His brief and dim experience of married life seems hardly to have affected him.  As a critic of art and ethics, as the writer of facile magnificent sentences, full of beauty and rhythm, as the composer of word-structures, apparently logical in form but deeply prejudiced and inconsequent in thought, he became one of the great influences of the day, and wielded not only power but real domination.  The widespread delusion of the English educated classes, that they are interested in art, was of Ruskin’s making.  Then something very serious happened to him; a baffled passion of extraordinary intensity, a perception of the realities of life, the consciousness that his public indulged and humoured him as his parents had done, and admired his artistic advice without paying the smallest heed to his ethical principles—­all these experiences broke over him, wearied as he was with excessive strain, like a bitter wave.  But his pessimism took the noble form of an intense concern with the blindness and impenetrability of the world at large.  He made a theory of political economy, which, peremptory and prejudiced as it is, is yet built on large lines, and has been fruitful in suggestiveness.  But he tasted discouragement and failure in deep draughts.  His parents frankly expressed their bewildered disappointment, his public looked upon him as a perverse man who was throwing away a beautiful message for the sake of a crabbed whim; and he fell into a fierce depression, alternating between savage energy and listless despondency, which lasted for several years, till at last the overwrought brain and mind gave way; and for the rest of his life he was liable to recurrent attacks of insanity, which cleared off and left him normal again, or as normal as he ever had been.  Wide and eager as Ruskin’s tenderness was, one feels that his heart was never really engaged; he was always far away, in a solitude full of fear, out of the reach of affection, always solemnly and mournfully alone.  Ruskin was never really allied with any other human soul; he knew most of the great men of the day; he baited Rossetti, he petted Carlyle; he had correspondents like Norton, to whom he poured out his overburdened heart; but he was always the spoiled and indulged child of his boyhood, infinitely winning, provoking, wilful.  He could not be helped, because he could never get away from himself; he could admire almost frenziedly, but he could not worship; he could not keep himself from criticism even when he adored, and he had a bitter superiority of spirit, a terrible perception of the imperfections and faults of others, a real despair of humanity.