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"Ideas there are upset, but a day will come when great and small will rise like one sole gentleman of the good old times, sword in hand' -and he stretched out his arm as if really brandishing a sword—' and compel respect for Christian civilisation, whereas now people respect nothing but interest.'

These glimpses of Ruskin's thoughts and interests illustrate many a page of the Letters in this volume. For here also we see how St. Ursula personified for him the Good and Beautiful. "All real education goes on into an entirely merry and amused life, like St. Ursula's, and ends in a delightsome death" (p. 23). It is St. Ursula who sends him messages (p. 30), dictating even-alas! in language not entirely intelligible-his policy on the Eastern Question (p. 46). Here, too, we find him laying down laws for Sheffield in Venetian terms (pp. 21, 38), and composing a revised Corn Law Rhyme, taught him, as he says, by the Doge Marino Morosini (p. 40 n.).

Count Zorzi has published the first draft of a passage in Ruskin's Preface, which illustrates again the power of St. Ursula over his thoughts at this time. In the Preface, as published, Ruskin praises the Venetian Count for bearing an "ancient name in its unblemished honour." He added in the MS., with reference to one of the pictures in Carpaccio's series,2 "as St. Ursula's standard-bearer; her standard of St. George's cross, bright against the sky by the Castle of Saint Angelo." Thus, at every point, of his artistic and social work alike, did St. Ursula and St. George govern his mind. But, through all his communings, Ruskin remained true to his gospel of manual labour. The Count thus records a morning call:

"One morning I found Mr. Ruskin in the court of the Calcina' with a hatchet in his hand.

"Oh, oh! what are you doing?' I cried. 'Are you preparing to execute summary justice on the assassins of artistic Venice?'

"No, no, my dear friend. As you see, I am cutting wood. Allow me' and he went on splitting certain logs for firewood with the greatest ease and naturalness. When he had set me a sufficiently good example, he invited me to his room, and as we went upstairs he advised me to take exercise in the same way from time to time, assuring me that wood-cutting was a kind of gymnastics very beneficial to health, which he had practised for some time, and which he was sure would do me good."

1 See Vol. XXIV. p. 411.

"The Reception of St. Ursula by the Pope": No. 6 in the series as described in Vol. XXIV. p. lii.

At home, as also abroad, this form of exercise and serviceable manual labour was constant with Ruskin; see his note on the subject in Letter 83, written at Brantwood (p. 2731).

Ruskin returned from Venice in June 1877, as has been previously said, "to St. George's work "; and the Letters written immediately on his return contain much matter on that subject. On a visit to the Midlands, to inspect St. George's land at Bewdley, he saw something of the nail-making district—a sight which inspired one of the most vivid passages in Fors, describing the "Clavigera" of modern industrial life (p. 174). A visit to London earlier in the year, when he went to the theatre and picture-galleries, had one memorable outcome; for a critique of the Grosvenor Gallery in Letter 79 led to the libel case of Whistler v. Ruskin, presently to be noticed. Among the places of entertainment which Ruskin was fond of visiting was the St. James's Hall, where the Moore and Burgess company of "Christy Minstrels " used then to perform. "I remember Sir Edward Burne-Jones's account," says Mr. Collingwood, "of a visit to them; how the Professor dragged him there, to a front seat, and those burnt-corked people anticked and shouted, and Burne-Jones wanted to go, and Ruskin wouldn't, but sat laughing through the whole performance as if he loved it. An afternoon to him of oblivion to the cares of life."3 There is a reference to these Christy Minstrels in Letter 76 (p. 854).

In the autumn of 1877 Ruskin received, among other visitors at Brantwood, Mr. T. C. Horsfall of Manchester, in whose scheme for establishing an Art Museum in that city he was greatly interested. Mr. Horsfall's paper on the subject, with Ruskin's comments, occupies several pages in this volume; 5 and in an Appendix several private letters from Ruskin to the same correspondent are now given. Mr. Horsfall's scheme took shape in the "Manchester Art Museum and University Settlement" (Ancoats Hall, Every Street, Manchester), which for many years has been a centre of "sweetness and light" in that city. It is an admirably educational Museum, and Ruskin's influence is very apparent in the ideas which have governed its arrangements. It includes several of his drawings, as also many copies after Turner by Mr. William Ward, in some cases touched by Ruskin. He wrote a few notes also descriptive of these copies, which the Committee

1 "Ruskin's bill-hook, for cutting coppice at Brantwood," is among the "personal relics" in the Ruskin Museum at Coniston.

Vol. XXIV. p. xlv.

3 Ruskin Relics, p. 156.

See also Vol. XXVIII. p. 492.

See pp. 149-157, 195-197, 213–217.

have placed under them "as one of the many proofs he has given them of his interest in their work."1

The winter months of 1877-1878 were, as already noticed, a time of much mental strain with Ruskin. The state of anger and of isolation, into which the writing of Fors Clavigera was apt to throw him, was a dangerous aggravation of over-work. One seems to see him in these later letters constantly fighting, but in vain, against excitement; certainly he is constantly promising the reader that he means in future to keep calm and adopt a gentler tone. "After this seventh year," he writes in the last Letter of 1877, "I am going out into the highways and hedges; but no more with expostulation. I have wearied myself in the fire enough; and now, under the wild roses and traveller's joy of the lane hedges, will take what rest may be in my pilgrimage (pp. 293-43).

