The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Queen of the Air, by John Ruskin

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Title: The Queen of the Air

Author: John Ruskin

Release Date: June 17, 2004 [eBook #12641]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEEN OF THE AIR***

E-text prepared by Julie C. Sparks

THE QUEEN OF THE AIR

Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm

BY

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

I. ATHENA CHALINITIS.
(Athena in the Heavens.)
Lecture on the Greek myths of Storm, given (partly) in University
College, London, March 9, 1869.

II. ATHENA KERAMITIS.
(Athena in the Earth.)
Study, supplementary to the preceding lecture, of the supposed and actual
relations of Athena to the vital force in material organism.

III. ATHENA ERGANE.
(Athena in the Heart.)
Various notes relating to the Conception of Athena as the Directress of
the Imagination and Will.

PREFACE

My days and strength have lately been much broken; and I never more felt
the insufficiency of both than in preparing for the press the following
desultory memoranda on a most noble subject. But I leave them now as
they stand, for no time nor labor would be enough to complete them to my
contentment; and I believe that they contain suggestions which may be
followed with safety, by persons who are beginning to take interest in
the aspects of mythology, which only recent investigation has removed
from the region of conjecture into that of rational inquiry. I have
some advantage, also, from my field work, in the interpretation of myths
relating to natural phenomena; and I have had always near me, since we
were at college together, a sure, and unweariedly kind, guide, in my
friend Charles Newton, to whom we owe the finding of more treasure in
mines of marble than, were it rightly estimated, all California could
buy. I must not, however, permit the chance of his name being in any
wise associated with my errors. Much of my work as been done obstinately
in my own way; and he is never responsible for me, though he has often
kept me right, or at least enabled me to advance in a new direct