Arrows of the Chace, vol. 1/2

2. “The Old Gate”—No. 48—oil on canvas. Lady in black and servant with basket coming through the gate of old mansion; four children at play at foot of steps; two villagers and dog in foreground. Exhibited R. A. 1869.

3. “The Cottage Gardens”—No. 71, “The Spring of Life.” Water-color. Lady in a garden with two children and a lamb; a cherry-tree in blossom. Exhibited at the Water-Color Society, Winter 1866-7. See also Nos. 14 and 21.

4. “Ladies and Lilies”—No. 37, “A Lady in a Garden, Perthshire.” Water-color. A lady seated on a knoll on which is a sun-dial; greyhound on left; background, old manor-house. No. 67, “Lilies.” Water-color. Lady in a garden watering flowers, chiefly lilies. Exhibited at the Water-Color Society, Winter 1869-70 and 1868-9 respectively.

5. “The Chaplain’s Daughter”—No. 20, subject from Miss Thackeray’s “Jack the Giant-killer.” Exhibited at the Water-Color Society, Summer 1868.

6. “Daughter of Heth,” by W. Black. No. 87. “Do ye no ken this is the Sabbath?” Young lady at piano; servant enters hurriedly. (Study in black and white, executed in 1872.)—[See vol. i. p. 41. “ ‘Preserve us a’, lassie, do ye ken what ye’re doing? Do ye no ken that this is the Sabbath, and that you’re in a respectable house?’ The girl turned round with more wonder than alarm in her face: ‘Is it not right to play music on Sunday?’ ”—(No. 131. Three more studies for the same novel.)

7. “The Old Farm Garden”—No. 33—Water-color. A girl, with cat on lawn, knitting: garden path bordered by tulips; farm buildings in background. Painted in 1871.

8. “Salmon-fishers”—No. 47—“Fisherman and Boy”—Water-color. Keeper and boy on bank of river. Glen Spean. Salmon in foreground. Exhibited at the Water-Color Society, Summer 1867.

9. Mushrooms and Fungi—No. 41—Water-color. Painted in 1873.

10. “Fishmonger’s Stalls”—Nos. 9 and 62 (not 952)—viz., No. 9, “A Fishmonger’s Shop.” Water-color. Painted in 1873; and No. 62, also “A Fishmonger’s Shop.” Water-color. Fishmongers selling fish; lady and boy in costumes of about 1800. Exhibited at Water-Color Society, Winter 1872-3. (The “Tobias” of Perugino has been already alluded to, p. 44, note.)

11. No. 68. “The Ferry.” Water-color. Sight size, 11 ¾ X 18 in. A ferry boat, in which are two figures, a boatman and a lady, approaching a landing-place; on the bank figures of villagers, and children feeding swans. Exhibited at Water-Color Society, Winter 1870-71.]

119

In 1858 the Oxford Museum was in course of building, its architects being Sir Thomas Deane and Mr. Woodward, and its style modern Gothic, whilst amongst those chiefly interested in it were Dr. Acland (the Regius Professor of Medicine) and Mr. Ruskin. The present letter, written in June, 1858, was read by Dr. Acland at a lecture given by him in that summer “to the members of the Architectural Societies that met in Oxford” at that time. I am permitted to reprint the following passage from Dr. Acland’s preface to the printed lecture, as well as one or two passages from the lecture itself (see below, pp. 130 and 132): “Many have yet to learn the apparently simple truth, that to an Artist his Art is his means of probation in this life; and that, whatever it may have of frivolity to us, to him it is as the two or the five talents, to be accounted for hereafter. I might say much on this point, for the full scope of the word Art seems by some to be even now unrecognized. Before the period of printing, Art was the largest mode of permanently recording human thought; it was spoken in every epoch, in all countries, and delivered in almost every material. In buildings, on medals and coins, in porcelain and earthenware, on wood, ivory, parchment, paper and canvas, the graver or the pencil has recorded the ideas of every form of society, of every variety of race and of every character. What wonder that the Artist is jealous of his craft, and proud of his brotherhood?”—See “The Oxford Museum,” p. 4. The reader is also referred to “Sesame and Lilies,” 1871 ed. §§ 103-4.

120

See next letter, pp. 131 seqq.

