its disciplinings, exactions, and devout selective creed.  But the age is a practical, unimaginative one, and whatever compacts men make, even for their highest welfare, there are, it is to be feared, few so loyal, tractable, and docile as to place themselves for long under such tutoring and one-patterned, fashioning forms of co-operative living.  Into whatever millennial state Ruskin sought to usher his little band of English followers and disciples, one must speak appreciatively of his motives in projecting the scheme, and of the money and labor he personally lavished upon the Utopian project.  Reverently also must one speak of the catholic creed to which its members were asked to subscribe:  namely, to trust in God, recognize the nobleness of human nature, labor faithfully with one’s might, be loyal to one’s common country, its laws, and its monarch’s or ruler’s orders, so far as they are consistent with the higher law of God; while exacting obedience, and a pledge that one will not deceive, either for gain or other motive; will not rob; will not hurt any living creature nor destroy any beautiful thing; and will honor one’s own body by proper care for it, for the joy and peace of life.  All this is very exemplary and beautiful, and not over-hard to live up to, though the working-men of Sheffield in time wearied of the organization, and the Guild and its noble ideals is now, we believe, but a memory, if we except the art museum and library of the Order taken over and still maintained by the town.

More practical, may we not say, than this imitation of the Florentine arti of the Middle Ages was the Working Men’s College, founded in London in the fifties by that other earnest Christian Socialist, F.D.  Maurice, in which Ruskin lectured gratuitously, took charge of the drawing classes, and hied off to the country with its members to sketch from nature and otherwise instruct and entertain them.  Yet good in many respects came of the Guild of St. George, in the impulse it gave to the revival of the then dormant industries, such as the hand-spinning of linen, hand-weaving of carpets and woollen fabrics, lace-making, wood-carving, and metal-working, besides the stimulus it gave, with the infusion of higher ideals of workmanship, to the decorative arts, and the improvement in the sightliness of factories, and in the homes and surroundings of labor.  Here Ruskin’s philanthropy and reform zeal showed themselves most worthily in the financial aid he gave in the pulling down, in crowded districts of the British metropolis, of poor tenements, and the building up in their place of clean, attractive, and wholesome habitations.  In such benevolences and well-doings, and in this life of renunciation and self-sacrifice, Ruskin spent himself, and made serious inroads into his bodily health and strength, as well as scattered the fortune—­about a million dollars—­left him by his now deceased father.  But this was the manner and character of Ruskin, and this the mode of expressing his love