NUSKTN'S TWO PATHS.

"Turn law which it has been my effort chiefly to illustrate," says

Mr. Ruskin, "is the dependence of all noble design,in any kind,' on the sculpture or painting of organic form. This is the vital law ; lying at the root of all that I have ever tried to teach re- specting architecture or any other art. It is also the law most generally disallowed." "We are all of us willing enough to ac- cept dead truths," but "a sapling truth" most men dislike. Master architects are " above " such a thing as carving or painting organic forms. Architects may choose for themselves which of the two paths they please: they may study architecture, decora- tive artists may study decoration, according to the rules or patterns laid down for them by their predecessors ; but those who de- sire to become masters of their art must study the subject them- selves from the beginning, and especially in the aspect of organic life. Mr. Ruskin stands like Virtue teaching the student Her- cules, of South Kensington or Manchester, how he ought to follow the more laborious path. The volume before us consists of five lectures, delivered at various places, and reprinted from the wri- ter's original manuscript, or reports as they were originally delivered ; the author mending obscure sentences here and there, or supplying passages which were originally spoken extempore. The subjects of the Lectures are—" The Deteriorative Power of Con- ventional Art over Nations," delivered at South Kensington, 18—; the "Unity of kt," part of an Address delivered at

Manchester in March 1859; "Modern Manufacture and Design," a lecture delivered at Bradford, March 1859; "the Influence of Imagination in Architecture and Art," an address delivered to the Architectural Association in Lyon's Inn Hall, 1q57; and "The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy," a lecture de-

ered at Tunbridge Wells, February 1858. There are ap- -; endiees also, explaining more in detail certain points in the original lectures. The volume is eminently characteristic of Ruskin, his style, purpose, and genius. Art, he insists, as

he has done elsewhere, must be the presentment of the truth; kin derives the most explicit statement of the rationale from those but in order to make a work of art, which is something more than Portions of architecture which are simply decorative. It is true, the reflex of a mirror, or even the fixed reflection of the photo- that a knowledge of organic) life, and especially of human senti- graph, there must be "the visible operation of the human in- ment, may enable us to comprehend the sympathies that dictate tailed in the presentation of the truth." Mr. Ruskin insists as liking or disliking for certain forms and proportions in arehi- much as ever upon the moral qualifies essential to the great artist. tecture ; but in very fact the human sympathy is so much more He must be in love with his work. He may originally take up extensive than ordinary thinkers imagine it be, that any well- the profession for some extraneous reason, such as that he must developed exemplification of the laws naturally ruling in the choose a calling, that he has relatives to support, or that he de_ creation move it to delight, admiration, and awe, so that the il- sires to succeed in the world ; but once with materials in hand, lustration be simple, clear, and strong enough. The present the motive which actuates him each instant must be the love of writer has, for some time past, contended that the fundamental the work. It is this which enables a man to tell at once, before Principles which underlie the rules of architectural arrangement and proportion, and which explain the empirical doctrines long since manufacture, art, and fine art. Manufacture, he says, is the or the working of his own written art Where he chooses to go making of anything by hands, with or without machmery, not upon fact, he is all for the details—is powerful and eloquent on necessarily by direct intelligence. Art is the operation of the the form of the individual leaf, paints with the pen every curl in hand and the inteffigence of man together • there is an art of the ripple of the water, and can tram the minutest of glancing making machinery, of building ships, and so on. "Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go toge- ther." The distinction is intelligible, and perhaps true ; yet a nice inquirer might ask Mr. Ruskin what he means by the heart of man." Of course he does not speak physiologically ; and if he means the affections, we might ask, whech of the affections? For some of them, Mr. Ruskin, we conceive, would exorcise.

