The manuscript and corrected proofs of the greater part of The Storm-Cloud are at Brantwood.

A comparison of these with the final text reveals Ruskin's usual care in revision. A few notes are added from the MS. (see, e.g.,

pp. 9, 20).

The illustrations, now included in the lecture, are reprinted from the report of it in the Art Journal. The lecture itself had been illustrated by coloured enlargements from Ruskin's sketches, which were thrown on a screen by the lime-light. Some of the enlargements were made for him by Mr. Arthur Severn (§ 26); others, by Mr. Collingwood (§ 40). "Such colours! such brushes! such-everything-waiting!" Ruskin had written to his aide-de-camp, who was set to work with Messrs. Newman's extra-luminous water-colours.1 For the abstract of the lecture (by Mr. Wedderburn) in the Art Journal, woodcuts were made by Mr. J. D. Cooper from the drawings, and these are here included (Plates I. and II. and Fig. 3).

"ON THE OLD ROAD"

Under this title, Ruskin's miscellanies were collected and edited for him by Mr. Wedderburn in 1885. It was "A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays, Pamphlets, etc., published 1834-1885," and a large number of the miscellanies belonged to Ruskin's earlier periods of literary activity. These earlier pieces have all been printed in the volumes to which they belonged in point of the time of their composition. The present collection comprises fourteen pieces which were published at various dates between 1871 and 1888. The last of them is also the last, with two exceptions, that Ruskin wrote.

The autobiographical reminiscence entitled My First Editor appropriately introduced the volumes of miscellanies issued in 1885, and it is here again placed first (pp. 93–104). The reminiscence, written in 1878, is of William Henry Harrison, the faithful friend and literary mentor of Ruskin's early days of authorship. A notice of him has been given in the Introduction to Ruskin's Poems (Vol. II.), and many letters from him and to him have been published,3 which illustrate

1 Life and Work of John Ruskin, 1900, p. 375.

The Epilogue to Modern Painters (September 1888) and the conclusion of Præterita (June 1889).

3

See, for instance, Vol. II. p. 27 n.; Vol. III. p. lii. n. ; Vol. VIII. p. 275; and General Index.

what Ruskin here says (p. 93) of Harrison's care in reading proofs, and criticising the author's style.

The piece was written by way of preface to a series of Reminiscences by Harrison, published after his death in the Dublin University Magazine (1878). Though not himself an author, except in a very mild way, Harrison lived near the rose. As editor of Friendship's Offering and Registrar of the Royal Literary Fund, he came across many men of distinction, in whose reflected radiance he sunned himself joyfully, as Ruskin describes.3

My First Editor is one of the most charming of Ruskin's shorter pieces; it shows the same serenity of temper, the same felicity in humorous reminiscence, and the same delicate skill in character-drawing that were afterwards conspicuous in Præterita. It is of peculiar interest in a connected study of Ruskin's writings, because this chapter -exhibiting, as it does, so complete a mastery of all his literary arts and graces-was written almost on the eve of his serious illness in 1878.4

The second and third pieces in this volume-on The Range of Intellectual Conception (pp. 107-111) and The Nature and Authority of Miracle (pp. 115-125) respectively-were papers read by Ruskin to the Metaphysical Society in 1871 and 1873. A third paper, read to the same Society in 1875-on Social Policy-was included by Ruskin in A Joy for Ever, and has already been printed. The Society was founded by Tennyson and Sir James Knowles in 1869, its original members including Dean Stanley, James Martineau, R. H. Hutton, Ward, Bagehot, Froude, Gladstone, Manning, Father Dalgairns, Hinton, Henry Sidgwick, and Mark Pattison." Ruskin was

1 He had died in August 1874. See Vol. XXIV. P. xxxvi.

2 See Vol. XX. p. liv.; and below, § 10.

One of his reminiscences is worth disinterring from the Magazine, because it is the original authority for an interesting anecdote about Turner :

"I used to meet Turner at the table of Mr. Ruskin, the father of the art critic. The first occasion was a few days after the appearance of a notice in the Athenæum, of a picture of Turner's which was therein characterised as 'Eggs and Spinach.' This stuck in the great painter's throat, and as we were returning together in Mr. Ruskin's carriage Turner ejaculated the obnoxious phrase every five minutes. I told him that if I had attained to his eminence in art I should not care a rush for what any one said of me. But the only reply I could get was, 'Eggs and Spinach."" (May 1878, p. 546.)

