“What we especially love to dwell on to-day is this:  that in all this unrivalled volume of printed thoughts, in this encyclopaedic range of topic by this most voluminous and most versatile of modern writers [may we not say of all English writers?] there is not one line that is base, or coarse, or frivolous; not a sentence that was framed in envy, malice, wantonness, or cruelty; not one piece that was written to win money, or popularity, or promotion; not a line composed for any selfish end or in any trivial mood.  Think what we may of this enormous library of print, we know that every word of it was put forth of set purpose without any hidden aim, utterly without fear, and wholly without guile; to make the world a little better, to guide, inspire, and teach men, come what might, scoff as they would, turn from him as they chose, though they left him alone, a broken old man crying in the wilderness, with none to hear or to care.  They might think it all utterly vain; we may think much of it was in vain:  but it was always the very heart’s blood of a rare genius and a noble soul.”

Before entering, somewhat in detail, into Ruskin’s vast and varied labors, let us briefly outline the scope and character of the work which gave the art critic and prophet of his time his chief fame.  The personal incidents in his life need not detain us at the outset, as they are not specially eventful, and may be more fully gathered from the excellent “Life” of Ruskin, by his friend and some-time secretary, W.G.  Collingwood, or from the delightfully interesting reminiscences by the master himself in his autobiographic “Praeterita,” published near the close of his long, arduous, and fruitful career.  John Ruskin was born in London on the 8th of February, 1819.  He was of Scotch ancestry, his father being a prosperous wine merchant in London, who acquired considerable wealth in trade, which the son in time inherited, and nobly used in his many private benevolences and philanthropic enterprises.  The comfortable circumstances in which he was born, coupled with his father’s own love of pictures and books, were helpful in giving encouragement and direction to the young student’s studies and tastes.  His mother, a deeply religious woman, was, moreover, influential in implanting the serious element in Ruskin’s character and life, and in familiarizing him with the Bible, whose noble English, in King James’ version, manifestly entered early into the youth’s ardent, prophetic soul, and, as a writer, had much to do in forming his magnificent prose style.  Ruskin was in early years—­indeed, far on in his manhood—­in delicate health, and consequently he was educated privately till he passed to Christ Church College, Oxford, where, at the age of twenty, he won the Newdigate prize for verse, and graduated in 1842.  His taste for art was manifested at an early age, and after passing from the university he studied painting under J.D.  Harding and Copley Fielding; but his masters, as he tells us in “Praeterita,” were Rubens and Rembrandt.