care; then the different forms and uses of their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a German grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; and under this absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work; admitting not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto,[171] or the breadth of a fillet.  Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the expression of them all; when we can speak this dead language naturally, and apply it to whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to every practical purpose of life; then, and not till then, a license might be permitted, and individual authority allowed to change or to add to the received forms, always within certain limits; the decorations, especially, might be made subjects of variable fancy, and enriched with ideas either original or taken from other schools.  And thus, in process of time and by a great national movement, it might come to pass that a new style should arise, as language itself changes; we might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak modern instead of old English; but this would be a matter of entire indifference, and a matter, besides, which no determination or desire could either hasten or prevent.  That alone which it is in our power to obtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous style of some kind, and such comprehension and practice of it as would enable us to adapt its features to the peculiar character of every several building, large or small, domestic, civil or ecclesiastical.

  [169] Coleridge’s Ode to France.

  [170] Hubert Van Eyck [1366-1440].  The great Flemish master.

  [171] A hollowed moulding. [New Eng.  Dict.]

SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART

Ruskin was first elected to the Slade Professorship of Fine Art in Oxford in 1869, and held the chair continuously until 1878, when he resigned because of ill-health, and again from 1883 to 1885.  The Lectures on Art were announced in the Oxford University Gazette of January 28, 1870, the general subject of the course being “The Limits and Elementary Practice of Art,” with Leonardo’s Trattato della Pittura as the text-book.  The lectures were delivered between February 8 and March 23, 1870.  They appeared in book form in July of the same year.  These lectures contain much of his best and most mature thought, of his most painstaking research and keenest analysis.  Talking with a friend in later years, he said:  “I have taken more pains with the Oxford Lectures than with anything else I have ever done”:  and in the preface to the edition of 1887 he began:  “The following lectures were the most important piece of my literary work, done with unabated power, best motive, and happiest concurrence of circumstance.”  Ruskin took his professorship very seriously.