he consciousness
that his public indulged and humoured him as his parents had done, and
admired his artistic advice without paying the smallest heed to his
ethical principles--all these experiences broke over him, wearied as he
was with excessive strain, like a bitter wave. But his pessimism took
the noble form of an intense concern with the blindness and
impenetrability of the world at large. He made a theory of political
economy, which, peremptory and prejudiced as it is, is yet built on
large lines, and has been fruitful in suggestiveness. But he tasted
discouragement and failure in deep draughts. His parents frankly
expressed their bewildered disappointment, his public looked upon him
as a perverse man who was throwing away a beautiful message for the
sake of a crabbed whim; and he fell into a fierce depression,
alternating between savage energy and listless despondency, which
lasted for several years, till at last the overwrought brain and mind
gave way; and for the rest of his life he was liable to recurrent
attacks of insanity, which cleared off and left him normal again, or as
normal as he ever had been. Wide and eager as Ruskin's tenderness was,
one feels that his heart was never really engaged; he was always far
away, in a solitude full of fear, out of the reach of affection, always
solemnly and mournfully alone. Ruskin was never really allied with any
other human soul; he knew most of the great men of the day; he baited
Rossetti, he petted Carlyle; he had correspondents like Norton, to whom
he poured out his overburdened heart; but he was always the spoiled and
indulged child of his boyhood, infinitely winning, provoking, wilful.
He could not be helped, because he could never get away from himself;
he could admire almost frenziedly, but he could not worship; he could
not keep himself from criticism even when he adored, and he had a
bitter superiority of spirit, a terrible perception of the
imperfections and faults of others, a real despair of humanity.

I do not know exactly what the terrors which Ruskin suffered were--very
few people will tell the tale of the valley of hobgoblins, or probably
cannot! In the Pilgrim's Progress itself, the unreality of the spirits
of fear, their secrecy and leniency, is very firmly and wittily told.
They scream in their dens, sitting together, I have thought, like fowls
in a roost. They come padding after the pilgrim, they show themselves
obscurely, swollen by the mist at the