originally written for the daily or weekly Press, in a

controver- sial manner. Half a loaf, may be better than no bread, but half a controversy, is certainly, as a rule, worse than no controversy at all. What opinion can be given from only hearing the case for the plaintiff? The present collection, however, is one by itself, for in the large majority of the letters here reprinted, the intrinsic interest is so great as to form sufficient attraction. Mr. Ruskin has at least this quality in common with Mr.. Huxley, that he "cannot be dull," no matter how technical and apparently unattractive is his subject; and in these letters, even more than in his finished work, the brilliant ease of his style and the lightness of his touch are clearly apparent. He says truly in the preface, that at the time when most of these epistles were composed, he was "fonder of metaphor and more fertile in simile " than now, and employed both with " franker trust in the reader's intelligence." The perception of this is one of the most delightful qualities of this book. The reader feels that the author is really writing letters to him personally, and trusting to his intelligence to fill up the gaps, just as if he were some familiar friend. The reasoning in these reprints is close, in the sense of a track of footprints, rather than the links of a chain ; a certain amount of attention and intelligence is needed, to follow the connection ; but this is owing not to looseness of thought, but pressure of space and time, and it would be difficult to find more precisely-stated fact and better reasoning thereon, in any equivalent quantity of words than we find here.

It is late in the day to say anything of the charms of the author's style, but to those who only know his writings from his published works, the ease and the freshness of these letters will come as a pleasant surprise. Though they abound in felicities of diction, they are by no means overloaded thereby ; and their most vital characteristic is their sharp and unhesitating pene- tration into the root of the matter in hand, and the fine discre- tion with which the author puts Us elaborate meaning into the shortest and simplest words, and leaves it there, without com- ment of any kind. He seems to say to the reader, " I cannot in a letter do more than present you with the facts of this case ; for the reasonings justifying them, you must go elsewhere." This, of course, only applies to those letters where he is not

* Letters by John Ruskin. Published by George Allen, Orpington, Kent.

engaged in defending any special point of his theory, but simply characterising various styles of Art, or pointing out various qualities. Take, as an example of this, these seven and a half lines

is propos of John Leech's sketching, " But of all rapid and con- densed realisation ever accomplished by the pencil, John Leech's is the most dainty and the least fallible in the subjects of which he was cognisant. Not merely right in the traits which he seizes, but refined in the sacrifice of what he refuses. The drawing becomes slight, through fastidiousness, not indolence, and the finest discretion has left its touches rare." Such criticism as this can only be fully appreciated by those who have good acquaintance with the work to which it refers ; but all can see how vital to the matter the writing is, and how much it actu-

ally tells us, in the smallest compass and the clearest manner. The last sentence would, indeed, apply to the author who wrote it, as well as to the artist it was written of, and it is a curious • echo of what we have said above as to the style of these letters. The contents of this first volume, consist of contributions to daily and weekly papers and magazines on various Art topics, between the years 1843 and 1876, beginning with

41 reply (from the Weekly Chronicle) to a criticism on Modern Painters, and ending with a criticism of the late Frederick Walker's painting, written to the Times in Jan- uary, 1876, at the request of Mr. H. S. Marks, R.A. The last-mentioned article might rightly stand as typical of all the rest, as it contains to the full the merits and the fail- ings of its author. True, with a completeness of artistic pene- tration which has never yet been equalled, where it deals with the purely artistic side of the question, it is yet warped and

distorted into something which is almost falsehood, when it brings to the enforcement of its artistic truths, moral and reli- gious sanctions. The passage in which the main characteristics -of Walker's art are first touched upon, is quite unsurpassable as criticism, and the passage in which the painter's choice of sub- ject is condemned, and his early death is in some measure attri-

buted to the fact of his sympathy with the wcrld as it is, rather than the world as it was, or as it might be, is as unjust as it is beautifully expressed. Mr. Ruskin's contempt and hatred for the world of to-day, which, after all, is the only world he and we have ever known, or can ever know, colour all that he writes -upon the subject ; and perhaps the greatest change of temper that we can perceive in these letters, taking them from first to

last, is the increasing insistence with which he drags this con- tempt into every subject upon which he writes.

No true estimate of these letters can be given in few words, or in detached quotations, and there are very few which are sufficiently short to be quoted in their entirety ; of these latter, the following gives, perhaps, the best idea of Mr. Ruskin's mastery of antithesis, his varying moods of scorn and sympathy, his power of expression, and the almost womanish wrong- headedness of his arguments, when his emotions are keenly

touched. It was written a propos of an article in the Daily Telegraph on " Castles," which had concluded by an appeal for

subscriptions from the public " towards the restoration of Warwick Castle, then recently destroyed by fire : "—

" CASTLES AND KENNELS.

