; to make the
world a little better, to guide, inspire, and teach men, come what
might, scoff as they would, turn from him as they chose, though they
left him alone, a broken old man crying in the wilderness, with none to
hear or to care. They might think it all utterly vain; we may think much
of it was in vain: but it was always the very heart's blood of a rare
genius and a noble soul."

Before entering, somewhat in detail, into Ruskin's vast and varied
labors, let us briefly outline the scope and character of the work which
gave the art critic and prophet of his time his chief fame. The
personal incidents in his life need not detain us at the outset, as they
are not specially eventful, and may be more fully gathered from the
excellent "Life" of Ruskin, by his friend and some-time secretary, W.G.
Collingwood, or from the delightfully interesting reminiscences by the
master himself in his autobiographic "Praeterita," published near the
close of his long, arduous, and fruitful career. John Ruskin was born in
London on the 8th of February, 1819. He was of Scotch ancestry, his
father being a prosperous wine merchant in London, who acquired
considerable wealth in trade, which the son in time inherited, and nobly
used in his many private benevolences and philanthropic enterprises. The
comfortable circumstances in which he was born, coupled with his
father's own love of pictures and books, were helpful in giving
encouragement and direction to the young student's studies and tastes.
His mother, a deeply religious woman, was, moreover, influential in
implanting the serious element in Ruskin's character and life, and in
familiarizing him with the Bible, whose noble English, in King James'
version, manifestly entered early into the youth's ardent, prophetic
soul, and, as a writer, had much to do in forming his magnificent prose
style. Ruskin was in early years--indeed, far on in his manhood--in
delicate health, and consequently he was educated privately till he
passed to Christ Church College, Oxford, where, at the age of twenty, he
won the Newdigate prize for verse, and graduated in 1842. His taste for
art was manifested at an early age, and after passing from the
university he studied painting under J.D. Harding and Copley Fielding;
but his masters, as he tells us in "Praeterita," were Rubens and
Rembrandt.

At the outset of his career Ruskin, as is well known, was led to take up
a defence of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and the