corners of the road. They give
the sense of being banded together in a numerous ambush, they can
deceive eye and ear, and even nose with noisome stenches; but they
cannot show themselves, and they cannot hurt. If they could be seen,
they would be nothing but limp ungainly things that would rouse disdain
and laughter and even pity, at anything at once so weak and so
malevolent. But they are not like the demons of sin that can hamper and
wound; they are just little gnomes and elves that can make a noise, and
their strength is a spiteful and a puny thing.

Ruskin had no sordid or material fears; he had no fear of poverty, for
he flung his father's hard-earned wealth profusely away; nor did he
fear illness; indeed one of the bravest and most gallant things about
him was the way in which he talked and wrote about his insane fits,
described his haunted visions, told, half-ruefully, half-humorously,
how he fought and struggled with his nurses, and made fun of the
matter. That was a very courageous thing to do, because most people are
ashamed of insanity, no doubt from the old sad ignorant tradition that
it was the work of demoniacal agencies, and not a mere disease like
other diseases. Half the tragedy of insanity is that it shocks people,
and cannot be alluded to or spoken about; but one can take the sting
out of almost any calamity if one can make fun of it, and this Ruskin
did.

But he was wounded by his fears, as we most of us are, not only through
his vanity but through his finest emotions. He felt his impotence and
his failure. He had thought of his gift of language as one might think
of a magic wand which one can wave, and thus compel duller spirits to
do one's bidding. Ruskin began by thinking that there was not much
amiss with the world except a sort of pathetic stupidity; and he
thought that if only people could be told, clearly and loudly enough,
what was right, they would do it gladly; and then it dawned upon him by
slow degrees that the confusion was far deeper than that, that men
mostly did not live in motives but in appetites. And so he fell into a
sort of noble rage with the imperfection of mortal things; and one of
the clearest signs, as he himself knew, that he was drifting into one
of the mind-storms which swept across him, was that in these moods
everything that people said or wrote had power to arouse his
irritation, to interrupt his work, to break his sleep, and to show him
that he was powerless indeed.