" Sia,—I was astonished the other day by your article on Taverns, bat never yet in my life was so much astonished by anything in print as by your to-day's article on Castles. I am a castle-lover of the truest sort. I do not suppose any man alive has felt anything like the sorrow and anger with which I have watched the modern destruction, by railroad and manufacture, helped by the wicked -improvidence of our great families, of half the national memorials of England, either actually, or in effect and power of association,—as 'Conway, for instance, now vibrating to ruin over a railway station. For Warwick Castle, I named it in my letter of last October in ' Fore Clavigera,' as a type of the architectural treasures of this England of ours, known to me, and beloved from childhood to this hour. But, -Sir, I am at this hour endeavouring to Sad work and food for a boy -of seventeen, one of eight people—two married couples, a woman and her daughter, and this boy and his sister—who all sleep together in one room, eighteen feet square, in the heart of London ; and you -call upon me for a subscription to help to rebuild Warwick Castle ! Sir, I am an old and thorough-bred Tory, and as such I say, ' If a noble family cannot rebuild their own castle, in God's name let them live in the nearest ditch till they can.'—I am, Sir, your faithful servant,

"JOHN RUSKIN."

Nothing could be more typical of Mr. Ruskin than this letter ; it is the whole man in a nutshell. He is thoroughly right in his meaning throughout, and the whole letter is a wonderful -example of how a case may be, so to speak, proved by a side- issue. It is abundantly clear that the mere fact that Mr. Ruskin was engaged in a work of charity, was no sufficient reason why Warwick Castle should not be restored ; but probably nothing

could have put the false charity of the subscription asked for in a more vivid light, than his narration of the crowded room, and and his scornful suggestion that the " noble family " also should " live in the ditch." What may, perhaps, be called the best side of the Tory spirit, comes out in the concluding picture of the pride which would "live in the ditch," but would not exist on charity in the castle, a feeling which he puts in still stronger terms in another letter on the same subject, "Lord Warwick's house is burnt. Let him build a better, if he can—a worse, if he must —but in any case, let him neither beg nor borrow."

Mr. Ruskin has done much good service in his time to Art, but perhaps his most vital work was done almost thirty years ago, in his continual defence of the pre-Raphaelities against the utterly unjust attacks to which they were at that time exposed.

One of the most celebrated of them said to the present writer, only a few days ago, some words that seemed to bring the matter home very clearly. " I had been painting for some years, and had not only been unable to sell my works, but had been met with such consistent and universal ingenuity of insult, that at last I came to the conclusion that I could stand it no longer, and that I was not fit to be a painter." Picture this frame of mind, not in one, but in dozens of young painters, and then think of the effect of suddenly finding, not only an advocate who sympa- thised with them, but one who could put his sympathy in so clear and unanswerable a form, as to silence, if it did not convince, the most virulent of their assailants. Conceive the effect upon the critics who had abused and laughed at the pre-Raphaelite pictures, of such a description as the one Mr. Ruskin gave of Mr. Holman Hunt's picture of the "Awakening Conscience," from which we quote a few sentences. After giving a description of the sub- ject and meaning of the picture, which brings it almost as vividly before the eye as if it were there in actual fact ; after pointing out its accuracy in details of emotion, no less than in details of inanimate nature and accessories generally ; after, in fact, justifying his praise by the clearest and most undeniable of evidence, the evidence of the picture itself, Mr. Ruskin con- cludes as follows :-

" I surely need not go on. Examine the whole range of the walls of the Academy,—nay, examine those of all our humbler and private picture galleries,—and while pictures will be met with by the thou- sand which literally tempt to evil, by the thousand which are directed to the merest trivialities of incident or emotion, by the thousand to the delicate fancies of inactive religion, there will not be found one powerful as this to meet fall in the front the moral evil of the age in which it is painted ; to waken into energy the inert thoughtlessness of youth, and subdue the severities of judgment into the sanctities of compassion."

With that quotation we may fitly close these notes upon Mr. Ruskin's Art Letters. They form a delightful book, in which the purest thoughts are expressed in language which is as eloquent as it is vigorous ; and there is not one of them which does not throw light upon the subject it touches, and increase our respect and sympathy for its writer.