viewed and valued!  And with what tender, reverent feeling has he not opened our hearts to compassion and to consideration for the welfare of our fellow-man, and how potent have been his counsellings pointing to the true and abiding sources of pleasure in life!  Long must his formative opinions and influence extend, and in the minds of all who think and reflect abiding must be the charm as well as the power of his imaginative, glowing thought.  That he met with opposition and hostility in his day was but the price to be paid for the disturbing, correcting, disciplining, yet inspiring part he played in the work he so impulsively set himself to do.  One smiles now at the epithets of scorn and contumely once hurled at him, at the man who, little understood as he has been, has done so much to uplift and purify the thought of his time and do battle with the forces opposed to reform and arrayed against those of light and truth.  And how great were the weapons with which he was armed, and how varied as well as marvellous the talents he brought into play in the onslaught upon shallowness, convention, and ignorance!  Truly, he has done much for his time, and great has been the gain Modern Art has won from his inspiring lessons and thought.  The coming of such a man, and at the time that was his, one cannot help reflecting, was one of the providences of an overruling Power, and adequately to estimate his influence and work, and the tone and temper in which he wrought, we have but to consider what the age would have been, in countless departments of thought and activity, had the century now passed possessed no John Ruskin.

AUTHORITIES.

Collingwood, W. G. Life of Ruskin.

Harrison, Frederic.  Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and other Estimates.

Mather, Marshall.  John Ruskin, his Life and Teaching.

Bayne, Peter.  Lessons from my Masters—­Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin.

Japp, Alex.  H. Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin.

Spielmann, M.H.  John Ruskin.

Waldstein, Charles.  Work of John Ruskin.

Ward, May Alden.  Prophets of the Nineteenth Century:  Carlyle, Ruskin, and Tolstoi.

Bates, Herbert.  Annotated edition, with Introduction, of Ruskin’s
“Sesame and Lilies” and “The King of the Golden River.”

Ruskin’s “Praeterita”:  An Autobiography.

HERBERT SPENCER.

1820-

THE EVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY.

BY MAYO W. HAZELTINE.

Herbert Spencer occupies a unique place in the history of human thought, because he has been the first to attempt the construction of a philosophical system in harmony with the theory of Evolution and with the results of modern science.  To his contemporaries he is known almost exclusively as the author of the colossal work which he has chosen to call the “Synthetic Philosophy.”  Concerning his personality very little information has been published, and it is doubtful whether he will deem it worth while to leave behind him the materials for a detailed biography.  About his private life we know even less than we know about that of Kant.  The very few facts obtainable may be summed up in a score of sentences.