who drew this memorial of her, wrote also the short story of her life, which I trust you will soon be able to read.*

Of this, and of the rest of these drawings, I have much to say to you; but this first and last,-that they are representations of beautiful human nature, such as could only have been found among people living in the pure Christian faith-such as it was, and is, since the twelfth century; and that, although, as I said, I have returned to Oxford only to teach you technical things, this truth must close the first words, as it must be the sum of all that I may be permitted to speak to you,-that the history of the art of the Greeks is the eulogy of their virtues; and the history of Art after the fall of Greece, is that of the Obedience and the Faith of Christianity.

27. There are two points of practical importance which I must leave under your consideration. I am confirmed by Mr. Macdonald in my feeling that some kind of accurately testing examination is necessary to give consistency and efficiency to the present drawing-school. I have therefore determined to give simple certificates of merit, annually, to the students who have both passed through the required course, and at the end of three years have produced work satisfactory to Mr. Macdonald and myself.1 After Easter, I will at once look over such drawings as Mr. Macdonald thinks well to show me, by students who have till now complied with the rules of the school; and give certificates accordingly;-henceforward, if my health is spared, annually and I trust that the advantage of this simple

* See the frontispiece to The Story of Ida, by "Francesca." G. Allen, 1883. [Vol. XXXII. p. 3.]

1 [For Ruskin's Professorial Notice on this subject, see Vol. XXI. p. 316. The terms of the Notice were not long enforced. At the conclusion of the first lecture of his next course, Ruskin remarked that "this modest ordinance,' having had the effect of emptying the school of its former pupils, and not having tempted new scholars, is now to be withdrawn, and the young ladies of Oxford are once more to be admitted to copy Turner in their own way.' As for the undergraduates, it will make no difference, for I never succeeded in getting more than two or three of them into my school, even in its palmiest days'

Gazette, October 20, 1884).]

(Pall Mall

and uncompetitive examination will be felt by succeeding holders of the Slade Professorship, and in time commend itself enough to be held as a part of the examination system of the University.

Uncompetitive, always. The drawing certificate will imply no compliment, and convey no distinction. It will mean merely that the student who obtains it knows perspective, with the scientific laws of light and colour in illustrating form, and has attained a certain proficiency in the management of the pencil.

28. The second point is of more importance and more difficulty.

I now see my way to making the collection of examples in the schools, quite representative of all that such a series ought to be. But there is extreme difficulty in finding any books that can be put into the hands of the home student which may supply the place of an academy. I do not mean merely as lessons in drawing, but in the formation of taste, which, when we analyse it, means of course merely the right direction of feeling.

29. I hope that in many English households there may be found already-I trust some day there may be found wherever there are children who can enjoy them, and especially in country village schools-the three series of designs by Ludwig Richter, in illustration of the Lord's Prayer, of the Sunday, and of the Seasons.1 Perfect as types of easy line drawing, exquisite in ornamental composition, and refined to the utmost in ideal grace, they represent all that is simplest, purest, and happiest in human life, all that is most strengthening and comforting in nature and in religion. They are enough, in themselves, to show that whatever its errors, whatever its backslidings, this century of ours has in its heart understood and fostered, more than any former one, the joys of family affection, and of household piety.

1 [Two of the designs in the Lord's Prayer Series are reproduced in Vol. XXIX. (see pp. 594, 595), and another is given below (p. 300). For notes on the Sunday and the Seasons, see Vol. XXX. pp. 349-351.]

For the former fairy of the woods, Richter has brought to you the angel on the threshold; for the former promises of distant Paradise, he has brought the perpetual blessing, "God be with you": amidst all the turmoil and speeding to and fro, and wandering of heart and eyes which perplex our paths, and betray our wills, he speaks to us in unfailing memorial of the message-" My Peace I leave with you."

1

1 [John xiv. 27. "At the end of his lecture," says a report in the St. James's Budget (see above, p. 259), "Mr. Ruskin committed himself to a somewhat perilous statement. He had found two young Italian artists, in whom the true spirit of old Italian art yet lived. No hand like theirs had been put to paper since Lippi and Leonardo. Mr. Ruskin concluded by showing two sketches of his own, harmonious in colour and faithful and tender in touch, of Italian architecture, taken from the Duomo of Lucca, to show that though he was growing older his hand had not lost its steadiness." For the "two young Italian artists," see above, p. 278 n.; and for the drawings of Lucca, above, p. xlv.]

LECTURE II

MYTHIC SCHOOLS OF PAINTING

E. BURNE-JONES AND G. F. WATTS

(Delivered 12th and 16th May 1883)

30. It is my purpose, in the lectures I may be permitted henceforward to give in Oxford, so to arrange them as to dispense with notes in subsequent printing; and, if I am forced for shortness, or in oversight, to leave anything insufficiently explained, to complete the passage in the next following lecture, or in any one, though after an interval, which may naturally recur to the subject. Thus the printed text will always be simply what I have read, or said; and the lectures will be more closely and easily connected than if I went always on without the care of explanatory retrospect.

31. It may have been observed, and perhaps with question of my meaning, by some readers, that in my last lecture I used the word "materialistic"* of the method of conception common to Rossetti and Hunt, with the greater number of their scholars. I used that expression to denote their peculiar tendency to feel and illustrate the relation of spiritual creatures to the substance and conditions of the visible world; more especially, the familiar, or in a sort humiliating, accidents or employments of their earthly life; -as, for instance, in the picture I referred to, Rossetti's Virgin in the house of St. John, the Madonna's being drawn at the moment when she rises to trim their lamp.

* Ante, § 5 [p. 270].

In many such cases, the incidents may of course have symbolical meaning, as, in the unfinished drawing by Rossetti of the Passover, which I have so long left with you,' the boy Christ is watching the blood struck on the doorpost;but the peculiar value and character of the treatment is in what I called its material veracity, compelling the spectator's belief, if he have the instinct of belief in him at all, in the thing's having verily happened; and not being a mere poetical fancy. If the spectator, on the contrary, have no capacity of belief in him, the use of such representation is in making him detect his own incredulity; and recognize, that in his former dreamy acceptance of the story, he had never really asked himself whether these things were so.

32. Thus, in what I believe to have been in actual time the first-though I do not claim for it the slightest lead in suggestive influence, yet the first dated example of such literal and close realization-my own endeavour in the third volume of Modern Painters (iv. 4, § 16)2 to describe the incidents preceding the charge to Peter, I have fastened on the words, "He girt his fisher's coat about him, and did cast himself into the sea," following them out with, "Then to Peter, all wet and shivering, staring at Christ in the sun;" not in the least supposing or intending any symbolism either in the coat or the dripping water, or the morning sunshine; but merely and straitly striving to put the facts before the readers' eyes as positively as if he had seen the thing come to pass on Brighton beach, and an English fisherman dash through the surf of it to the feet of his captain-once dead, and now with the morning brightness on his face.

33. And you will observe farther, that this way of

1 [Plate XXXIV. The drawing was commissioned by Ruskin in 1854, but never completed by the artist (see, in a later volume, several references to it in Ruskin's letters to Rossetti). The drawing was shown at the Old Masters Exhibition of 1883, No. 364. It was at that time in the Ruskin Drawing School, but is now at Brantwood. For another reference to the drawing, see The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism, § 22 (Vol. XXXIV.).]

2 [See Vol. V. pp. 80, 81.]

3 [John xxi. 7.]