American editions caricatured his beautiful plates.  Not only that, but it was a common practice to smuggle these editions, recommended by their cheapness, into other countries.  Mr. Wiley sent, on an average, five hundred sets of “Modern Painters” to Europe every year, the greater number to England.  His example was followed by other American publishers, so that in New York alone there came to be half a dozen houses advertising Ruskin’s works, and many more throughout the cities of the States.  Mr. Wiley, the first in the field, proposed to pay up a royalty upon all the copies he had sold if Ruskin would recognise him as accredited publisher in America.  The offer of so large a sum would have been tempting, had it not meant that Ruskin must condone what he had for years denounced, and sanction what he strongly disapproved.  The case would have been different if proposals had been made to reproduce his books in his own style, under competent supervision.  This was done in 1890, when arrangements were made with Messrs. Charles E. Merrill & Co., of New York, to bring out the “Brantwood” edition of Ruskin, under the editorship of Professor C.E.  Norton.

Though the sale of Ruskin’s books in America had never, until so recently, brought him any profit, his own business in England, started in 1871 with the monthly pamphlet of “Fors,” and in 1872 with the volume of “Sesame and Lilies,” prospered singularly.  Mr. George Allen, who, while building up an independent connection, still remained the sole publisher of Mr. Ruskin’s works, said that the venture was successful from its earliest years.  It was found that the booksellers were not indispensable, and that business could be done through the post as well as over the counter.  In spite of occasional difficulties, such as the bringing out of works in parts, appearing irregularly or stopping outright at the author’s illnesses, there was a steady increase of profit, rising in the author’s later years (according to Mr. Allen) to an average of L4,000.

Fortunate it was that this bold attempt succeeded.  The L200,000 he inherited from his parents had gone,—­chiefly in gifts and in attempts to do good.  The interest he used to spend on himself; the capital he gave away until it totally disappeared, except what is represented by the house he lived in and its contents.  The sale of his books was his only income, and a great part of that went to pensioners to whom in the days of his wealth he pledged himself, to relatives and friends, discharged servants, institutions in which he took an interest at one time or other.  But he had sufficient for his wants, and no need to fear poverty in his old age.

In this quiet retreat at Brantwood the echoes of the outer world did not sound very loudly.  Ruskin had been too highly praised and too roundly abused, during fifty years of public life, to care what magazine critics and journalists said of him.  Other men of his standing could solace themselves, if it be solace, in the consciousness that a grateful country has recognised their talents or their services.  But civic and academic honours were not likely to be showered on a man who had spent his life in strenuous opposition to academicism in art and letters, and in vigorous attacks upon both political parties, and upon the established order of things.