1

mental tension, his behaviour was not free from eccentricity, and those to whose lot it fell to soothe him by music were not wholly successful. At this time Ruskin was much with Jowett, who "entertained him in his house with a watchful and almost tender courtesy," which left on those who saw the two men together "an indelible impression." What his friends feared was that Ruskin might quite break down under a continuation of the strain. With the postponement-sine die, as it was destined to be-of the lectures on "Sense" and "Nonsense," the danger was past. That the danger existed is confessed by a good resolve registered three weeks later in his diary: "I must never stir out of quiet work more" (December 23). The last two of the substituted lectures-on "Birds" and "Landscape" respectively-were full of charm, and had a great success. "I gave my fourteenth and last for this year," he wrote to Miss Beever (December 1), "with vigour and effect, and am safe and well, D.G." Two other addresses, however, he gave at Oxford. One was to the members of the St. George's Guild; 2 the other was at a meeting of the Anti-Vivisection Society on December 9; a report of his speech is contained in a later volume (XXXIV.).

On leaving Oxford, Ruskin went for a day or two to Cheltenham, and then to pay a long-promised visit to Farnley-partly in connexion with the loan of Turner drawings for the exhibition, referred to above. Mrs. Fawkes describes her guest as "seeming very worn and tired out," but full of interesting talk. From Farnley Ruskin returned to Brantwood, intending to complete the interrupted course at Oxford during the ensuing term. He first prepared for press the third and the fourth of the lectures already delivered, and these were duly published in February and April. He also was at work on the fifth of the lectures, and fully intended to write and deliver the sixth and the seventh. On March 10, however, "the vote endowing vivisection " was passed, and Ruskin, in wrath and vexation of spirit, shook the dust of his feet off against the University for ever. The letter in which he conveyed his resignation to the Vice-Chancellor has never

Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, 1897, vol. ii. p. 75. To like effect, another observer: "The Master-of whom Ruskin always spoke as the sweetest of men'-was singularly happy in his influence, gently and imperceptibly leading the conversation away from dangerous or overexciting topics, and directing his numerous enthusiasms into channels least likely to be disturbing to the peace of the University" (" Happy Memories of John Ruskin,' by L. Allen Harker, in The Puritan, May 1900).

2 Printed in Vol. XXX. p. 87.

* For some particulars on this subject, see Sir Henry Acland's Preface of 1893 to The Oxford Museum, in Vol. XVI. p. 237. The final circulars issued on the two sides (the one against the grant being signed by Ruskin), and a report of the debate and division, are in the Times of March 9 and 11, 1885.

He

seen the light, but Ruskin referred to it in a letter given below.1 resigned on March 22, and in the Pall Mall Gazette of April 21 it was suggested that Ruskin, in his sixty-seventh year, might well feel that the adequate discharge of the duties of the professorship were no longer compatible with "a just estimate of decline in the energy of advancing age," and that the resignation would give him leisure to complete his numerous books in the press and to write his autobiography. Four days later the following letter from him appeared in the same newspaper: 3

"BRANTWOOD, April 24 [1885].

SIR,-By mischance I have not till to-day seen your kindlymeant paragraphs on my resignation of the Slade Professorship at Oxford. Yet, permit me at once to correct the impression under which they were written. Whatever may be my failure in energy or ability, the best I could yet do was wholly at the service of Oxford; nor would any other designs, or supposed duties, have interfered for a moment with the perfectly manifest duty of teaching in Oxford as much art as she gave her students time to learn. I meant to die in my harness there, and my resignation was placed in the Vice-Chancellor's hands on the Monday following the vote endowing vivisection in the University, solely in consequence of that vote, with distinct statement to the Vice-Chancellor, intended to be read in Convocation, of its being so. This statement I repeated in a letter intended for publication in the University Gazette, and sent to its office a fortnight since. Neither of these letters, so far as I know, has yet been made public. It is sufficient proof, however, how far it was contrary to my purpose to retire from the Slade Professorship that I applied in March of last year for a grant to build a well-lighted room for the undergraduates, apart from the obscure and inconvenient Ruskin school; and to purchase for its furniture the two Yorkshire drawings by Turner of Crook of Lune and Kirkby Lonsdale-grants instantly refused on the plea of the University's being in debt.