See Vol. XXV. p. xxiv.

5 Vol. XVI. pp. 161-169.

"The

The full list, with other particulars of the Society, may be read in Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by his Son, 1897, vol. ii. p. 167. Tennyson's poem Higher Pantheism" was read at the first meeting of the Society (ibid., p. 168). To Dalgairns, Ruskin refers in a letter to Professor Norton of November 10, 1870; for Hinton, see Fors Clavigera, Letter 75, § 10 (Vol. XXIX. p. 67).]

added in 1870. The Society died in 1880-"of too much love," according to Huxley; "because after ten years of strenuous effort no one had succeeded," said Tennyson, "in even defining the term 'metaphysics.'" Ruskin's attempt, in the first of the papers here printed, if not to define the term, yet to delimit the scope of the science (p. 111), was one of the many attempts, equally unsuccessful in all ages, it would seem, in this direction.

Of the proceedings of the Metaphysical Society, a vivid sketch was published in 1885 by R. H. Hutton.1 In this he gave imaginary speeches by several of its members; that put into Ruskin's mouth is a compost of the actual papers here printed. He describes Ruskin's "deep-toned, musical voice which dwelt with slow emphasis on the most important words of each sentence, and which gave a singular force to the irony with which the speaker's expression of belief was freely mingled." Of the meeting at which Ruskin read his paper on Miracle, a lively account was given by Dr. Magee, then Bishop of Peterborough, in a letter to his wife: 2

"... I went to dinner duly at the Grosvenor Hotel. The dinner was certainly a strangely interesting one. Had the dishes been as various we should have had severe dyspepsia, all of us. Archbishop Manning in the chair was flanked by two Protestant bishops right and leftGloucester and Bristol and myself-on my right was Hutton, editor of the Spectator-an Arian; then came Father Dalgairns, a very able Roman Catholic priest; opposite him, Lord A. Russell, a Deist; then two Scotch metaphysical writers-Freethinkers; then Knowles, the very broad editor of the Contemporary; then, dressed as a layman and looking like a country squire, was Ward, formerly Rev. Ward, and earliest of the perverts to Rome; then Greg, author of The Creed of Christendom, a Deist; then Froude, the historian, once a deacon in our church, now a Deist; then Roden Noel, an actual Atheist and red republican, and looking very like one! Lastly Ruskin, who read after dinner a paper on miracles! which we discussed for an hour and a half! Nothing could be calmer, fairer, or even, on the whole, more reverent than the discussion. Nothing flippant or scoffing or bitter was said on either side, and very great ability, both of speech and thought, was shown by most speakers. In my opinion, we, the Christians, had much the best of it. Dalgairns, the priest, was very masterly; Manning, clever and precise and weighty; Froude, very acute, and so was Greg; while Ruskin declared himself

"The Metaphysical Society: a Reunion," in the Nineteenth Century, August 1885, vol. 18, pp. 177 seq. The speech given to Ruskin is on pp. 186, 187.

2 The Life and Correspondence of William Connor Magee, by J. C. Macdonnell, 1896, vol. i. p. 284.

1

delighted with the exquisite accuracy and logical power of the Bishop of Peterborough.' There is the story of the dinner. Altogether a remarkable and most interesting scene, and a greater gathering of remarkable men than could easily be met elsewhere. We only wanted a Jew and a Mahometan to make our Religious Museum complete."

The next piece (pp. 129, 130) is a Preface which Ruskin wrote for the daughter of an Oxford friend, Miss A. C. Owen, to her sketches, republished from the Monthly Packet, of Art Schools of Mediaval Christendom (1875). The occasional notes which Ruskin appended to the author's text are added (pp. 130-132); and it may be noticed that good things are often to be found even in remarks thus made casually by the way. How excellent, for instance, is the characterisation of Vasari-"an ass with good things in his panniers" (p. 132).