121

After reading this letter to his audience Dr. Acland thus continued: “The principles thus clearly enumerated by Mr. Ruskin are, on the main, those that animate the earnest student of Gothic. It is not for me especially to advocate Gothic Art, but only to urge, that if called into life, it should be in conformity to its own proper laws of vitality. If week after week, in my youth, with fresh senses and a docile spirit, I have drank in each golden glow that is poured by a Mediterranean sun from over the blue Ægæan upon the Athenian Parthenon,—if, day by day, sitting on Mars’ Hill, I have watched each purple shadow, as the temple darkened in majesty against the evening sky,—if so, it has been to teach me, as the alphabet of all Art, to love all truth and to hate all falsehood, and to kiss the hand of every Master who has brought down, under whatever circumstance, and in whatever age, one spark of true light from the Beauty and the subtle Law, which stamps the meanest work of the Ever living, Ever-working Artist.”—“The Oxford Museum,” pp. 56-7.

122

See “The Oxford Museum,” pp. 17-23. The following is a portion of the passage alluded to: “Without the Geologist on one side, and the Anatomist and Physiologist on the other, Zoology is not worthy of its name. The student of life, bearing in mind the more general laws which in the several departments above named he will have sought to appreciate, will find in the collections of Zoology, combined with the Geological specimens and the dissections of the Anatomist, a boundless field of interest and of inquiry, to which almost every other science lends its aid: from each science he borrows a special light to guide him through the ranges of extinct and existing animal forms, from the lowest up to the highest types, which, last and most perfect, but preshadowed in previous ages, is seen in Man. By the aid of physiological illustrations he begins to understand how hard to unravel are the complex mechanisms and prescient intentions of the Maker of all; and he slowly learns to appreciate what exquisite care is needed for discovering the real action of even an apparently comprehended machine. And so at last, almost bewildered, but not cast down, he attempts to scrutinize in the rooms devoted to Medicine, the various injuries which man is doomed to undergo in his progress towards death; he begins to revere the beneficent contrivances which shine forth in the midst of suffering and disease, and to veil his face before the mysterious alterations of structure, to which there seem attached pain, with scarce relief, and a steady advance, without a check, to death. He will look, and as he looks, will cherish hope, not unmixed with prayer, that the great Art of Healing may by all these things advance, and that by the progress of profounder science, by the spread among the people of the resultant practical knowledge, by stricter obedience to physiological laws, by a consequent more self-denying spirit, some disorders may at a future day be cured, which cannot be prevented, and some, perhaps, prevented, which never can be cured.”

123

Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, the naturalist and author of many works, of which those on infusoria may be especially noted here. He was born in 1795, and in 1842 was elected Principal Secretary to the Berlin Academy of Science, which post he held till his death in 1876. The late Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, Bart., will also be remembered in connection with the study of natural science, as well as for his efforts in philanthropy. He died in March, 1879. I have been unable to find any further information as to the prize mentioned by Mr. Ruskin, or as to the essay which obtained it.

124

Mr. Brodie, who succeeded his father as Sir Benjamin Brodie in 1867, was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Oxford in 1855.

125

Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s book “On Color and the Diffusion of Taste” was published in 1858.

126

See note to p. 142.

127

“The monks of Melrose made good kailOn Friday, when they fasted.”

The kail leaf is the one principally employed in the decorations of the abbey. (Original note to “The Oxford Museum,” p. 83.)

128

This engraving, which formed the frontispiece of “The Oxford Museum,” will be found facing the title page of the present volume, the original plate having proved in excellent condition. O’Shea was, together with others of his name and family, amongst the principal workmen on the building. The capital represents the following ferns: the common hart’s-tongue (scolopendrium vulgare), the northern hard-fern (blechnum boreale), and the male fern (filix mas).

129

A new armory was to be added to the Castle.

130

The Literary Gazette of September 26, 1857, after quoting a great part of the previous letter, stated that the new armory was not to be built without all due regard to the preservation of the rock, and that there was therefore no real cause for alarm.

131

“Poems of the Fancy,” xiv. (1803). The quotation omits two lines after the fourth:

“Who loved the little rock, and setUpon its head this coronet?”

The second stanza then begins: “Was it the humor of a child?” etc.

132

The article on taverns occurred in the Daily Telegraph of the 8th December, and commented on a recent meeting of the Licensed Victuallers’ Protection Society. There was also a short article upon drunkenness as a cause of crime in the Daily Telegraph of December 9—referred to by Mr. Ruskin in a letter which will be found in the second volume of this book. The article on castles concluded with an appeal for public subscriptions towards the restoration of Warwick Castle, then recently destroyed by fire.

