all of the true and living art of our time.  But that volume, professedly treating art with reference to its superficial attributes and for a special purpose, the redemption of a great and revered artist from unjust disparagement and undeserved neglect, touched in scarcely the least degree the vital questions of taste or art-production.  It had no considerations of sentiment or discussion of principles to offer:  it dealt with facts, and touched the simple truths of Nature with an enthusiastic fire and lucidness which were proof positive of the knowledge and feeling of the author; and the public, either conversant with those facts or capable of being satisfied of them without much thought, abandoned itself to the fascination of his eloquence and acquiesced in his teachings, or arrayed itself in utter hostility to him and his new ideas.

The second volume was more abstruse and deeper in feeling, and comparatively few of Mr. Ruskin’s followers through the first cared to get entangled in the metaphysical mazes of the second, and it is generally neglected, although containing some of the deepest and most satisfactory studies on the fundamental principles of art and taste which have ever been printed.

The third and fourth volumes, coming up again nearer the surface, made an application of the principles investigated to the material for art which Nature furnishes; and here again the author found in part his audience diminished among those who had at first been carried away by his enthusiasm or silenced and convinced by his unhesitating dogmatism.  A partial reaction took place, owing not only to the change in the tone of the “Modern Painters,” but to the springing up of a new school of painting, the consequence, mainly and legitimately, of the teachings of the work,—­the pre-Raphaelite,—­which, at once attacked virulently and immeasurably by the old school of critics, and defended as earnestly by Mr. Ruskin, became the subject of the war which was still waged between him and them.  Turner in the meanwhile had passed away and was admitted to apotheosis, the malignant critics of yesterday becoming the ignorant adulators of to-day:  his position was conceded, but the hostility to Ruskin was sustained with unabated bitterness on the new field.  He was demolished anew, and proved, many useless times over and over, an ignorant pretender; the public in the meanwhile, even his opponents, taking up in turn his proteges, as he pointed them out to their notice.  The effect of his criticisms in enhancing the value of the works they approved would be incredible, if one did not know how glad an English public is to be led.  As a single instance,—­a drawing which was sold from one of the water-color exhibitions at fifty guineas, sold again, after Ruskin’s notice, at two hundred and fifty; and in the lists of pictures sold or to be sold at auction, one sees constantly, “Noticed by Mr. Ruskin,” “Approved by Mr. Ruskin,” appended to the title.