Meanwhile the war was raging.  Ruskin was asked by his friends to raise his voice against the ravage of France; but he replied that it was inevitable.  At last, in October, he read how Rosa Bonheur and Edouard Frere had been permitted to pass through the German lines, and next day came the news of the bombardment of Strasburg, with anticipations of the destruction of the Cathedral, library, and picture galleries, foretelling, as it seemed, the more terrible and irreparable ruin of the treasure-houses of art in Paris.  His heart was with the French, and he broke silence in the bitterness of his spirit, upbraiding their disorder and showing how the German success was the victory of “one of the truest monarchies and schools of honour and obedience yet organised under heaven.”  He hoped that Germany, now that she had shown her power, would withdraw, and demand no indemnity.  But that was too much to ask.

Before long Paris itself became the scene of action, and in January 1871 was besieged and bombarded.  So much of Ruskin’s work and affection had been given to French Gothic that he could not endure to think of his beloved Sainte Chapelle as being actually under fire—­to say nothing of the horror of human suffering in a siege.  He joined Cardinal (then Archbishop) Manning, Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock and James Knowles in forming a “Paris Food Fund,” which shortly united with the Lord Mayor’s committee for the general relief of the besieged.  The day after writing on the Sainte Chapelle he attended the meeting of the Mansion House, and gave a subscription of L50.  He followed events anxiously through the storm of the Commune and its fearful ending, angered at the fratricide and anarchy which no Mansion House help could avert or repair.

It was no time for talking on art, he felt:  instead of the full course, he could only manage three lectures on landscape, and these not so completely prepared as to make them ready for printing.  Before Christmas he had been once more to Woolwich, where Colonel Brackenbury invited him to address the cadets at the prize-giving of the Science and Art Department, December 13, 1870, in which the Rev. W. Kingsley, an old friend of Ruskin’s and of Turner’s, was one of the masters.  Two of the lectures of the “Crown of Wild Olive” had been given there, with more than usual animation, and enthusiastically received by crowded and distinguished audiences, among whom was Prince Arthur (the Duke of Connaught), then at the Royal Military Academy.  This time it was the “Story of Arachne,” an address on education and aims in life; opening with reminiscences of his own childhood, and pleasantly telling the Greek myths of the spider and the ant, with interpretations for the times.

In the three lectures on landscape, given January 20, February 9 and 23, 1871, he dwelt on the necessity of human and historic interest in scenery; and compared Greek “solidity and veracity” with Gothic “spirituality and mendacity,” Greek chiaroscuro and tranquil activity with Gothic colour and “passionate rest.”  Botticelli’s “Nativity” (now in the National Gallery) was then being shown at the Old Master’s Exhibition, and Ruskin took it, along with the works of Cima, as a type of one form of Greek Art.