"I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

"JOHN RUSKIN."

A few weeks later I reverted to the subject in conversation with Ruskin, and he said oracularly, "Double motives are very useful things;

1 See also, in a later volume, a letter to Jowett of February 28, 1884.

2 From the "Advice" of July 1882, issued with the list of his Works.

3 From the Pall Mall Gazette, April 25, 1885. Reprinted in Igdrasil, December 1890, vol. ii. p. 103; and thence in Ruskiniana, part i., 1890, p. 116.

you can do a thing for two that you couldn't for one;" and it is difficult to say which had had the most weight with him, the University's refusal of what he had wanted, or its concession of what he disapproved. He had already in another way visited upon the University its sin, if such it were, in refusing to add any more drawings by Turner to its collections. By a will dated October 23, 1883, he had bequeathed to the Bodleian Library his books, his portrait of the Doge Andrea Gritti by Titian, and the choicest of his Turner drawings. On June 4, 1884, he revoked this bequest. He never set foot in Oxford again.1

The severance of his connexion with Oxford left Ruskin free for other work, more especially for the writing of Præterita; but with this a new chapter in his life begins, which must be reserved for a later Introduction. Here I pass to some detailed notice of the several books contained in the present volume.

"THE BIBLE OF AMIENS"

The Bible of Amiens, which stands first in the volume, is one of the most popular of Ruskin's later writings-as the account in the Bibliographical Note (pp. 5-17) of its numerous editions sufficiently shows. It owes some of its circulation to use as a guide-book; but it is much more than that, being, as I shall presently suggest, one of the central books in Ruskin's gospel. As a guide-book, indeed, The Bible of Amiens is obviously fragmentary, and the visitor to Amiens will readily find other books, both large and small, which cover the descriptive and explanatory ground more fully, though none which will take him more faithfully to the heart of the matter. Ruskin's treatment of the subject is at once more comprehensive, and less complete,

1 Two years after resigning his Professorship in 1885, he removed from his Drawing School at Oxford a large number of drawings and pictures: see Vol. XXI. p. 307.

Ruskin refers to, and quotes from, three guide-books which may still be consulted: Gilbert's Description Historique, 1833 (see p. 134 n.); Roze's little Visite, 1877 (see p. 133); and Jourdain et Duval's Stalles et les Clôtures, 1867 (see p. 127 n.). This latter book is now difficult to obtain; but all other descriptions of the cathedral are now superseded by the elaborate and sumptuously illustrated Monographie, in 2 volumes, 1901, by Georges Durand (see p. 141 n.). From it M. Durand has abstracted a capital little Description Abrégée (Amiens, 1904). Readers who desire to make a comparative study of the iconography in various French cathedrals may be referred to an interesting and well-illustrated book by M. Émile Mâle, entitled L'Art Religieux du XIII Siecle (1902). I am indebted for acquaintance with this book, as for one or two notes in the present volume, to M. Marcel Proust's annotated French translation of The Bible of Amiens (see p. 15).

than any which may be found elsewhere; and it may be useful, at the outset, to indicate the scope and purpose of the book.

