any by company, troop by troop, so
measured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll
with them, and the earth to reel under them.... And then wait yet for
one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving
mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea,
are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning: watch the white
glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty
serpents with scales of fire: watch the columnar peaks of solitary
snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new
morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than
the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like
altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes
flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer
light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on
every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven, one scarlet
canopy, is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault
beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels:
and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are
bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me
who has best delivered this His message unto men![34]

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

[31] A mythical island in the Atlantic.

[32] 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.]

[33] Lake Lucerne. [Ruskin.]

[34] The implication is that Turner has best delivered it.

THE GRAND STYLE[35]

VOLUME III, CHAPTER I

In taking up the clue of an inquiry, now intermitted for nearly ten
years, it may be well to do as a traveller would, who had to
recommence an interrupted journey in a guideless country; and,
ascending, as it were, some little hill beside our road, note how far
we have already advanced, and what pleasantest ways we may choose for
farther progress.

I endeavoured, in the beginning of the first volume, to divide t