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It may be noted that, just a year before, he had made a like vow. "One quite fixed plan for the last year of Fors," he wrote to Miss Beever from Venice (November 13, 1876), "is that there shall be absolutely no abuse or controversy in it." He permitted himself, however, "a good fling at the Bishops to finish with."4 But there was too much "devil" in him to make those blameful words the last. To his state of nervous irritability at the end of 1877 must be attributed the tone of the correspondence with Miss Octavia Hill, an old, true, and welltried friend, and its publication in Tetter 86 (February 1878). He allowed the correspondence to stand when he afterwards revised the book; but at a later date (1888) he spoke to a friend of his desire to "ask forgiveness" for his "anger and pride." The last Letter (87: "The Snow Manger"), written before his illness, is perfectly coherent and forcible, as a reader, who uses the notes of reference now given below the text, will perceive; but the Letter shows also, as he subsequently said, "a dangerous state of more or less excited temper and too much quickened thought" (p. 382).

And then at last came the break-down, in the form of the grave illness of February 1878. His recovery, as we have seen,5 was not slow;

1 Mr. Horsfall explained his original scheme for the Museum, both in the letter to the Manchester Guardian quoted in Fors, and in a pamphlet entitled The Art Museum, Manchester (1878). An interesting account of the Museum is given in The Ruskin Reading Guild Journal, vol. i. (1889) pp. 149–151.

? See Vol. XXV. pp. xxi. seq.

3 See also p. 200.

+ Hortus Inclusus, p. 40 (ed. 1); reprinted in a later volume of this edition. See also the letter of July 28, 1877, to Mr. Horsfal in Appendix 22 (below, p. 589).

5 Vol. XXV. P. xxvi.

but he was weak, and for some time the injunctions of his doctors made the suspension of Fors imperative.

One of the first duties which awaited him on his partial recovery was the task of considering the defence in the libel action brought by Whistler. Ruskin's critique had appeared in July 1877 (p. 160), and it was at once reported that Whistler intended to bring an action for libel. Ruskin had been delighted at the prospect. "It's mere nuts and nectar to me," he wrote to Burne-Jones, "the notion of having to answer for myself in court, and the whole thing will enable me to assert some principles of art economy which I've never got into the public's head, by writing, but may get sent over all the world vividly in a newspaper report or two.”1 But this was not to be. The action was not brought immediately; Ruskin's serious illness intervened, and when the case was ready for trial his doctors forbade him to risk the excitement of appearing in person. Ruskin and Whistler, it may be interesting to state, had never met. Some years before Whistler had, through a mutual friend, expressed a desire to make the acquaintance of Ruskin, whose works he knew and appreciated, and he wished to show his pictures to the critic, but the meeting had not taken place.

The works which Whistler had exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 were (in addition to a portrait of Carlyle):—

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Ruskin's criticism was general, but was given a certain specific application by the remark that he had "never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." One of the pictures in question-the "Nocturne in Blue and Silver (Battersea Bridge)"-is now in the Tate Gallery (No. 1959), having been presented to the nation by the Art Collections Fund in 1905. It is often stated that this is the picture which Ruskin attacked, but

1 Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. ii. p. 86.

the statement is somewhat misleading. Several pictures were, indeed, included in the critical indictment, but the one which in fact aroused Ruskin's ire was, however, the "Nocturne in Black and Gold (The Falling Rocket)"-the only one of the four Nocturnes then for sale -"a night piece," Whistler called it at the trial, "representing the fireworks at Cremorne." This, too, was the picture which Ruskin's principal witness, Burne-Jones, singled out as justifying the criticisms. It now belongs to Mrs. Samuel Untermeyer.

The case, which was tried before Baron Huddleston, excited lively interest both in artistic circles and among the general public. Ruskin's leading counsel was the Attorney-General, Sir John Holker, and with him was Mr. (afterwards Lord) Bowen.1 On the other side was another famous counsel of the time, Serjeant Parry. Whistler appeared in the box, and he called as experts Mr. Albert Moore, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, and Mr. W. G. Wills. Ruskin's witnesses, besides BurneJones, were Mr. Frith, R.A., and Mr. Tom Taylor. The names of these witnesses show how sharply both the artistic and the critical opinions were at that time divided on the character of Whistler's work. Perhaps it is true of painters, as Wordsworth said of poets, that innovators have to create the taste by which they are to be admired. Whistler produced his Nocturnes in court; the defence produced Ruskin's portrait of the Doge Andrea Gritti by Titian,2 to show what is meant by sound workmanship. In the end the jury found for the plaintiff, but awarded only one farthing damages3—a verdict which implied that in their opinion Ruskin was technically in the wrong, but that substantially his remarks were fair criticism. The

1 Bowen's Opinion, given (November 29, 1877) when the action was first threatened, concluded as follows: "Most people of educated habits of mind are well aware of the infinite importance of having works of art, or alleged works of art, freely and even severely criticised by skilled and competent critics. But Mr. Ruskin must not expect that he will necessarily find juries composed of persons who have any knowledge of or sympathy with art. It would, for example, be hopeless to try to convince a jury that Mr. Ruskin's view of Mr. Whistler's performance was right. They never could or would be able to decide on that. They would look to the language used rather than to the provocation. And their sympathies would rather lean to the side of the man who wanted to sell his picture than to the side of the outspoken critic whose criticism interfered with the sale of a marketable commodity. I think, therefore, that Mr. Ruskin, whose language about Mr. Whistler in Fors Clavigera is exceedingly trenchant and contemptuous, must not be surprised if he loses the verdict. I should rather expect him to do so. The question is one of fact, whether the limits of fair and reasonable criticism were passed or not. And this issue will have to be determined not by a tribunal with any knowledge of or love for art, but by a jury composed of those who probably know nothing about it."

2 Plate X. in Vol. XIX.

3 Whistler for some years used to wear the farthing on his watch-chain.

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