New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1900-01-21
JOHN RUSKIN.

During his lifetime contemporary opinion diff
fered widely as the poles concerning Ruskin.
Now that he is dead, the difficulty of appraising
him is no less 1t is, indeed, much easier to say
/ what he not than what he was. Thus, 1t
may confidently be set down that he not
| practical, that he not consistent, that he
was by means always ineligible, that he
was not by habit exactly reasonable; but this
| gives scarcely the faintest shadow of what the
man really was. 1t is related of him that when
| he was nine years old he wrote poem on the
universe; and there is n certain subtle symbol
ism in this childish ambition. He believed him
| self critic but he was far more poet. Nature
| spoke to him as she never speaks save to the
initiate few. The qualities which in Modern
Painters" first drew attention to the young OXO-
| MAN were not critical ones. His analyses were
| indeed brilliant, but neither sober nor profound.
| The true secret of his literary power was the
| marvellous nsight-an insight as of mystic
altatiOn-nto the deep meanings OF natural phe-
nOmena. For him the cloud, the blue sky the
| lightning flash, the mountain torrent. the whis-
per of the breeze among the trees, the majesty
of uplfted crags, had language and signiti-
canoe such as perhaps no other modern man
has been instructed in.
If it were possible to fix so Protean charac-
ter to define so mutable a temperament, it
an ancient Greek with the sensibility and emo
tional capacity of a modern woman. In the b.
ginning of his career art, as he understood it,
engrossed his attention. But his mind be-
came fuller and his powers of observation
banded he took in more and more the tragedy
pathos and perversty of human lfe and all his
large nature revOlted against modern civiliza-
ton. Revolted, however, with limitations, for
he, like all of us, was the result of evolution,
and heredity exercised in him the conventional
restraints which his ancestors had created and
developed And this explains in part the other
wise incomprehensbe turns and changes to
which he was subject. All the selfhood of the
man cried out against the injustice, the wrong
the fraud, the hypocrisy, the gross materialism
that he saw around him. Ever and anon the
real Ruskin would bid defiance TO inherited ten
dencies and then the world was startled by his
chivarous outbursts, his generous renunciatiOns
his fiery philanthropy. Again the meaner part
In him would obtain ascendancy, and then he
shocked those who loved him by his Grass wrong
medicines, by his wild abuse of the North dur
ing the Rebellion or his lamentable defence of
Governor Eyre, of Jamaica notoriety.
No charge has been oftener preferred against
him than that of egotsm. 1t rests upon the
irascible dogmatism of his style mainly, and to
some extent upon the assumption of omnisci-
But the truth is that Ruskn firmly believed in
the genuineness of his insight He a
prophet, seer and preacher in his own estimation
The exalted ideas the mystic visions he derived
from contemplation of Nature, he transmitted in
the alembic of his versatile brain, and gave back
to humanity in a food of poetic didactcism. lie
believed in himself without doubt, but he was
no egotst and the very antithesis of selfshnesS.
The sincerity and force of his character We're
never more strkngy exhibited than when he
deliberately stripped himself of all but pttance
and consecrated his fortune to benevolent uses.
Preachers and teachers are many, but men who
will obey the SaviOur's injunction to 'sell all
thou hast and give to the poor" are rare to-
day as nineteen centuries ago And Ruskin was
as full of reverence as of compassion. Wrong
kindled in him burning heat, and made him
rave against It with tempestuous denunciation.
But of all wrongdoing that which touched him
most was the spiritual iniquity which sought to
exclude the divine from the universe. Modern
philosophy seemed TO this man born out of time
to have become in very truth the ''procuress of
He'll" and in resisting the tendency of COntem-
porary thought he sometimes fell into eXtrava-
gances.
1t has been said that his influence was gone;
that neither England nor the world cared any
more for the strange, wild eloquence of John
Ruskin; that his inconsistencies and divagations
had worn out his welcome. 1t is not TO be de-
MED that he attempted too much. He took all
knowledge for his domain, and the enterprise
was beyond him. But his influence has been
and yet will be great in stimulating thought, in
opening the minds of young men, in discovering
the inner meanings as we'll as the apparent
beauties of Nature, and in leading thinkers to
examine and test the canons of art rejecting
what is false no matter how buttressed by con-
YentiOn, and hOnOring what is true no matter
how sighted by authority. Nor is it to be be-
lieved that noble an example of sincerity, in
tegrity true patriotism and earnest veracity can
ever be lost sight Of The world in its heart
must acknowledge and confess that wherever
Ruskin seemed eccentric he most often stood OPP
posed 10 practices and principles the mainten-
ance of which is no honor to civilization; and
that where he appeared least in harmony with
his peers, in the courageous altruism of his con-
duct the very isolation in which he stood con-
stituted a rebuke TO his generation not the less
sharp because silent In him a distinguished
man has passed away, and one who, with many
faults, deserves to have il said of him that all
his aims were lofty and all his conduct and his
teachings pure.
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OPENING THE NILE
The formal proclamation of the opening OF
| kI,a bxy T