Ruskin's title is, as usual, a sufficient clue to his purpose. The Bible of Amiens, it will be noticed, was a sub-title, the principal one being Our Fathers have Told Us, which again was explained as indicating "Sketches of the History of Christendom for boys and girls who have been held at its fonts." The Bible of Amiens will not be read aright unless it be recognised as one of an intended series which was to deal successively with various local divisions of Christian History, and was to gather "towards their close, into united illustration of the power of the Church in the thirteenth century."1 The Bible of Amiens, it has been well said, "was to be to the Seven Lamps what St. Mark's Rest was to Stones of Venice." As in St. Mark's Rest the object was to tell some chapters of "the History of Venice for the help of the few travellers who still care for her monuments "3—the monuments described in the Stones-so was The Bible of Amiens to tell some passages of early Christian history, in order to illustrate the spirit which lit the Lamps of Christian Architecture. At first sight The Bible of Amiens seems a somewhat chaotic book. We start at Amiens itself; but before we find ourselves in front of the cathedral again, we have been taken upon journeys "Under the Drachenfels" and over a considerable portion of northern Europe as well, not without some excursion to southern lands, and have made acquaintance with "The Lion Tamer," St. Jerome. There is a sentence in the final chapter of the book which gives the meaning of these excursions into seemingly foreign fields. "Who built it?" asks Ruskin, as he bids us look up to "the Parthenon of Gothic Architecture." "God, and Man," he tells us, "is the first and most true answer. The stars in their courses built it, and the Nations. Greek Athena labours here-and Roman Father Jove, and Guardian Mars. The Gaul labours here, and the Frank: knightly Norman,-mighty Ostrogoth, and wasted anchorite of Idumea." 4

The object of his chapters is, then, to trace in broad outline the history and the beliefs of the men and nations whose genius found expression in an exemplary work of perfect art. Taking the Cathedral of Amiens as the representative work of the Franks, he shows us first the state of the country in heathen days (i. § 6). Then he describes

1 See the Plan of the series included in the book; below, p. 186.

2 W. G. Collingwood's Life and Work of John Ruskin, 1900, p. 357.

3 The sub-title of St. Mark's Rest (Vol. XXIV.).

Ch. iv. § 12 (p. 131).

the coming, the preaching, and the martyrdom of St. Firmin—as they are told on the sculptures of the choir (§§ 7, 8). The little chapel raised over the body of the Saint at St. Acheul, near to Amiens, was "the first cathedral of the French nation," and Amiens itself became the first capital of the Franks in France (§§ 8, 9).

The story of the conversion of Clovis, the Frankish king, and the rise of his kingdom are next passed in rapid review (§§ 10-21), and then we are taken back to the legends of St. Martin (§§ 22-31), which also it is needful to know in reading the sculptures of the cathedral. The "history of Christendom" which Ruskin desires to tell is that of its faiths and its virtues; and for insight into these, the Christian legends are a clue: "whether these things ever were SO is immaterial; what matters is the fact that they were believed (§§ 17-19, 23, 25).

The second chapter ("Under the Drachenfels ") begins with the story of St. Geneviève (§§ 1-7), and passes to the history of the Franks, describing their home in the heart of the mountainous region stretching eastward from the Drachenfels (§§ 8-26); and their national characteristics (§§ 16, 27-48). Then the story of Clovis is resumed, and is brought into relation with St. Geneviève (§§ 49–55). The gist of the chapter is its sketch of the Frank character; the arrangement, as Ruskin himself remarks, is somewhat devious (§ 39).

The remark applies not less to the third chapter ("The Lion Tamer"). The fact that the book was published in Parts, at considerable intervals of time, and Ruskin's habit of spreading his material over many books, leave their marks very plainly, I think, on The Bible of Amiens. Thus, in the present instance, this Chapter iii. would be clearer if it had been combined, in its bird's-eye views of the early Christianised empire, with the similar sketch in Candida Casa; and in its discussion of monasticism, with parts of Valle Crucis and one of Ruskin's essays in Roadside Songs of Tuscany.1 What Ruskin lacked, said Matthew Arnold, was "the ordo concatenatioque veri." I doubt the justice of the criticism in the larger sense implied by the word veri; substitute rerum, and the criticism is true, especially of his later books, written in broken health. Yet there is throughout The Bible of Amiens a clear and a consistent purpose, and this Chapter iii. is essential to it. Who built the Cathedral of Amiens? The faith of the Frank (Ch. ii.) and the labours of the "wasted anchorite of Idumea," through whom "the

2

1 See Vol. XXXII. pp. 116-125.

Letters of Matthew Arnold, 1895, vol. i. p. 51.