eval and
Renaissance spirit in its relation to art, and to illustrate from
Browning's poetry, "unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle
Ages, always vital and right and profound; so that in the matter of art
there is hardly a principle connected with the mediaeval temper that he
has not struck upon in those seemingly careless and too rugged lines of
his." This was written twenty-five years before the Browning Society was
heard of, and at a time when the style of Browning was an offence to
most people. To Ruskin, also, it had been some, thing of a puzzle; and
he wrote to the poet, asking him to explain himself; which the poet
accordingly did.

That Ruskin was open to conviction and conversion could be shown from
the difference in his tone of thought about poetry before and after this
period; that he was the best of friends with the man who took him to
task for narrowness, may be seen from the following letter, written on
the next Christmas Eve:

"MY DEAR MR. RUSKIN,

"Your note having just arrived, Robert deputes me to write for him
while he dresses to go out on an engagement. It is the evening. All
the hours are wasted, since the morning, through our not being
found at the Rue de Grenelle, but here--and our instinct of
self-preservation or self-satisfaction insists on our not losing a
moment more by our own fault.

"Thank you, thank you for sending us your book, and also for
writing my husband's name in it. It will be the same thing as if
you had written mine--except for the pleasure, as you say, which is
greater so. How good and kind you are!

"And not well. That is worst. Surely you would be better if you had
the summer in winter we have here. But I was to write only a
word--Let it say how affectionately we regard you.

"ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

"3, RUE DU COLYSEE,

"_Thursday Evening, 24th" (December_, 1855).

CHAPTER IX

"THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART" (1857-1858)

The humble work of the drawing-classes at Great Ormond Street was
teaching Ruskin even more than he taught his pupils. It was showing him
how far his plans were practicable; how they should be modified; how
they might be improved; and especially what more, beside
drawing-classes, was needed to realize his ideal. He was anxiously
willing to co-operate with every movement, to join hands with any kind
of man, to go anywhere, do anything t