is that the life of every man is a daily inculcation of good or bad example to others. The life of a good man is at the same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe reproof of vice. Dr.

There is more difference between the language of the English writings of Sir Thomas More and that of the prose of Chaucer than there is between that of More and of Ruskin. But it is not till the seventeenth century that the modern spirit, in the fullest sense of the word, comes into being.

Now, it seems to me that if Mr. Ruskin could realize in some isolated nation this idea of a pastoral, simple existence, under a paternal government, he would have in time an ignorant, stupid, brutal community in a great deal worse case than the agricultural laborers of England are at present.

They will dispute about vertebrae with Cuvier, or metaphysics with William Hamilton, or paintings with Ruskin, or medicine with Doctor Rush, and attempt to sting Professor Jaeger to death with his own insects. The first and last important lesson for such persons to learn is, like this animal at our foot, to shut up their shell.

Venerable Mrs. Jameson, author of a little library of writings on Italian art, was likewise of our company occasionally; and she evinced a marked liking for my father, which was remarkable, inasmuch as he was able to keep no sort of pace with her in her didactic homilies, which were delivered with a tranquil, ex-cathedra manner, befitting one who was the authority on her subject; one would no more have thought of questioning her verdicts than those of Ruskin; but I should have liked to see the latter and her together, with a difference between them.

Ruskin advised me to send an account of the affair to the Cornhill, which I did; but it was rejected, as might have been expected in the state of public opinion at that time, and I can easily imagine Thackeray putting it into the basket in a rage.

Storing his mind like a museum with the wonder of the Old World, but all lit up as by a window with the wonder of the New, he had fallen heir to some thing of the unique critical position of Ruskin or Pater, and was further famous as a discoverer of minor poets. He was a judicious discoverer, and he did not turn all his minor poets into major prophets.

Ruskin said that John Ruskin should have married his mother she spoke the truth. He was married to his mother. For in spite of all our intention, all our creed, all our purity, all our desire and all our will, once we arouse the dynamic relation in the upper, higher plane of love, we inevitably evoke a dynamic consciousness on the lower, deeper plane of sensual love. And then what?

Since the days of Johnson there are but two Englishmen whose lives we know in anything like the same detail Ruskin and Carlyle. We know the life of Ruskin mainly from his own power of impassioned autobiography, and because he had the same sort of power of exhibiting both his charm and his weakness as Boswell had in dealing with Johnson.

Publicity! publicity! was the persistent demand. To meet the demand, small papers, owned and edited by women, sprang up all over the land, and like Jonah's gourd, perished in a night. Ruskin says to be noble is to be known, and at that period there was a great demand on the part of women for their full allowance of nobility; but not one in a hundred thought of merit as a means of reaching it.