“to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in the world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and splendour";[16]

and the tendency, almost a mannerism, to add to the music of his own rhythm, the deep organ-notes of Biblical text and paraphrase.  But if we wish to see how aptly Ruskin’s style responds to the tone of his subject, we need but remark the rich liquid sentence descriptive of Giorgione’s home,

    “brightness out of the north and balm from the south, and the stars
    of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched
    heaven and circling sea,"[17]

which he has set over against the harsh explosiveness of

    “Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick pit
    or wall is formed by a close-set block of house to the back
    windows of which it admits a few rays of light—­”

the birthplace of Turner.

[Sidenote:  His beauty of style often distracts from the thought.]

But none knew better than Ruskin that a style so stiff with ornament was likely to produce all manner of faults.  In overloading his sentences with jewelry he frequently obscures the sense; his beauties often degenerate into mere prettiness; his sweetness cloys.  His free indulgence of the emotions, often at the expense of the intellect, leads to a riotous extravagance of superlative.  But, above all, his richness distracts attention from matter to manner.  In the case of an author so profoundly in earnest, this could not but be unfortunate; nothing enraged him more than to have people look upon the beauties of his style rather than ponder the substance of his book.  In a passage of complacent self-scourging he says: 

“For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so, until I was heavily punished for this pride by finding that many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning.  Happily, therefore, the power of using such language—­if indeed it ever were mine—­is passing away from me; and whatever I am now able to say at all I find myself forced to say with great plainness."[18]

[Sidenote:  His picturesque extravagance of style.]

But Ruskin’s decision to speak with “great plainness” by no means made the people of England attend to what he said rather than the way he said it.  He could be, and in his later work he usually was, strong and clear; but the old picturesqueness and exuberance of passion were with him still.  The public discovered that it enjoyed Ruskin’s denunciations of machinery much as it had enjoyed his descriptions of mountains, and, without obviously mending its ways, called loudly for more.  Lecture-rooms