It is only by degrees and as Ruskin develops himself that we find the true distinction between the powerful and the feeble in his writing. It is a question in art, as well worth his own doily, and worth the study of critics who have oftener eulogized or vita-

• The Two Paths : being Lectures on Art and its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, delivered in 18,58-9. By John Buskin, M.A., Author of " Modem Painters," he. he. With two Plates. Published by Smith, Elder, and Co.

he goes through the laborious process of study, whether or not he is capable of becoming an artist—is he or is he not actuated by "the love of natural fact as a primal energy ? " As we go deeper into the rationale of the subject, the art philo- sopher becomes more uncertain. He makes the distinction between

perated him than explained the reason, why he mingles such striking success with such conspicuous failure. If there were time and space, we think it might be shown that Ruskin is great and powerful in proportion as he follows his own rule of adhering to the presentment of facts; that he becomes obscure and ques- tionable, deviating into wrong, as soon as he indulges what ap- pears to be an inborn propensity of dogmatizing. Of his earlier _ works, perhaps one half, was derived direct from fact and posi- tive observation ; the other half from I priori conclusions, and what he would call moral lights brought to bear upon the subject of art. The first half is full of eloquence, tells straight to the mind of the reader, and carries its own conviction with it. The second half is not unlike passages out of the Koran, eloquent, enigmatical, and provocative of scepticism. When he exhorts the artist, if he would make a complete artist, to study organic forms, he has with him the evidence of nature and of art itself. His explanation of the same precept from the history of art, al- though disfigured here and there by redundancies of arrogant praise or blame, is true. Art has always been rising, and is raised to its highest elevation, while the painter was draw- ing his inspiration, practice, and guidance, from the close study of life. It is also true that the greatest of artists have not con- — fined their studies to their own branch. This is well put in one out of scores of passages on the same point. We take the extract from the paper on "the influence of Imagination in Architec- ture." It has a characteristic commencement.

"This conclusion, then, we arrive at, must arrive at ; the fact being ir- revocably so ; that in order to give your imagination and the other _powers of your souls full play, you must do as all the great architects of old time did—you must yourselves be your sculptors. Phidias, Michael Angelo, Orcagna, Pisan°, Giotto,—which of these men, do you think, could not use his chisel? You say, 'It is difficult ; quite out of your way.' I know it is ; nothing that is great is easy ; and nothing that is great, so long as you study building without sculpture, can be in your way. I want to put it in your way, and you to find your way to it. But, on the other hand, do not shrink from the task as if the refined art of perfect sculpture were always required from you. For, though architecture and sculpture are not sepa- rate arts, there is an architectural manner of sculpture ; and it is, in the majority of its applications, a comparatively easy one. Our great mistake, at present, in dealing with stone at all is requiring to have all our work too refined ; it is just the same mistake as if we were to require all our book illustrations to be as fine work as Raphael's. John Leech does not sketch so well as Leonardo da Vinci; but do you think that the public could easily spare him, or that he is wrong in bringing out his talent in the way in which it is most effective ? Would you advise him, if he asked your ad- vice, to give up his wood-blocks and take to canvass ? I know you would not ; neither would you tell him, I believe, on the other hand, that because he could not draw as well as Leonardo, therefore he ought to draw nothing but straight lines with a ruler, and circles with compasses, and no figure- subjects at all. That would be some loss to you; would it not ? You would all be vexed if next week's Punch had nothing in it but proportionate lines. And yet, do not you see that you are doing precisely the same thing with your powers of sculptural design that be would be doing with his powers of pictorial design, if he gave you nothing but such lines. You feel that you cannot carve like Phidias ; therefore you will not carve at all, but only draw mouldings ; and thus all that intermediate power which is of especial value in modern days—that popular power of expression which is within the attainment of thousands, and would address itself to tens of thousands—is utterly- lost to us in stone, though in ink and paper it has be- come one of the most important engines, and one of the most desired luxuries of modern civilization."

Since, however, Mr. Ruskin does not always favour us by stating the facts on which his conclusions are based, the conclu- sions sometimes rest upon uncertainty. For instance, he insists that arohitecture, as well as sculpture and noir: rests upon a knowledge of organic life ; but where is the e. euce ? It is true as regards many of the ornaments of architecture, .d perhaps Mr. Hiss-

put forth, are nothing more nor less than the laws of inorganic life. But Mr. Ruskin has taken up the idea that organic life is the ruling influence in art ; and while there is much truth in that rinciple he only pushes it too far. He has, however, a safe rule — shadows ; but when it pleases him to be dogmatic, he has only to generalize ; and if you stop him with inquiry, he will, like the flute-player who disregarded the signature at the commencement of the stave, put you off with, "damn the minutiei." It is this divided character of his mind and habitual thinking which makes. his metaphors sometimes so happy, sometimes so much the reverse. What can be worse than this comparison of the naturalist and the sculptor, seeking to elevate the artist at the expense of the philosopher ?

