pet, and so laid the foundation for that minute and accurate
observation which is manifest in all his writings. Third, he was educated
first by his mother, then by private tutors, and so missed the discipline
of the public schools. The influence of this lonely training is evident in
all his work. Like Carlyle, he is often too positive and dogmatic,--the
result of failing to test his work by the standards of other men of his
age. Fourth, he was obliged to read the Bible every day and to learn long
passages verbatim. The result of this training was, he says, "to make every
word of the Scriptures familiar to my ear in habitual music." We can hardly
read a page of his later work without finding some reflection of the noble
simplicity or vivid imagery of the sacred records. Fifth, he traveled much
with his father and mother, and his innate love of nature was intensified
by what he saw on his leisurely journeys through the most beautiful parts
of England and the Continent.

Ruskin entered Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1836, when only seventeen
years old. He was at this time a shy, sensitive boy, a lover of nature and
of every art which reflects nature, but almost entirely ignorant of the
ways of boys and men. An attack of consumption, with which he had long been
threatened, caused him to leave Oxford in 1840, and for nearly two years he
wandered over Italy searching for health and cheerfulness, and gathering
materials for the first volume of _Modern Painters_, the book that made him
famous.

Ruskin's literary work began in childhood, when he was encouraged to write
freely in prose and poetry. A volume of poems illustrated by his own
drawings was published in 1859, after he had won fame as a prose writer,
but, save for the drawings, it is of small importance. The first volume of
_Modern Painters_ (1843) was begun as a heated defense of the artist
Turner, but it developed into an essay on art as a true picture of nature,
"not only in her outward aspect but in her inward spirit." The work, which
was signed simply "Oxford Graduate," aroused a storm of mingled approval
and protest; but however much critics warred over its theories of art, all
were agreed that the unknown author was a master of descriptive prose.
Ruskin now made frequent trips to the art galleries of the Continent, and
produced four more volumes of _Modern Painters_ during the next seventeen
years. Meanwhile he wrote other books,--_Seven Lamps of Architecture_