133

The passage alluded to is partly as follows. “It happened also, which was the real cause of my bias in after-life, that my father had a real love of pictures.... Accordingly, wherever there was a gallery to be seen, we stopped at the nearest town for the night; and in reverentest manner I thus saw nearly all the noblemen’s houses in England; not indeed myself at that age caring for the pictures, but much for castles and ruins, feeling more and more, as I grew older, the healthy delight of uncovetous admiration, and perceiving, as soon as I could perceive any political truth at all, that it was probably much happier to live in a small house and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick Castle, and have nothing to be astonished at; and that, at all events, it would not make Brunswick Square in the least more pleasantly habitable to pull Warwick Castle down. And, at this day, though I have kind invitations enough to visit America, I could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles.”

134

In a second article upon the same subject the Daily Telegraph had expressed surprise at Mr. Ruskin’s former letter. “Who does not remember,” it wrote, “his proposal to buy Verona, so as to secure from decay the glorious monuments in it?”

135

This letter, it will be noticed, was written during the bombardment and a few days before the capitulation of Paris in 1871.

136

On Friday, March 8, 1872, entitled “Turner and Mulready—On the Effect of certain Faults of Vision on Painting, with especial reference to their Works.” The argument of the lecturer, and distinguished oculist, was that the change of style in the pictures of Turner was due to a change in his eyes which developed itself during the last twenty years of his life. (See “Proceedings of the Royal Institution,” 1872, vol. vi., p. 450.)

137

“A History of the Gothic Revival.” By Charles L. Eastlake, F.R.I.B.A. London, Longman and Co., 1872.—In this work Mr. Eastlake had estimated very highly Mr. Ruskin’s influence, on modern architecture, whilst his reviewer was “disposed to say that Mr. Ruskin’s direct and immediate influences had almost always been in the wrong; and his more indirect influences as often in the right.” It is upon these words that Mr. Ruskin comments here, and to this comment the critic replied in a letter which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette of the 20th inst. The main portion of his reply was as follows: “The direct influences, then, which I had principally in my mind were those which had resulted in a preference for Venetian over English Gothic, in the underrating of expressional character in architecture, and the overrating of sculptured ornament, especially of a naturalistic and imitative character, and more generally in an exclusiveness which limited the due influence of some, as I think, noble styles of architecture. By the indirect influences I meant the habit of looking at questions of architectural art in the light of imaginative ideas; the recognition of the vital importance of such questions even in their least important details; and generally an enthusiasm and activity which could have resulted from no less a force than Mr. Ruskin’s wondrously suggestive genius.” To this explanation Mr. Ruskin replied in his second letter on the subject.

138

Mr. Street’s design for the New Law Courts was, after much discussion, selected, May 30, 1868, and approved by commission, August, 1870. The building was not, however, begun till February, 1874, and the hope expressed in this letter is therefore, unfortunately, no expression of opinion on the work itself.

139

Denmark Hill.

140

See “Arabian Windows in the Campo Santa Maria, Mater Domini,” Plate ii. of the “Examples of the Architecture of Venice,” selected and drawn to measurement from the edifice, 1851. And see, too, “Stones of Venice,” vol. ii., chap, vii., Gothic Palaces.

141

This letter was originally received by “a Liverpool gentleman,” and sent inclosed in a long letter signed “An Antiquarian,” to the Liverpool Daily Post.

142

An obvious misprint for “stone-layers.”

143

Ribbesford Church was finally closed after the morning service on Sunday, July 15, 1877. It was then restored, and was reopened and reconsecrated on June 15, 1879. The Kidderminster Times of the 21st inst. contained an account of a meeting of the Ribbesford parishioners to consider the restoration of the church. Hence the allusions in this letter to “copying” the traceries.

144

This circular, which was distributed as above noted during the winter of 1879-80, is here reprinted by Mr. Ruskin’s permission, in connection with the preceding letters upon restoration in architecture. See the Notes on Prout and Hunt, 1879-80, p. 71.

145

In February, 1878; see the “Turner Notes” of that year, and “Fors Clavigera,” New Series—Letter the Fourth, March, 1880.

146

Count Alvise Piero Zorzi, the author of an admirable and authoritative essay on the restoration of St. Mark’s (Venice, 1877).