"For instance, the naturalist, coming upon a block of marble, has to be- gin considering immediately how far its purple is owing to iron, or its whiteness to magnesia; he breaks his piece of marble, and at the close of his day, has nothing but a little sand in his crucible, and some data added to the theory of the elements. But you approach your marble to syrnpa- thize with it and rejoice over its beauty. You cut it a little indeed ; but only to bring out its veins more perfectly ; and at the end of your day's work you leave your marble shaft with joy and complacency in its perfectness, as marble. When you have to watch an animal instead of a stone, you differ from the naturalist in the same way.. He may, perhaps, if he be an amiable naturalist, take delight in having living creatures round him ; still, the ma- jor part ofhis Work is or has been, in counting feathers, separating fibres, and analyzing structures. But your work is always with the living crea- ture; the thing you have to get at in him is his life, and ways of going about things."

Why, that is the very thing the naturalist is doing ! and it is but a vulgar, superficial notion that he is only cutting dead crea- tures or counting sands.

" The paper on iron might be taken as a monograph of the artist writer himself ; it is such a complete and concise collection of his characteristics, great or otherwise. He begins with a beautiful description of a fountain that he remembers in early youth, its basin marked with stains of saffron yellow. From that stain of saffron he expands to a description of iron, and of all that it is and does in nature, art, and even policy. He tells us that-iron in

i a state of rust, that is of oxygenation, s living ; when pure or polished, dead. The supporting element of the breath, he says, without which the blood and the life is oxygen, cannot be sustain- ed: "now it is the very same air which this iron breathes when it gets rusty." What a world of suggestio falsi is there in this left- handed metaphor! Yet it helps the author to say that "the ocherous dust is nobler than pure iron." What does the "noble- ness" mean. Oxygen, he tells us, "is part of the blue heaven, which you love and long for." Why the blue of the " heaven " is the mixed atmosphere round the earth? and if he is pointing above the blue, what is he pointing to, but to centrifugal space and unknown scatterment ? Later on, the considerations upon iron lead him to consider the sword and the fetter ; the fetter being with him, the great instrument of civilization ! Believe it oh reader ! for Ruskin says so. And yet in this same /Japer there is most eloquent exhortation against oppression of the poor," as counter to Christianity,—which most indubitably it is. And in this same paper again, is there most lucid and eloquent explana- tion of that which ductile yet rigid iron can do to perpetuate the tenderest and most changeful forms of organic life ; so that we can bid it wind it like the creeper and tendril round the stories of architecture. Yet, as we have already said, even where Ruskin makes us mistrust, and provokes us to contradict, at all events he compels us to think, and that is one mode of preserving organic life in art.

The book is full of matter for extract; but many of our readers will have it entire. Here are a couple of truths, powerfully put.

THE ARTIST IN HIS ART.

• " I have pleaded, from the beginning, for this art of i yours, especially be- cause it has room for the whole of your character—if jest is n you, let the jest be jested; if mathematical ingenuity is yours, let your problem beput, and your solution worked out, as quaintly as you choose; above all, see that your work is easily and happily done, else it will never make anybody else happy : but while you thus give the rein to all your impulses, see that those impulses be headed and centred by one noble impulse ; and let that be Love —triple love—for the art which you practise, the creation in which, you move, and the creatures to whom you minister."

THE RIGHT MOOD FOR IVORY.

, " Among thousands of various means of doing this, perhaps the one I ought specially to name to you, is the keeping yourselves clear of petty and mean cares. Whatever you do, don't be anxious, nor fill your heads with little chagrins and little desires. I have just said, that you may be great artiste, and yet be miserly and jealous, and troubled about many thine. So you may be ; but I said also that the miserliness or trouble must not be in your hearts all day. It is possible that you may get a habit of saving money ; or xt is possible, at a time of great trial, you may yield to the temptation of speaking unjustly of a rival,—and you will shorten your powers and dim your sight even fly this—but the thing that you have to dread far more than any such unconscious habit, or any such momentary fall—is the constancy of small emotions ; the anxiety whether Mr. So-and-So will like your work ; whether such and such a workman will do all that you want of him, and so on ; not wrong feelings or anxieties in themselves, but impertinent, and wholly incompatible with the full exercise of your imagination."