The Life of John Ruskin

o Mr. Dale for some private lessons, and for the lectures on logic, English literature, and translation, which were given on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at King's College, London. John enjoyed h

buted to their amusement with his rea

work easy, except epigram-writing, which he thought "excessively stupid and laborious," but helped himself out, when sch

sapere maxim

ave; sed, cum dura

sentis pr?cip

on, suggested to him only pen-etching; he was hardly conscious that somewhere there existed the tiny, coloured pictures that Turner had made for the engraver. Still, now that he could draw really well, his father, who painted in water-colours himself, complied with the demand for better teaching than Runciman's, went straight to the President of the Old Water-Colour Society, and engaged him for the usual course of half a dozen lessons at a guinea a piece. Copley Fielding could draw mountains as

ntense significance and subtle observation, appealed to young Ruskin as it appealed to few other spectators. Public opinion regretted this change in its old favourite, the draughtsman of Oxford colleges, the painter of shipwrecks and castles. And Blackwood's Magazine, which th

aroscuro childish; in answer to which Ruskin explained that Turner's reasoned system was to represent light and shade by the contrast of warm and cold colour, rather than by the opposition of white and black which other painter

egious than those of any other great existing artist; bu

ndering in vague and infinite glory around the earth that they have loved. Instinct with the beauty of uncertain light, they move and mingle among the pale stars, and rise up into the brightness of the illimitable heaven, whose soft, sad blue eye gazes down into the deep waters of the sea for ever-that sea whose motionless and silent transparency is beaming with phosphor light, that emanates out of its sapphire serenity like brig

nounced to be 'like models of different parts of Venice

courteous note from Mr. John James Ruskin, asking his permission to publish. Turner replied, expressing the scorn he felt for anonymous attacks, and jestingly hinting that the art-critics

at Oxford (October 18, 1836). He told the story of his first ap

past o'er-the

ame-I felt a

sh; paid some

ped and gowned wi

the Vice-Chan

ots, nor cut o

ly-to shun

rbles or freq

with breeches b

, to put my c

gulations of

ordering of m

ess time than I

member of the

cial and scholastic advantages were believed to be found in pre-eminent combination, and he had chosen what was thought to be the best p

d to Herne Hill. John went back to King's College, and in December was examined in the subjects of

le, and the interrogations difficult. It lasted only three hours. I wrote answers in very magnificent style to all

n his letters about King's College, must be the paper published in 1893, in answer to the questi

ford: "Saussure, Humboldt, and other works on natural philosophy and geology," he answered. "Then he asked if I ever read any of the modern fashionable novels; on this point I thought he began to look positive, so I gave him a negati

the Geological Society (January 4, 1837), with promise of introduction to Buckland and Lyell. The meeting, as he wrote, was "amusing and interesti

Fall] says will frighten them out of their meteorological wits, containing six close-written folio pages, and ha