147

This drawing (No. 28 in the Exhibition) was of a small portion of the west front.

148

“Stones of Venice,” vol. ii., chapter 4, of original edition, and vol. i., chapter 4, of the smaller edition for the use of travellers.

149

In the first edition of this circular this sentence ran as follows: “In the mean time, with the aid of the drawing just referred to, every touch of it from the building, and left, as the color dried in the morning light of the 10th May, 1877, some of the points chiefly insisted on in the ‘Stones of Venice,’ are of importance now.”

150

Printed “Pan-choreion” in the first edition.

151

For “state,” the first edition reads “mind,” and for “have become, in some measure, able,” it has “have qualified myself.” So again for “am at this moment aided,” it reads “am asked, and enabled to do so.”

152

Early in 1879

153

Printed in the second edition only.

154

The reference is to the closing paragraph of the Preface to the Notes, which runs as follows: “Athena, observe, of the Agora, or Market Place. And St. James of the Deep Stream or Market River. The Angels of Honest Sale and Honest Porterage; such honest porterage being the grandeur of the Grand Canal, and of all other canals, rivers, sounds, and seas that ever moved in wavering morris under the night. And the eternally electric light of the embankment of that Rialto stream was shed upon it by the Cross—know you that for certain, you dwellers by high-embanked and steamer-burdened Thames. And learn from your poor wandering painter this lesson—for the sum of the best he had to give you (it is the Alpha of the Laws of true human life)—that no city is prosperous in the sight of Heaven, unless the peasant sells in its market—adding this lesson of Gentile Bellini’s for the Omega, that no city is ever righteous in the Sight of Heaven unless the Noble walks in its street.”—Notes on Prout and Hunt, p. 44.

155

See the “Notes on Prout and Hunt,” p. 78.

156

See the Standard (Dec. 3, 1879). M. Meduna was the architect who carried out the “restoration” of the South façade of the Cathedral.

157

The Reader of October 15 contained an article “On the Conformation of the Alps,” to which in the following issue of the journal (October 22) Sir Roderick Murchison replied in a letter dated “Torquay, 16th October,” and entitled “On the Excavation of Lake Basins in solid rocks by Glaciers,” the possibility of which he altogether denied.

158

“On the Forms of the Stratified Alps of Savoy,” delivered on June 5, 1863. The subject was treated under three heads. 1. The material of the Savoy Alps. 2. The mode of their formation. 3. The mode of their subsequent sculpture. (See the report of the lecture in the “Proceedings of the Royal Institution,” 1863, vol. iv., p. 142. It was also printed by the Institution in a separate form, p. 4.)

159

In reply to this letter, the Reader of November 19, 1864, published one from a Scottish correspondent, signed “Tain Caimbeul,” the writer of which declared that, whilst he looked on Mr. Ruskin “as a thoroughly reliable guide in all that relates to the external aspects of the Alps,” he could not “accept his leadership in questions of political economy or the mechanics of glacier motion.”

160

See below, “Forbes: his real greatness,” pp. 187 seqq., and the references given in the notes there.

161

Even in lower Apennine, “Dat sonitum saxis, et torto vertice torrens.” [Virgil, Æneid, vii. 567].

162

See “Deucalion,” vol. i. p. 93.

163

There twice a day the Severn fills;The salt sea-water passes by,And hushes half the babbling Wye,And makes a silence in the hills.Tennyson, “In Memoriam,” xix.

164

See “Deucalion,” vol. i. p. 3 (Introduction).

165

Following this letter in the same number of the Reader was one from the well-known geologist Mr. Joseph Beete Jukes, F.R.S., who, writing from “Selly Oak, Birmingham, Nov. 22,” described himself as “the originator of the discussion.” He therefore was no doubt the author of the article in the Reader alluded to above (p. 173, note). Mr. Jukes died in 1869.

166

The following is the sentence from Mr. Jukes’ letter alluded to: “Therefore when Mr. Ruskin says that ‘the forms of the Alps are quite visibly owing to the action of elevatory, contractile, and expansive forces,’ I would entreat him to listen to those who have had their vision corrected by the laborious use of chain and theodolite and protractor for many toilsome years over similar forms.”

167

The Battle of Sempach (?). See the letters on “The Italian Question,” at the beginning of the second volume.

