to read the book right through, once a year at least, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, every syllable, at a time when no skill of interpretation in the teacher and no precocity in the pupil could have imparted a right understanding of many portions, the opinion we form of her judgment and discretion is not too favourable.

But the imaginative reconstruction of a personality from episodes is seldom reliable, and, in the case of Mr. Ruskin's mother, evidently gives a most unjustly biassed view. The fuller and more general picture is that of a singularly peaceful and gentle home, parents closely attached to one another, and in ever kind and anxious sympathy with all that made for the interest and welfare of their child. The strong evangelical leanings of the mother admitted the relaxations of "a lighter self" capable of a free and honest enjoyment even of the stories of Fielding and Sterne, which Mr. Ruskin's father, a devoted student of literary masterpieces, read aloud in the evenings.

§ 2. This family life was self-centred to an unusual extent; and the extreme care which both parents took of their boy kept him from many of the childish interests which might have thrown him freely amongst other children and have widened the area of child-life. As we read his early story we are reminded of the title he has given to one of his own books, "Hortus Inclusus." To the physical care bestowed upon him by his mother, John, with his delicate constitution and mental precocity, owed very much. To the early training he received in literature and art he owed still more. Too much is often made" of books that have influenced me." But no careful student of Mr. Ruskin can fail to see the extraordinarily powerful impact upon his sensitive imagination

and his retentive memory of the "great books" which taught him his earliest wider lessons of life and humanity. The Bible, Sir Walter Scott, Homer (in Pope's version) not only formed his early outlook upon life and history, but stored his childish mind with images and words which made an imperishable impression upon his literary work.

Art, too, crept early into his life, for his father was not merely a collector but an amateur painter of delicate taste, and pictures and engravings were objects of serious interest to him. The somewhat austere habits of this Scottish household seem to have admitted a good deal of material comfort which, under the pressure of a rapidly expanding income, included many expensive luxuries, though never degenerating into show or magnificence.

Born in London, John Ruskin was yet no city-bred boy. In 1824, when he was five years old, the family moved to a comfortable mansion in Herne Hill, then a charming rural spot, upon which the speculative builder had not begun to lay unholy hands. Here the Ruskins kept almost entirely to themselves, rarely entertaining, never "entering society," giving their son John the best of everything, as they understood it, in physical and mental culture. In such an atmosphere, fenced round by parental solicitude, there was indeed grave danger lest a sensitive, precocious child might develop into a portentous prig. That he escaped this fate must in part be imputed to his native modesty, and to the powerful early interests in books, art, and nature which took him outside of himself.

§3. Had the elder Mr. Ruskin been possessed by that

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same genius of mis-education which was driving another Scottish father 1 to attempt the ruin of another distinguished son, it would have gone hard with John Ruskin. Fortunately, the strict physical regimen of young Ruskin was mitigated by abundance of free leisure, that "broad margin to life” which is so essential to healthy growth. From books and the routine of a too carefully ordered home, John found wholesome relief in the beauties of Nature, which were the objects of his earliest and most abiding passion. The woods and streams and trees in the charming country round Dulwich became his familiar friends, and their free beauty formed a healthy counterpoise to the "luxury and formalism which in later years he recognised as chief dangers of his early years. Moreover, each summer, the peaceful monotony of residence at Herne Hill was broken by long and delightful travels, in which the child became familiar with all the varied scenery of his native land. There is an irresistible quaintness in the picture of little John packed away in the post-chaise with father and mother, leisurely traversing England and Scotland as they drove from one stately home to another, to take orders for sherry. Mr. Ruskin was his own traveller, and worked in pleasure and business most successfully. It was indeed a splendid education for such a child, who saw all the famous sights, the cities, cathedrals, rivers, mountains, castles of his native land. His first love, he tells us, was for castles and ruins, not for pictures; that came afterwards. These travels, to be supplemented later by Continental journeys, fastened the realities of history upon his imagination, and early reflections and

1 James Mill.

judgments began to stir his childish mind. From Homer and Scott he had already gained "strange ideas about kings," and in "Fors Clavigera "1 he tells how "a painful wonder soon arose in my child-mind why the castles should now be always empty. Dark yearning took hold of me for a kind of Restoration"

a seedling of the later hero-worship and new feudalism which were to figure so strongly in his scheme of social reform.

Too much, however, must not be made of these dim foreshadowings. Ruskin's early love was the pure romantic passion for beautiful scenery and historic associations. This soon took further shape in the beginnings of scientific curiosity. Not content with a "superficial sentiment," derived from the "grandeur" of mountains, he wished to know about them, became a searcher into causes. Mountains thus led him to mineralogy and physical geography, and one by one other branches of the natural sciences began to interest him, and he sought to give more definite meaning to the rivers, the clouds, trees, and all the objects of the external world.

This early scientific spirit belongs to the "analytic” talent which Mr. Ruskin in manhood has always justly claimed as his most distinctive gift. His was never a mere delicately receptive mind; to accurate sensation he added this power of analysis and the attendant faculty of creative imagination. Those, however, who regard him distinctively as of a poetical imaginative nature have no justification for this view. Of the faculties. just named, the creative imagination was always weaker than the faculties of observation and analysis. 1 Fors, Letter x. (i. 193).

§ 4. Later in life Mr. Ruskin brought this rare analytic power to bear upon the moral education of his early life. Its virtues and defects are clearly and justly indicated by him. Peace, obedience, and faith were the moral atmosphere he breathed; truth, honesty, and perfect exactitude of conduct were taught in the example of his parents; the foundation of justice and consideration for others was laid in his home life. It was a safe but hardly a stimulating moral atmosphere. It furnished, he tells us, "nothing to love," and "nothing to endure:" the "judgment of right and wrong and power of independent action were left wholly undeveloped." 1 Nor was any corrective to this somewhat enervating calm furnished by school life. Except for a brief season in a small day-school, his "education" was conducted by private tutors under the same close parental care. The best "individual attention" of skilled teachers was secured for him both in the ordinary branches of learning and in art. It is impossible to assess the gain and loss arising from this policy of home education. On the whole, however, it is probably a matter for congratulation that young Ruskin escaped the hardening ordeal of a great public school at a time before modern notions of humanity had softened the asperities of mechanical discipline. Brutal injustice is ill compensated by a rough sense of comradeship; and to thrust into the educational cock-pit a sensitive nature such as Ruskin's in order that he might "find his level," and "have the nonsense knocked out of him," was a fatuous policy, which the good sense and affection of his parents forbade them to entertain. Thus he escaped the fate of being turned out 1 Fors, Letter liv. (iii. 109).