faults in Turner, but what is true and beautiful in Turner becomes daily a deeper conviction of my life." In 1853, Mr. Ruskin lectured before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, on Architecture and Painting. These lectures afterwards formed a separate volume under the title of "The Crown of Wild Olives," issued in 1866. Others of these essays published in a collected form bear such titles as the "Ethics of the Dust," "Sesame and Lilies," "Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds," a religious pamphlet, and "Unto the Last." Mr. Ruskin's other chief works are "Studies of Architecture in Our Schools," "The Queen of the Air," "Lectures on Art," "Essays on Political Economy," and "Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art."

But we must not think to find the whole of Ruskin's work as an author in his very excellent treatises on art; for in him existed a strong desire to be helpful in the practical affairs of life.

Like Wordsworth, he has rev.led to us many of nature's hidden beauties, but, unlike Wordsworth, he did not seclude himself from the life of his fellow man.

In breadth of culture he was foremost among his countrymen. By one it has been said, "Ruskin interprets all that is meant by a liberal education." He wrote extensively for the laboring class, he spent a large fortune in trying to maintain guilds and other institutions for the benefit of the workingmen. And, too, he spent large sums on the Sheffield Museum. Much and often did he write to the newspapers articles on economic subjects. He lectured much in those large manufacturing towns of Great Britain, where many thousand workingmen assembled to hear him. One illustration alone, will serve to show the quality of these writings, which always held a high moral tone.

Of drunkenness he says:

"Drunkenness very slightly encourages murder, and universally encourages idleness. *** Drunkenness is not the cause of crime in any case. It is itself crime in every case. A gentleman will not knock out his wife's brains while he is drunk; but it is nevertheless his duty to remain sober.

"Much more, it is his duty to teach his peasantry to remain sober and to furnish them with sojourn more pleasant than the pot-house, and means of amusement less circumscribed than the pot. And the encouragement of drunkenness, for the sake of the profit on sale of drink, is certainly one of the most criminal methods of assassination for money hitherto adopted by the bravos of any age or country."

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Had Ruskin never been known to the world as its greatest and most charming art critic, still he would have been known as a writer on ethical and economic subjects. practical and visionary, his economic schemes were called, and his critics often told him that he was mistaken in having left the sure path of art criticism, to grope in the life of the workingman. Nevertheless, Ruskin wrote late in his life, that he had missed the work to which God had appointed him by devoting so much of his time to art interests, and so little to the raising of his fellow man to higher ethical and social ideals. Ruskin's political economy was of course called visionary, because it was, and still is, beyond its time. However, if our modest opinion on such a subject may be permitted, we believe that when the world has reached that happy, heavenly state that God has designed His children should attain to in the United Order, much that Ruskin has thought and said shall be found embodied therein.

It was John Ruskin who wrote, "There are voices of battle and fam

must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence." He was speaking of the oppression wielded by those in power. Let me ask, is such a thought visionary? Does not every student of social questions know this to be a truth?

Concerning his great fortune we quote the following to show what disposition he himself made of his wealth: "He inherited from his father and mother $785,000 in cash besides other possessions. Of this he lost $100,000 by bad mortgages. He gave to poor relations $85,000. To a cousin he gave $75,000. He gave $70,000 to the art institutions of Sheffield and Oxford. For thirteen years he spent $27,500 annually. He thus in one way or another sacrificed $755,000. But in consequence of the enhancement in value of his father's property he had $285,000 left. He gave away all this, retaining only his home, and $1,000 to be spent in amusing himself in Venice or elsewhere, and $60,000 to be invested in consols to supply $1800 a year on which he said a bachelor gentleman ought to live, or if he would not, he deserved speedily to die. In this contemptuous way did Mr. Ruskin enter his protest against mere accumulation."

He died on the 20th day of January, 1900. And the nation whom he had honored, honored him in those last sad rites. He is laid to rest in beautiful Westminster, a fit shrine for his beauty-loving spirit to inhabit. With his death, England, and indeed, the English speaking world can be said to have buried the last of their great literary men. At least, he is the last whose genius has claimed the attention of the world for any considerable length of time. When the Americans parted with Holmes, they were compelled to register a similar thought. Now, are the English forced to the same conclusion.

A writer in this month's Scribner has said, in substance, that Ruskin above all others saw nature through and through, and opened the eyes of the blind so that they might see it as no other man has been able to make them see it. Fidelity to nature was the great plea he made for all landscape painting, and it was this same fidelity that made him the great defender and disciple of Turner. Born of beauty was his every thought; and clothed in beauty was every word that fell from his lips or pen. Master of eloquence we must needs call him.

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Of the second period of his thorship, that period that produced "Unto the Last," "The Crown of Wild Olives," "Time and Tide," and especially "Fors Clavigera," we must needs speak. For twenty years he had discussed art subjects, but as he grew older and the knowledge of life in all its complexities bore down upon him, he concluded that to talk art and the beautiful to a nation where ideals and life were so far from the Christian life, was largely vain and useless. He now felt the great mission of his life was not to talk Turner, Rubens, or Angelo, but to raise mankind to greater and higher things. From thenceforth he was the inspirer of men's lives rather than of their art ideals, and, too, he often chastised them because of their greed and lust. If in his youth he had turned from the ministry to art, in his later life he turned from art to a real and glorious ministry. He sounded, to all, words of warning and encouragement, and not infrequently did he, like Carlyle, use the lash and scourge. "This desire