Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1885-08-18
JOHN RUsEIN.
ms LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENT


career Tia, is Duslae, from All Oar GEN
grafton.
A London letter says The death OF
Mr.. Ruskin is now expected momen-
tariiy.
With infinite and peculiar reluctance
intelligent and earnest people are every
where reading the news that John Rus
kin is dying. Within the last year
even there has been so much vigor IN
his work that no one expected his end
was near. There was so much work
vet 10 be done that ne alone could do
as Il ought TO be done, so much shil ex-
recssd OF him, that il seems like viola
lion Of the natural order of things for
such man. now only in his sixty
seventh year, TO pass out Of world in
which he always has filed place
never filed in any nation so we'll be-
fore. Though born in comparative lux
ury, John Ruskin has always been a
martyr TO conscientious, enthusiastic
labor and selfsacrifce. He was too
full Of thought ever 10 be idle, and too
full Of sense OF duty, as learned in
the nursery from the Sermon on
the Mount, ever to become con-
senting member Of state Of society
he believed to be radically wrong in
its purposes and organization. Hence
his forty years OF active labor have
been also years Of bitter internal con-
flict and Of conflict with all the flip
pant and seliishly idle and seDsually
base members of modern society. IL
is a finely-organized life--a human in
carnation Of art and beauty taken to
prophecy and martyrdom-no only no
easy task, but an infinitely arduous
and exhausting task hence, perhaps,
an untimely end.
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.
John Ruskin was born in the city OF
London in February, 1919. His father
began business as a wine merchant,
with no capital and considerable debt
inherited from the grandfather. The
father paid the debts Of the grand
father and people called him a fool.
When John grew old enough to know
what his father had been and had done,
and when the father died, our seer
had engraved on a granite slab
over his grave that he was
"an entirely honest merchant" This
honest merchant had also "a rare love
of pictures an innate faculty for the
discernment Of true art. When John
was yet child the father used to take
him in his private carriage through
many parts Of England, stopping always
in towns where fine pictures were to be
seen. So young John Ruskin got his
bias for art, already having the bent in
the blood, and so also he saw many Of the
finest castles in England and grew fond
of those types Of architecture which
seem more part Of nature than
anything else in the way of
human structures to be found in this
world. In his early years he had Wal
ter Scott's novels, the Had, in Pope's
translation. Robinson CruSoe, the Pill
grim's Porgress, and always the Old
and New Testaments, which latter his
mother, hoping to make a preacher Of
her son, insisted that he should manage
to read through about once year. So
he learned the Apocalypse by heart,
got the Decalogue engraved in his
being, saw the glory Of Paul's fifteenth
chapter of First Corinthians, was
touched with the glory of the Sermon
on the Mount, and hence, beng an
honest soul from the start, never could
quite adopt the Coleridgian moonshine
or the Gibbons rhetoric Of the age in
which he was reared.
SCHOOLING AND FIRST WORK.
In his boyhood, besides the influences
Just mentioned, John Ruskin had all
the advantages to be obtained from pri-
vate tutors of such education as a boy
can learn. In 1889, age twenty, he
was sent to Oxford University, where
he gained the Newdigate prize, with a
poem entitled "Salsetto aad Elphanta.
A few years later he published small
volume Of poems. But he was not a .
poet and the rhyming business went its
way to oblivion. He was graduated at
Oxford in 1912, devoted himself to the
study Of art, apparently expecting him
self. to be a painter; learned water
color painting with Copley, Fielding.
and j. ID. Hading, mastered the tech
nique Of drawing and became incarnate
art, as We said and as every product Of
his pencil has clearly shown. But in
London at this same time there was
poor boy studying water-color drawing
and making popular pictures to earn his
bread. Two rarer young men than
young Turner and young Ruskin never
grew up together in the same city, with
the same longing and much the same
powers, and Ruskin only failed Of being
q frst-rate artist in water-colors and
oils because he saw in Turner'S
early works even a truth Of nature,
a depth Of sky, and a splendor Of
heavens light that no painter ever
before had drawn, and because the
sight Of it captiva;ed his soul. So John
Ruskin dabbled in poetry and touched
art with a firm hand, to find that a
greater than he was already in his
chosen field, and that to explain Tur-
ner's art in its relation to world art,
and hence TO explain what world art
means in its relation to world morality
and religion, was the bounden duty
Of his own existence. Hence in
lS43 John Ruskin published the
first two parts NOW known as the first
yolume) Of "Modern Painters: Their
Superiority in the Art Of Landscape
Painting to All the Ancient Masters.
BY q Graduate OF Oxford" And so
the light was kindled that burst into q
nations eyes; that started ages from
their accepted slumbers; that made
John Ruskin enemies and worshippers
for life and won him splendid immor.
tality. Modern Painters" is an ap
peal from sleep and formality TO natur,
and sunlight and open eyes and honest
accurate industry. II made Turner
the typical inearnste painter of ma
ture--that is, Of the truth anC
spirit Of nature--and it was tn,
most eloquent, soulful, splendid writin,
England had then ever known. The
second volume Of Modern Painters y
foflowad In 1915 f,,,;tk =. .o,,:..l ia.