The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-19 00:00:00

MR. RUSKIN'S NEW GOSPEL OF ART.

Mr. John Ruskin, as all the world knows, has lately
become Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford. Mr.
Ruskin has for some time been held to be a better autho-
rity upon painting than upon political economy, and con-
temporary judges have by no means kept this compara-
tive estimate of his powers in reserve. Nothing daunted,
however, the author of " Modern Painters " has taken
occasion in his inaugural lectures at Oxford to affirm
his peculiar tenets with considetable emphasis,
and to repeat at the same time some of those unpleasant
statements that the English people so much dislike to
hear. He declares, for example, that his countrymen
will never excel in decorative design. Such design is
usually produced by people of great natural powers of
mind, who have no variety of subjects to employ them-
selves on, and no oppressive anxieties. The English have
too much to do and to think of to attain a high degree of
excellence. Nor can they be successful in the highest fields
of ideal or theological art—for the reason that ever since
the Conquest, if not earlier, there has existed in that
people a strange delight in the forms of burlesque "which
are connected in some degree with the foulness in evil."
And yet, bad as such a tendency is, " you will find," Mr.
Ruskin tells us, "that whenever Englishmen are wholly
without this instinct, their genius is comparatively weak
and restricted." Now, the first necessity for executing
any great work in ideal art, he goes on to explain,
is the looking upon all foulness with horror, as
a contemptible, though dreadful enemy ; and he
adds that we shall easily understand what he means
" by comparing the feelings with which Dante regards
any form of obscenity or of base jest, with the temper in
whichthe same things are regarded by Shakspere." It
may be some comfort to the many Anglo-Saxons who
will feel outraged by this slur on the immortal bard to
learn that Mr. Ruskin acknowledges English supe-
riority in portraiture, as illustrated by Rey-
nolds and Gainsborough, and confesses that they
(the English) have a sympathy with the lower
animals which is peculiarly their own, but which, although
"it has already found some exquisite expression in the
works of Bewick and Landseer, is yet quite undeveloped."
In subsequent lectures Mr. Ruskin proceeds to instruct
the ingenious young Britons committed to his charge that
there can absolutely be not alone no right art, but no right
morality or happiness, in a country the cities of which
are built as they are in Englend. He said as much twenty:,
two years ago in the " Seven Lamps of Architecture ;
he says it again now with increased force and confidence.
"You must have," he urges, "lovely cities, crystallised,
not coagulated, into form ; limited in size and not casting
out out the scum and scurf of them into an encircling
eruption of shame, but girded, each with its sacred
pomcerium, and with garlands of gardens full of blossom-
ing trees, and softly guided streams." Mr. Ruskin an-
ticipates that this will be declared impossible ; but, with
afine discrimination, avers that he "has nothing to do
with its possibility, but only with its indispensibility."
But more than this ; There must be no iron roofs, and
no steam-power—at least, nowhere in sight. -Unholy
machines of all sorts must be banished from houses and
fields. "Agriculture by the hand, and absolute refusal
or banishment of unnecessary igneous force are the first
conditions of a school of art in any country. And until
you do this, be it soon or late, things will continue in that
triumphant state to which, for want of finer art, your
mechanism has brought them that, though England
is deafened with spinning-wheels, her people have not
clothes ; though she is black with digging of fuel, they die
of cold ; and though she has sold her soul for gain, they
die of hunger." Mr. Ruskin subsequently lays down a
number of propositions, most of which are so far from
being objectionable in themselves, as to be obvious
truisms ; but they are rendered ludicrous by the dog-
matic assertion of their necessary co-relation to art. Thus,
he insists, the people must be made clean, must live in
tasteful houses, and eat wholesome food, before there
can be any art school or art taste whatever in the country
which they inhabit. No doubt there is truth of a
broad and general sort in these assumptions but
their trustworthiness as practical guides, distpates
into thin air in the light of very common expe-
rience. Aristotle taught the Republic under Alex-
ander ; Turner painted the most glorious of
English landscapes among a people more wretched
than can now be found in London ; all manner of lovely
works in literature as well as art, ranking among the
most perfect in existence, have been produced in evil times
and amidst the most corrupt society. The truth is that
Mr. Ruskin has mixed up his Political Economy with his
Art Criticism until neither- he nor hiss readers can
tell where one leaves off or the other begins.
The consequences of over population, the en-
tail of real property, and other special and
local matters, are associated by him with the development
of art in a manner that is often plausible and eloquent, but
not always either coherent or rational. He is no wiser in
this regard than are our own native philosophers who insist
uponimputing to democratic institutions all the beneficent
results that have sprung from vast area and sparse popu-
lation. But Mr. Ruskin has told us so much in his former
works, and even in his present lectures, that if not invari-
ably new, has been not only true, but beautifully expressed,
and full of healthful morality: so that adverse criticism in
his case must always be overbalanced by gratitude.
Sharp judges may say of him that he knows not logic, and
that he is even at times absurd ; but there are few writers
of our generation in whom we can sooner overlook weak-
kness in the application of the laws of reasoning, or more
easily forgive occasional absurdity.—New York Times.

THREE MEN• POISONED. A farmer and two
labourers have been poisoned at Waterford through eating
unsound fish: The deceased dined together one day last
week on salt Newfoundland fish, potatoes, and milk.
Shortly after partaking of the meal, one of them became
very ill, and in about half-an-hour afterwards the other
two became so alarmingly sick that medical assistance
was called in, but all efforts to save their lives were of no
avail, as the three ram died during the evening. Two
wives and nine children are, through this calamity, left
unprovided for.