Selections From the Works of John Ruskin. Ruskin JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.

1

Præterita. He was born February 8, 1819.

2

Ruskin himself quotes a not very brilliant specimen in Modern Painters, III, in "Moral of Landscape."

3

Præterita, § 53.

4

The Mystery of Life.

5

See Harrison's Life, p. 111. Cf. the opening of The Mystery of Life.

6

Part 2, sec. 1, chap. 4.

7

See p. 159.

8

Modern Painters, vol. 1, part 2, sec. 1, chap. 7.

9

Unto This Last.

10

See p. 262.

11

See p. 162.

12

See p. 139.

13

See p. 147.

14

See p. 121.

15

See p. 122.

16

See p. 149.

17

See p. 122.

18

The Mystery of Life.

19

Sesame and Lilies, "Kings' Treasuries," §§ 25, 31.

20

The Crown of Wild Olive, "War."

21

"Kings' Treasuries," § 32.

22

Genesis ii, 15; iii 24.

23

Genesis ii, 15; iii 24.

24

"In our own National Gallery. It is quaint and imperfect, but of great interest." [Ruskin.] Paolo Uccello (c. 1397-1475), a Florentine painter of the Renaissance, the first of the naturalists. His real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was called Uccello from his fondness for birds.

25

In tracing the whole of the deep enjoyment to mountain association, I of course except whatever feelings are connected with the observance of rural life, or with that of architecture. None of these feelings arise out of the landscape properly so called: the pleasure with which we see a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a ploughman doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a cottage door, being wholly separate from that which we find in the fields or commons around them; and the beauty of architecture, or the associations connected with it, in like manner often ennobling the most tame scenery;—yet not so but that we may always distinguish between the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the charm which it derives from the architecture. Much of the majesty of French landscape consists in its grand and grey village churches and turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and beautifully placed cities. [Ruskin.]

26

One of the principal reasons for the false supposition that Switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and painters in representing pine forest in middle distance as dark green, or grey green, whereas its true colour is always purple, at distances of even two or three miles. Let any traveller coming down the Montanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide, between the near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten feet from it, he can see the opposite forests on the Breven or Flegère. Those forests are not above two or two and a half miles from him; but he will find the aperture is filled by a tint of nearly pure azure or purple, not by green. [Ruskin.]

27

The Savoyard's name for its flower, "Pain du Bon Dieu," is very beautiful; from, I believe, the supposed resemblance of its white and scattered blossom to the fallen manna, [Ruskin.]

28

Ezekiel vii, 10; Hosea vi, 3.

29

In "The Mountain Gloom," the chapter immediately preceding.

30

Ruskin refers to The Fulfilling of the Scripture, a book by Robert Fleming [1630-94].

31

Some sentences of an argumentative nature have been omitted from this selection.

32

A mythical island in the Atlantic.

33

I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged with the seven colours of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. The colours are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic lustre upon them. [Ruskin.]

34

Lake Lucerne. [Ruskin.]

35

The implication is that Turner has best delivered it.

36

The full title of this chapter is "Of the Received Opinions touching the 'Grand Style.'"

37

I have put this sentence in a parenthesis, because it is inconsistent with the rest of the statement, and with the general teaching of the paper; since that which "attends only to the invariable" cannot certainly adopt "every ornament that will warm the imagination." [Ruskin.]

38

Stanza 6 of Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, quoted with a slight inaccuracy.

39

"Messrs. Mallet and Pictet, being on the lake, in front of the Castle of Chillon, on August 6, 1774, sunk a thermometer to the depth of 312 feet." … —SAUSSURE, Voyages dans les Alpes, chap. ii, § 33. It appears from the next paragraph, that the thermometer was at the bottom of the lake. [Ruskin, altered.]

40

Ruskin later wrote: "It leaves out rhythm, which I now consider a defect in said definition; otherwise good."

41

Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the Affliction of Margaret:

This we call Poetry, because it is invented or made by the writer, entering into the mind of a supposed person. Next, take an instance of the actual feeling truly experienced and simply expressed by a real person.

"Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argentière, whose cottage I went into to ask for milk, as I came down from the glacier of Argentière, in the month of March, 1764. An epidemic dysentery had prevailed in the village, and, a few months before, had taken away from her, her father, her husband, and her brothers, so that she was left alone, with three children in the cradle. Her face had something noble in it, and its expression bore the seal of a calm and profound sorrow. After having given me milk, she asked me whence I came, and what I came there to do, so early in the year. When she knew that I was of Geneva, she said to me, 'she could not believe that all Protestants were lost souls; that there were many honest people among us, and that God was too good and