The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1907-07-25
John Ruskin's Sacrifice.
BY NIxoLA GREELEY.ssnTH.

John Ruskin. author Of Sesame
and Lilies "The Seven Lamps OF
Architecture" and other works which
many persons of discernment rave
over and some others leave respect
fully alone. was not half so original
in his works as In his life.
He had several love affairs of very
pastel coloring before the great ro.
nance of his life began with his mar
riage to Euphemia Chalmers Gray
and ended with her divorce and sec
ond marriage to the great painter,
Sir John Millais.
The most important of his prelim-
mary love affairs was best told by
Ruskin himself. The heroine, Char.
lotte Withers, "a fragile, fair,
freckled. sensitive slip of girl about
sixteen was on visit to his par.
ents' home. ~''-"-''---.Vs-r.-S...
She was." Ruskin wrote, "grace-
full in an unfinished and small wild
flower sort of way, extremely in.
telligent, affectionate, wholly right
minded. and mild in piety. An alto
gether sweet and delicate creature OF
ordinary sort, not pretty, but quite
pleasant to see, especially II her
eyes were looking your way, and her
mind with them. We got to like
each other IN O mildly confidential
way in the course of week. We dis
puted on the relative dignities Of
music and painting, and l wrote an
essay nine foolscap pages long, pro-
posing the entire establishment of
my own opinion, and the total dis
comfiture and overthrow os hers, ac-
cording to my usual manner of pay
ing court to my mistresses. Charlotte
Withers, however, thought | did her
great honor, and carried away the
essay as If it had been a school
! prize. And, as l said, II my father
and mother had chosen to keep her
month longer, we should have
fallen c2ite melodiously and quietly
, in love, and they might have given
me an excellently pleasant little wife,
and set me up, geology and all, in
the coal business, without any re-
sistance or further trouble on my
: part. When Charlotte went away
with her father, l walked with her
, to Camberwell Green, and we said
goodbye, rather sorrowfully, at the
! corner of the New road; and that
! possibility of meek happiness van
ished forever. little while after
ward her father negotiated a mar
riage for her with a well-to-do
trader whom she took because she
was bid. He treated her pretty much
as one of his coal sacks, and in year
or two she died"
i Though his first love was child
for whom he wrote ponderous essays,
Ruskin married in 1S4S, when he
was twenty-nine years old, the girl
for whom he devised his first fair :
story.
Euphemia Gray was an extremely
statues1ue beauty whom he et at a
ball and whom he admired about as
much as he might st. Paul's Church
or Lincoln Cathedral. Soon after
the meeting he proposed, and she
accepted him, though the feeling on
neither side was stronger than
friendship. Marriage did not
strengthen It, and when Ruskin
brought the handsome young pre-
Raphaelite painter, John Millais, to
his home to paint Mrs. Ruekin's por-
trait, the result was swift and inev-
table. The artist and his sitter fell
in love, and being honest and un-
conventional, they told Ruskin about
it. The latter met the situation as
few men have ever done. lie prompt
( ly secured the annulment of his mar
riage, and at the wedding of his ex-
wife and Millais, which followed i'm
mediately, he gave the bride away.
This action was as bizarre as that
of any Bel lard Shaw hero ana has a
prototype only in the astounding ro-
nance OF Richard Wagner.-New
York Evening World.