. Most readers of these lines, though they may never have seen
him act,--as I never did,--still know that his acting was excellent.
As an actor he would have been at the top of his profession. And he
had another gift,--had it so wonderfully, that it may almost be said
that he has left no equal behind him. He spoke so well, that a public
dinner became a blessing instead of a curse, if he was in the
chair,--had its compensating twenty minutes of pleasure, even if he
were called upon to propose a toast, or to thank the company for
drinking his health. For myself, I never could tell how far his
speeches were ordinarily prepared:--but I can declare that I have
heard him speak admirably when he has had to do so with no moment of
preparation.

A great man has gone from us--such a one that we may surely say of him
that we shall not look upon his like again. As years roll on, we shall
learn to appreciate his loss. He now rests in the spot consecrated to
the memory of our greatest and noblest; and Englishmen would certainly
not have been contented had he been laid elsewhere.

XXVII

RUSKIN'S CHILDHOOD

We are fortunate in having Ruskin's own account of how he passed his
childhood days. In _Praeterita_ we have his autobiography. His
description of his early days runs as follows:

"I am and my father was before me a violent Tory of the old school
(Walter Scott's school, that is to say, and Homer's); I name these two
out of the numberless great Tory writers, because they were my own two
masters. I had Walter Scott's novels and the _Iliad_ (Pope's
translation), for my only reading when I was a child, on weekdays; on
Sunday their effect was tempered by _Robinson Crusoe_ and the
_Pilgrim's Progress_, my mother having it deeply in her heart to make
an evangelical clergyman of me. Fortunately, I had an aunt more
evangelical than her mother, and my aunt gave me cold mutton for
Sunday's dinner, which, as I much preferred it hot, greatly diminished
the influence of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and the end of the matter
was, that I got all of the imaginative teachings of De Foe and Bunyan,
and yet--am not an evangelical clergyman.

"I had, however, still better teaching than theirs, and that
compulsorily, and every day of the week.

"Walter Scott and Pope's Homer were reading of my own election, but my
mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the
Bible by heart, as well as to read it every syllable thro