[112] Clouds, 316-318; 380 ff.; 320-321.

  [113] Ephesians ii, 12.

  [114] Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us.”

  [115] Pre-Raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase
  of art, in no wise considered in this chapter.  Blake was sincere,
  but full of wild creeds, and somewhat diseased in brain. [Ruskin.]

  [116] Gower Street, a London street selected as typical of modern
  ugliness.

  Gaspar Poussin [1613-75], a French landscape painter, of the
  pseudo-classical school.

[117] Of course this is meant only of the modern citizen or country-gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old Florence.  I leave it to others to say whether the “neglect of the art of war” may or may not, in a yet more fatal sense, be predicated of the English nation.  War, without art, we seem, with God’s help, able still to wage nobly. [Ruskin.]

  [118] See David Copperfield, chap. 55 and 58. [Ruskin.]

  [119] Ruskin proceeds to discuss Scott as he has discussed Homer. 
  The chapter on Turner that follows here is an almost equally good
  illustration of Ruskin’s ideas.

THE TWO BOYHOODS

VOLUME V, PART 9, CHAPTER 9

Born half-way between the mountains and the sea—­that young George of Castelfranco—­of the Brave Castle:—­Stout George they called him, George of Georges, so goodly a boy he was—­Giorgione.[120]

Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on—­fair, searching eyes of youth?  What a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots to the shore;—­of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble city—­and became himself as a fiery heart to it?

A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald.  For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper.  Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave.  Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,—­the men of Venice moved in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights; the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot angrily under their blood-red mantle-folds.  Fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable,—­every word a fate—­sate her senate.  In hope and honour, lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each with his name written and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead.  A wonderful piece of world.  Rather, itself a world.  It lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at evening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but for its power, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge