him. He recognised, for instance, that a poor man who is healthy and happy is more enviable than a rich man who is neither. That was the foundation of his attacks upon the political economists. He saw and stated that the important thing is not to understand the laws of human life as they affect our pockets, but to understand them as they affect ourselves. He saw that a man may get more benefit from a thing that costs twopence than from another thing that costs a thousand pounds. And he accordingly asserted that price is not the real test of value. The effect of MUNERA PULVERIS and UNTO THIS LAST was not to show that political economy was wrong; it was to show that it was an affair of comparatively small importance. Because in these books Ruskin took account of human

feeling, which is just as necessary and just as common a thing as the human body or human reason, he has been persistently derided as a sentimentalist. That is illogical.

You might as well call a man an acrobat because he had written a

treatise on anatomy. Some day, however, it will be realised that he was treating, quite dispassionately, the most important of the sciences.

There

The fact that appeared to Ruskin to give the key to human conduct was that nothing is really of value to a man unless it bring health to his body or exercise and development to his mind and feelings. There may be physical experience which is agreeable but does not tend to increase health; it is of no use to the body. may be mental occupations which are agreeable, but do not tend to increase mental power; they are of no use to the mind. There may be experiences of feeling which are agreeable and yet do not tend to increase morality; they are of no use to the feelings. And what is of no use to the body,

the mind, or the feelings is of no value to man. The agreeableness of these experiences is illusory, and would never be felt but for disordered and perverted instinct. That, we take it, was the gospel of Ruskin, as it was the gospel of the founder of Christianity. Christianity. It is the most solid

science you can have.

Being then a great philosopher Ruskin had of course a very great qualification for understanding the significance of painting. Philosophy, in the sense of an accurate understanding of the principles which should guide human conduct, may almost be said to embrace all the other sciences. It teaches us the true significance of mathematics, chemistry, physics, and the rest. That is a philosophy in which a child may be more proficient than the most learned professor. Ruskin had a great deal of this philosophy, and it is therefore not surprising that he was able to say something of great importance about art. Had he lived

in an ideal world he would have been able to say things of greater importance still; but because he did not live in an ideal world his very greatness as a philosopher was in some respects an obstacle to him. Such was the power over Ruskin of his own genius for the understanding of the problem of human conduct, and so intense was his desire to impart an understanding of it to others, that he was led to look upon the bettering of the lives of men as a supreme object to which all human effort of every kind ought to be directed. The result was that he regarded the study of art almost as a branch of the study of morals; nay more,-he regarded it as a means to the inculcating of moral principles. The closing words of the introduction to THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE are a remarkable illustration of this.

I have ventured, at the risk of giving to some passages the appearance of irreverence, to take the higher line of argument wherever it appeared clearly traceable; and this, I would ask the reader especially to observe, not merely because I think it is the best mode of reaching ultimate truth; still less because I think the subject of more importance than many others; but because every subject should surely, at a period like the present, be taken up in this spirit, or not at all. The aspect of the years that approach us is as solemn as it is full of mystery; and the weight of evil against which we have to contend is increasing like the letting out of water. It is no time for the idleness of metaphysics, or the entertainment of the arts.

The

blasphemies of the earth are sounding louder and its miseries heaped heavier every day and if, in the midst of the exertion which every good man is called upon to put forth for their repression or relief, it is lawful to ask for a thought for a moment, for a lifting of the finger, in any direction but that of the immediate and overwhelming need, it is at least incumbent upon us to approach the questions on which we would engage him in the spirit which has become the habit of his mind, and in the hope that neither his zeal nor his usefulness may be checked by the withdrawal of an hour, which has shown him how even those things which seemed mechanical, indifferent, or contemptible depend for their perfection upon the acknowledgement of the principles of faith, truth and obedience, for which it has become the occupation of his life to contend.

It is scarcely too much to say that this amounts to a confession of prejudice. It is one thing to investigate art by the light of a profound understanding of human nature, and find that its significance for men is that it tends to make them moral; it is another thing to start with the intention of making men moral, and then enter upon an investigation of art with the determination that it shall conduce to that end. Ruskin's

desire to make art a means to morals was so intense that it spoiled the simplicity and accuracy of his insight

into its ethical power. He did not approach the subject with a single and impartial mind. He set to work

to collect and enumerate all the methods by which a picture could make an an ethical suggestion. He applied himself to the detection of possibilities of moral influence with the ingenuity and the concentration of a Sherlock Holmes. The result was that he lost his sense of the supremacy of the main aim of art, and magnified the importance of minor incidents which form little part of its real concern.

But Ruskin's desire to reform men's lives was not the only cause of his looking upon art as the handmaid of morals. There can be no doubt that the tendency was in great measure fostered by his own practice of painting. The great moralist found in painting a channel for the exercise of patience and reverence. When he was painting he felt that he was expressing his individuality, but he did not realise that he was expressing the individuality of a moralist, not of a painter. Ruskin altogether exaggerated the connection between merit in a painting and virtue in the artist. He seems almost to have thought that you have only to stand up to an easel in a spirit of patience, reverence, and humility in order to produce a great picture. The truth of course is that the virtue must be in the subject, not in the artist. What is required of the artist is, not that he have in himself virtue, but that he be able to see it. Let us suppose that a child is sitting engaged in some mechanical occupation, sorting bristles we will say; and let us suppose that she is shedding over the dull task all the glory of a divine humility and patience. A painter comes in, sees her beauty, and paints her. It is he that produces the work of art, not

the child. He worships and she worships also; but he alone is engaged in representing what he worships. What Ruskin really worshipped when he was outlining a tree was not the tree but the virtue of patience. It is not enough that a painter should worship; he must worship what he paints. It is conceivable that under the influence of the worship of patience a man might paint a picture having no resemblance to anything we have ever seen, but which to him mysteriously represented patience. It may be that Ruskin would have done this, and carried the power of art into new worlds altogether, if he had only been a painter by vocation.

