The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1889-04-19

ROMANCE.

John Ruskin did a strangely hayward
thing when he consented to get married.
He did a most erratic and to the public a
most inexplicable thing when he arranged
for his divorce.
He had accepted some of the loftiest ira
ditions about womanbood that men some
times read Of and talk about, and he look
ed for his ideal companion. One night he
met her in the drawing-room Of q London
friend, who, without his know ing il, had
brought the young lady to-meet the eyes of
the great writer
1t was a June night, he was thirty-five
and she looked like a Greek goddess.
lie was dazzled. She was d tall, grace
full girl of nineteen, with a face and figure
as fanltless as one of the statues Of DID,
No one verexpected Ruskin to fall in love,
and he did not. She was poor, needed a
home and its comforts, and so they were
married.
Their welded life was peaceful, friendly,
kindly to the highest degree, but there was
not a spark of affection to tighten their ex-
%istencc. She admired the great man she
had married, and was grateful for the
wealth and comfort he showered on her.
He worshipped her as he would the marble
made life-like by the sculptor's chisel.
There was nothing human about the life
they led as husband and wife, and she was
a wema who in her heart, like all true
women, laughed at the traditions that
made her sex love distant worship.
One day Ruskin brought an artist to
paint his wife's picture. And the man
was Millais, and he was a bright, clieery,
handsome fellow, human every inch Of him,
with a great and absorbing love for tie
beautiful and a willingness to tell Of his
love,
He began to paint the portrait Of the
magnificent woman and when lie had fin
ished he was in love with his friends wife.
Woman-like she saw it, and perhaps she
was not full of sorrow and ~reproach. 1t
was the first tribute Of real manful love
| that had been laid at her feet.
itist iStiNhAti. LIS va tftS Sef tiit ~
nance that was weaving around those two
lives and his heart realized how little affec-
| tion he had to lavish on the woman he had
made his wife.
How be told her the story of his pride in
her and the sacrifice he was to make for
her, while she lay prone at his feet, is one
of the things which only he or she could
tell.
1t is difficult to obtain a divorce in Eng
land, but John Ruskin secured it FOR her,
and one bracing morning in the early win
ter, a month after the divorce was granted,
Ruskin stood beside the couple in one Of
London's quiet churches and saw them
made man and wife.
That was a good many years ago, and
| since then Millais has become rich and IA
nous and is now Sir John and his wife is
my Lady Millais.
The warmest, sturdiest friend the strng-
| Cling painter had in his toiling days was
| the man whose wife he had married, and
through all the years of Millais' later sue
cess and greater honor. John Ruskin has
been the welcome guest and almost daily
| visitor to the man and woman whose lives
he so unselfshly crowned with happiness.
1t is a strange story and the world knows
little about it, and some men have con-
demned him as some women have eensured
her. But the two men and that one wo
man who know best have been happy and
| contented with the change that John Rus
kin's pnre unseIfshness brought into their
| lives. And SO the world should not COM
plain.