re told,[6] is the same as that
of the preacher, for "the duty of both is to take for each discourse
one essential truth." As if recalling this argument that the painter
is a preacher, Carlyle described _The Stones of Venice_ as a "sermon
in stones." In the idea that all art, when we have taken due account
of technique and training, springs from a moral character, we find the
unifying principle of Ruskin's strangely diversified work. The very
title _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, with its chapters headed
"Sacrifice," "Obedience," etc., is a sufficient illustration of
Ruskin's identification of moral principles with aesthetic principles.
A glance at the following pages of this book will show how Ruskin is
for ever halting himself to demand the moral significance of some fair
landscape, gorgeous painting, heaven-aspiring cathedral. In "Mountain
Glory," for example, he refers to the mountains as "kindly in simple
lessons to the workman," and inquires later at what times mankind has
offered worship in these mountain churches; of the English cathedral
he says, "Weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who have
passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries";[7] of
St. Mark's, "And what effect has this splendour on those who pass
beneath it?"--and it will be noticed on referring to "The Two
Boyhoods," that, in seeking to define the difference between Giorgione
and Turner, the author instinctively has recourse to distinguishing
the _religious_ influences exerted on the two in youth.

[Sidenote: Underlying idea a moral one.]

Now it is clear that a student of the relation of art to life, of work
to the character of the workman and of his nation, may, and in fact
inevitably must, be led in time to attend to the producer rather than
to the product, to the cause rather than to the effect; and if we
grant, with Ruskin, that the sources of art, namely, the national
life, are denied, it will obviously be the part, not only of humanity
but of common sense, for such a student to set about purifying the
social life of the nation. Whether the reformation proposed by Ruskin
be the proper method of attack is not the question we are here
concerned with; our only object at present being to call attention to
the fact that such a lecture as that on "Traffic" in _The Crown of
Wild Olive_ is the logical outgrowth of such a chapter as "Ideas of
Beauty" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_. Between the author
who wrot