168

To the effect that “the form of the ground is the result wholly of denudation.” For the “scheme,” consisting of ten articles, see the note 172 below.

169

Dr. William Buckland, the geologist, and at one time Dean of Westminster. He died in 1856. See “Fors Clavigera,” 1873, Letter 34, p. 19.

170

This and the following sentences allude to parts of the above-mentioned scheme. “The whole question,” wrote Mr. Jukes, “depends on the relative dates of production of the lithological composition, the petro-logical structure, and the form of the surface,” The scheme then attempts to sketch the “order of the processes which formed these three things,” in ten articles, of which the following are specially referred to by Mr. Ruskin: “1. The formation of a great series of stratified rocks on the bed of a sea.... 3. The possible intrusion of great masses of granitic rock” in more or less fluent state; and 6, 7, 8, 9, which dealt with alternate elevation and depression, of which there might be “even more than one repetition.”

171

See Herodotus, ii. 92; Plato, Critias, 112; and Horace, Od. i. 31.

172

The address was delivered by Mr. Jukes as President of the Geological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which met in 1862 at Cambridge. (See the Report of the Association, vol. xxxii. p. 54.)

173

Mr. Jukes’ letter had concluded by recommending English geologists to pursue their studies at home, on the ground that “a student, commencing to learn comparative anatomy, does not think it necessary to go to Africa and kill an elephant.” In the following number of the Reader (Dec. 10) Mr. Jukes wrote, in answer to the present letter, that he had not intended to imply any hostility towards Mr. Ruskin, with whose next letter the discussion ended.

174

“M. A. C.” wrote “Concerning Stones,” and dealt—or attempted to deal—with “atmospheric pressure” in addition to the pressure of water alluded to in Mr. Ruskin’s letter of November 26. The letter signed “G. M.” was entitled “Mr. Ruskin on Glaciers;” see next note. Both letters appeared in the Reader of December 3, 1864.

175

Not in the “last letter,” but in the last but one—see ante, p. 177, “A stone at the bottom of a stream,” etc. The parts of “G. M.’s” letter specially alluded to by Mr. Ruskin are as follows:

“It is very evident that the nearer the source of the glacier, the steeper will be the angle at which it advances from above, and the greater its power of excavation.... Mr. Ruskin gets rid of the rocks and débris on the under side of the glacier by supposing that they are pressed beyond the range of action in the solid body of the ice; but there must be a limit to this, however soft the matrix.”

176

See “Modern Painters,” Part v., chap. 13, “On the Sculpture Mountains,” vol. iv. p. 174.

177

In connection with the question of glacier-motion, Mr. Ruskin’s estimate of Professor Forbes and his work is here reprinted from Rendu’s “Glaciers of Savoy” (Macmillan, 1874), pp. 205-207. For a passage on the same subject which was reprinted in the “Glaciers of Savoy,” in addition to the new matter republished here, and for a statement of the course of glacier-science, and the relation of Forbes to Agassiz, the reader is referred to “Fors Clavigera,” 1873, Letter 34, pp. 17-26. The “incidental passage” consists of a review of Professor Tyndall’s “Forms of Water” (London, 1872), and the “contemptible issue” was that of his position and Forbes’ amongst geological discoverers.

178

George Forbes, B.A., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Andersonian University, Glasgow, and editor of “The Glaciers of Savoy.”

179

This saying of Macaulay’s occurred in an address which, as M.P. for that city, he delivered at the opening of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, 1846 (Nov. 4). Forbes’ criticism of it and of the whole address may be found in a lecture introductory to a course on Natural Philosophy, delivered before the University of Edinburgh (Nov. 1 and 2, 1848), and entitled “The Danger of Superficial Knowledge;” under which title it was afterwards printed, together with a newspaper report of Macaulay’s address (London and Edinburgh, 1849). In the edition of Macaulay’s speeches revised by himself, the sentence in question is omitted, though others of a like nature, such as “The profundity of one age is the shallowness of the next,” are retained, and the whole argument of the address remains the same. (See Macaulay’s Works, 8 vol. ed., Longmans, 1866. Vol. viii. p. 380, “The Literature of Great Britain.”) For a second mention of this saying by Mr. Ruskin, see also “Remarks addressed to the Mansfield Art Night Class,” 1873, now reprinted in “A Joy for Ever” (Ruskin’s Works, vol. xi. p. 201).