1849 “The Seven Lamps of Architecture,”
in definition of the qualities of good art in that
line, under the heads of the Lamps of Sacrifice, of
Truth, of Power, of Beauty, of Life, of Memory, and
Obedience, pleading in particular for the Gothic style;
these were followed in 1851 by “PRE-RAPHAELITISM”
(q. v.), and 1851-53 by the “Stones of Venice,”
in further exposition of his views in the “Seven
Lamps,” and others on the same and kindred arts.
Not till 1862 did he appear in the role of
social reformer, and that was by the publication of
“Unto this Last,” in the Cornhill Magazine,
on the first principles of political economy, the
doctrines in which were further expounded in “Munera
Pulveris,” “Time and Tide,” and “FORS
CLAVIGERA” (q. v.), the principles in which he
endeavoured to give practical effect to by the Institution
of St. George’s Guild, with the view of commending
“the rational organisation of country life independent
of that of cities.” His writings are numerous,
several of them originally lectures, and nearly all
on matters of vital account, besides many others on
subjects equally so which he began, but has had, to
the grief of his admirers, to leave unfinished from
failing health, among these his “Praeterita,”
or memories from his past life. The most popular
of his recent writings is “Sesame and Lilies,”
with perhaps the “Crown of Wild Olive,”
and the most useful that of the series beginning with
“Unto this Last,” and culminating in “Time
and Tide.” He began his career as an admirer
of Turner, and finished as a disciple of Thomas Carlyle,
but neither slavishly nor with the surrender of his
own sense of justice and truth; Justice is the goddess
he worships, and except in her return to the earth
as sovereign he bodes nothing but disaster to the fortunes
of the race; his despair of seeing this seems to have
unhinged him, and he is now in a state of fatal collapse;
his contemporaries praised his style of writing, but
to his disgust they did not believe a word he said;
he sits sadly in these days at Brantwood, in utter
apathy to everything of passing interest, and if he
thinks or speaks at all it would seem his sense of
the injustice in things, and the doom it is under,
is not yet utterly dead—his sun has not
even yet gone down upon his wrath; the keynote of
his wrath was, Men do the work of this world and rogues
take the pay, selling for money what God has given
for nothing, or what others have purchased by their
life’s blood; b. 1819. He died 20th
January 1900.
RUSSELL, JOHN, EARL, known best as LORD JOHN RUSSELL, statesman, youngest son of the Earl of Bedford; travelled in Spain, studied at Edinburgh, entered Parliament in 1813, took up vigorously the cause of parliamentary reform and Catholic Emancipation, joined Earl Grey’s ministry in 1830 as Paymaster of the Forces, framed and zealously advocated the Reform Bill (1832), drove Peel from office in 1835, and became, under Lord Melbourne, Home Secretary and leader of the Commons; four years