There is a certain peculiarity of man that is often forgotten nowadays; namely, that he receives emotional and ethical impressions not only through his intellect but also through all his senses. Certain sights and sounds are pleasing and enlivening to our feelings; we do not know why; it is not necessary or possible that we should know why. The peculiar power of painting is this, that it is able to appeal directly from the eye to the emotions. Just as there are certain scenes, so there are certain pictures which are capable of exercising and elevating our feelings, and of doing so without the intervention of the intellect. The real mission of the graphic arts is this peculiar mission, this mission which is not shared by literature or music, to appeal straight from the eye to the emotions. It is with an art as with a man; the thing that it really has to do is the thing that it alone can do.

Ruskin was so anxious to make art a means to morals that he lost sight of the importance of this. He did not indeed fail to see that beauty has nothing to with the intellect.

Why we receive pleasure [he writes]

from some forms and colours and not from others, is no more to be asked or answered, than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood. The utmost subtlety of investigation will only lead us to ultimate instincts and principles of human nature, for which no further reason can be given than the simple will of the Deity that we should be so created If a person receiving even the noblest ideas of simple beauty be asked why he likes the object exciting them, he will not be able to give any disformed thought to which he can appeal tinct reason, nor to trace in his mind any as a source of pleasure.

Ruskin did not fail to see that beauty has nothing to do with the intellect, but he did not assign its proper importance to beauty, which occupied far too small a place in his scheme of the functions of art.

was

Nor

this surprising. It was not likely that a man who was investigating art with a view to the inculcation of cherished principles would assign overwhelming importance to that particular element about which, of its very nature, there is nothing to be said. That is what has always stood in the way of the proper recognition of the direct influence of art

upon the feelings. The peculiarity of a purely emotional impression is that it altogether eludes language. Thought can be expressed in language and naturally formulates itself in language; feeling cannot be expressed in language at all. That is why the intellectual element, if there be one, in any piece of work, is such a god-send to critics; and that is why the intellect is so often dragged in to meddle with business in which it has no concern.

To appeal to the intellect was, in Ruskin's view, a far more important part of the aim of art than beauty. "Those ideas are the noblest subjects of art," he tells us, "which are the subjects of distinct intellectual perception and action, and which are therefore worthy of the name of

thoughts." He attached great importance to accurate resemblance of Nature, the evidence of power and even of labour in the artist, and the representation of facts from which the mind can read a pathetic or enlivening story.

Take [he says, in his chapter on Greatness in Art] one of the most perfect poems or pictures (I use the words as synonymous) which modern times have seen: the "Old Shepherd's Chief mourner." Here the exquisite execution of the glossy and crisp hair of the dog, the bright sharp touching of the green bough beside it, the clear painting

of the wood of the coffin and the folds of the blanket, are language-language clear and expressive in the highest degree. But the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood, the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total powerlessness of the head laid, close and motionless, upon its folds, the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no motion, no change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck on the coffin lid, the quietness and gloom of the chamber, the spectacles marking the place where the Bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has been the life, how unwatched the departure, of him who is now laid solitary in his sleep; these are all thoughts-thoughts by which the picture is separated at once from hundreds of equal merit as far as mere painting goes, by which it ranks as a work of high art, and stamps its author, not as the mere imitator of the texture of a skin or the fold of a drapery, but as the Man of Mind.

Again, we are asked to admire similar qualities in Turner's Building OF CARTHAGE.

It was of course inevitable that a man who attached great value to such matters as these should come into conflict with painters of the It is modern impressionist school.

well known to be difficult to define with precision the characteristics of impressionism; but there are one or two principles which form acknowledged articles in the impressionist creed, and some of these are that it is not the function of a picture to tell a story, that it is not the duty of the artist to copy Nature, and that details and minor gradations should often be sacrificed to the general effect, or for the sake of the more vivid expression of what is important. But perhaps the cardinal doctrine of the school is the distinction between truth of aspect and truth of fact. The impressionist tells us that the artist should paint what he sees, not what he knows to be there. What Ruskin thought upon the matter may be illustrated by a quotation from the ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. "It may perfectly well happen that in Nature the arrangement of boughs should be less distinct than your outline will make it, but it is better in this kind of sketch The to mark the facts clearly. temptation is always to be sloverly and careless; and the outline is like a bridle, and forces our indolence The into attention and precision." moral motive is clear enough here; one is almost reminded of Mrs. Turner's Cautionary Stories.

It is a curious thing that nearly all those writers upon art who most strongly praise impressionism, and

therefore decry Ruskin, agree with him on one point; and that is the very point where they might most reasonably have assailed him. They connect an ethical aim in art with an appeal to the intellect. Ruskin and his opponents were at one in this fundamental error; and differed only in their deductions from it. He, enamoured of the ethical aim, laid too much stress upon appeals to the intellect; they, seeing the triviality of appeals to the intellect, refused to acknowledge the ethical aim. If Ruskin could have been persuaded that beauty pure and simple is what above all influences ethics, he might

have seen the merit of impressionism. If the upholders of impressionism could have been persuaded that ethics demand beauty and not fact, they might have been reconciled to ethics. But they have always been imbued with the notion that a picture with a moral effect must be a picture of angels and saints and haloes. The best advice we can give to these people is to read the philosophy of Ruskin. And when they have read it they will find, not that they must accept his views on art, but that they will understand, with new clearness, what are the real grounds of their

own.

LIONEL W. CLARKE.