The fifth paper is on a subject which, in a different connexion, will meet us again later in the volume, and which at all times enlisted Ruskin's ardent protest. Thirty years ago, schemes for the Extension of Railways in the Lake District were much discussed. In 1875 there was no definite scheme before Parliament, but a proposal was in the air for a continuation of the line from Windermere to Ambleside, and thence by Rydal and Grasmere and over Dunmail Raise to Keswick. An actual scheme was produced twelve years later, and was rejected by Parliament; for which result some share of the credit must be given to the nucleus of opposition formed at this earlier date by Ruskin and the St. George's Guild.2 It was a Companion of the Guild, Mr. Robert Somervell, who organised the local protest. At the first whisper of the threatened "assault," Mr. Somervell drew up a form of petition, and Ruskin called attention to it, begging all "who may have taken an interest in his writings, or who may have any personal regard for him," to associate themselves with the protest. This request was distributed with Fors Clavigera, and is now reprinted (p. 135). A later slip-now one of the rare Ruskinian fly-sheets-in which he thanks those who had forwarded petitions, is also given (pp. 135-136). In 1876 Mr. Somervell's protest was enlarged and issued as a pamphlet, with the Preface by Ruskin now included among his Miscellanies (pp. 137-143).

1 For a reference to the papers, see Pleasures of England, § 99 n. (Vol. XXXIII. p. 491).

2 At the later date the local opposition was organised mainly by Mr. W. H. Hills, of Ambleside, Canon Rawnsley, of Crosthwaite, and Mr. Gordon Somervell, of Windermere.

Ruskin's Preface takes the form of a destructive analysis, written with characteristic vigour and point, of the arguments in favour of the new railway, and, mutatis mutandis, is applicable to other cases in which the destruction of natural scenery in favoured spots is defended by what Wordsworth called the "false utilitarian lure." The greatest happiness of the greatest number demands, it is said, that such scenery should be made accessible by the cheapest and swiftest transit to the largest number of persons. Ruskin's answer is that the scenery thus made accessible would no longer be the same scenery, and that its full capacity of pleasing the mind and heart would be gone (pp. 140, 141). In 1887 the scheme for an Ambleside railway was again mooted, and Ruskin once more intervened in the controversy (p. 603). Perhaps the ultimate solution, and safety, will be found in the proposal with which he expressed his agreement in a yet later letter (p. 604); namely, the acquisition or reservation of certain districts as National Trusts.

The manuscript of a portion of Ruskin's Preface (§§ 4, 5) is at Brantwood. Letters from Ruskin to Mr. Somervell show that the Preface cost him much trouble. "It will not come right," he said; but it did come in the end. "I've done the Preface at last," he wrote (June 22, 1876), “and I think it stunning. It came to me all of a heap as I was shaving. Nothing that's worth sixpence ever comes to me but that way; only sometimes it makes me cut myself."

The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism-the piece which comes next in the volume1 (pp. 147-174)-is reprinted from two consecutive numbers of the Nineteenth Century (November and December 1878), where it appeared in the form of an undelivered Oxford lecture (§ 1). The discourse was suggested to Ruskin by a visit to the late Mr. William Graham and his daughter at Dunira, where he had found himself in company of three pictures, typical of different aspects of the Pre-Raphaelite movement—the "Ecce Ancilla Domini" of Rossetti, the "Blind Girl" of Millais, and a drawing called "The King's Bridal" by Burne-Jones. The descriptions of these pictures, with the analysis of their several aims and characteristics, should be read in connexion with the first and second lectures in the later course on The Art of England (1883), in which Ruskin again discussed the meaning of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and paid a further tribute to the genius of Burne-Jones.2

1 In the chronological order, the "Introductory" chapter on My First Editor precedes the Three Colours.

2 See Vol. XXXIII. pp. 270-271, 287 seq.