This life of zealous work and brilliant recognition was interrupted in 1848 by Ruskin’s amazing marriage to Miss Euphemia Gray, a union into which he entered at the desire of his parents with a docility as stupid as it was stupendous.  Five years later the couple were quietly divorced, that Mrs. Ruskin might marry Millais.  All the author’s biographers maintain an indiscreet reserve in discussing the affair, but there can be no concealment of the fact that its effect upon Ruskin was profound in its depression.  Experiences like this and his later sad passion for Miss La Touche at once presage and indicate his mental disorder, and no doubt had their share—­a large one—­in causing Ruskin’s dissatisfaction with everything, and above all with his own life and work.  Be this as it may, it is at this time in the life of Ruskin that we must begin to reckon with the decline of his aesthetic and the rise of his ethical impulse; his interest passes from art to conduct.  It is also the period in which he began his career as lecturer, his chief interest being the social life of his age.

[Sidenote:  Ruskin’s increasing interest in social questions.]

By 1860, he was publishing the papers on political economy, later called Unto this Last, which roused so great a storm of protest when they appeared in the Cornhill Magazine that their publication had to be suspended.  The attitude of the public toward such works as these,—­its alternate excitement and apathy,—­the death of his parents, combined with the distressing events mentioned above, darkened Ruskin’s life and spoiled his interest in everything that did not tend to make the national life more thoughtfully solemn.

    “It seems to me that now ... the thoughts of the true nature of
    our life, and of its powers and responsibilities should present
    themselves with absolute sadness and sternness."[4]

His lectures as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, a post which he held at various times from 1870 to 1883, failed to re-establish his undistracted interest in things beautiful.

[Sidenote:  Triumph of the reformer over the art-critic.]

The complete triumph of the reformer over the art-critic is marked by Fors Clavigera, a series of letters to workingmen, begun New Year’s Day, 1871, in which it was proposed to establish a model colony of peasants, whose lives should be made simple, honest, happy, and even cultured, by a return to more primitive methods of tilling the soil and of making useful and beautiful objects.  The Guild of St. George, established to “slay the dragon of industrialism,” to dispose of machinery, slums, and discontent, consumed a large part of Ruskin’s time and money.  He had inherited a fortune of approximately a million dollars, and he now began to dispose of it in various charitable schemes,—­establishing tea-shops, supporting young painters, planning model tenements, but, above all, in elaborating his ideas for the Guild.  The result of it all—­whatever particular reforms were effected or manual industries established—­was, to Ruskin’s view, failure, and his mind, weakening under the strain of its profound disappointments, at last crashed in ruin.