began to write The Bible of Amiens on October 17, and the writing was combined with sketching many of the pieces of sculpture which he was to catalogue and describe. To attune his thoughts to the system of theology which he found upon the stones of Amiens, Ruskin at this time made a daily study of the Kalendars of saints in some of his illuminated manuscripts, and copied out in his diary verses of mediæval hymns or litanies. The lecture was given at Eton, on November 6, shortly after his return. As written, it contained the first draft of his work on the cathedral; but he forgot to bring his MS. with him: a short report of the actual lecture is now printed in the Bibliographical Note (p. 5). Some days were next spent in London, at work in the National Gallery upon a new catalogue of the Turner Drawings and Sketches, and in revising the proofs for the first part of The Bible of Amiens. He then returned to Brantwood, resuming for a while the quiet life, already described-in studies of sky and flowers and shells. But only half the story has been told, in records of quiet hours and calm skies.

It had been well for Ruskin's health if he could have husbanded all his gradually recovered strength for the studies which brought him peace of mind. His friends, as he says in Fors, often counselled him to avoid controversial and painful subjects. Cardinal Manning, for

one, had written to him: "Joy is one of the twelve fruits of the Holy Ghost. There is before you and about you a world of beauty, sweetness, stillness, peace, and light. You have only to open your whole soul to it." But his eager spirit made such peaceful preoccupation and such economy of power impossible to him. He knew what was good for his peace, he perfectly recognised in which fields of thought the danger lay; but with "such things to do, such things to be,” he was unable to follow only the paths of prudence. At times he succeeded in being as lazy as he knew how to be, of which knowledge he had at best but little; but at other times he was bent upon the chace, "jealous," as he notes in the diary (March 13, 1879), “of every golden minute of every golden day.". At every new trial, as he says in one of his books,3 the words of the Sibyl were for ever murmured in his ears

"Tu ne cede malis, sed contra fortior ito❞—

and, whenever some new strength was gained, he heard in it a call to action. "Much better this morning," he notes in the diary (February 28,

1 See Vol. XIII. pp. 349 seq.

2 Letter 72 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 757).

3 Ariadne Florentina, § 214 (Vol. XXII. p. 447).

1879); "more in my heart than I can write, except that I got two oracles from Horace in the night. Fortem memento,' I remembered naturally enough; but 'Mors et fugacem persequitur virum '2 being opened at decided me to go to London to-morrow." 3 The diary contains frequent calls of the kind-as, for instance, this :

:

"(January 2, 1880.)—Utterly jaded and feverish with nearly sleepless night and crowding thoughts-wonderful in sudden call upon me for action and I so feeble, but must answer a little. Thankful for the clear guiding-see the new Fors begun yesterday."4

Here the sudden call was immediately responded to, and Ruskin plunged into violent controversy upon a subject which of all excited him the most he wrote in eager haste, yet not without careful revision, his Rejoinder to the Bishop of Manchester's reply in defence of "Usury." A little earlier he had allowed himself, partly in connexion with the same subject, to be drawn into another field of exciting discussion, that of the Lord's Prayer in relation to the duties of the clergy and present-day problems. Nothing is more striking in Ruskin's writings of this period than the contrast between the easy serenity of style in the essays on subjects of art or nature and the fulgurant, and at times somewhat ill-balanced, vehemence in those on politics or economics. If the reader will glance in succession at two pieces, written within a few weeks of each other-the Notes on Prout and Hunt (Vol. XIV.) and the Rejoinder to the Bishop of Manchester (Vol. XXXIV.)—he will at once perceive the contrast. Other work which greatly excited Ruskin's brain at this time was the series of essays-brilliantly penetrating, if over-discursive-upon Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron which he entitled Fiction, Fair and Foul. They are among his best literary essays, and their polished allusiveness shows a mind and a memory in fullest activity. He enjoyed writing them. "I always get into heart again," he says in the diary, in noting his first plan for the papers (April 13, 1880), "when I see my way well into a thing." But the strain was great. "Scott papers and Byron 1 Compare Ruskin's Sortes Biblica: Vol. XIX. p. xxvi., Vol. XXII. pp. xxv., xxviii., xxix.

Odes, ii. 3, 1, and iii. 2, 14. Ruskin somewhat characteristically forgot that the word in the first line was æquam, not fortem.

The journey (which was not "to-morrow," but a few weeks later) was in connexion with the legal proceedings mentioned above. See in a later volume the letter to Professor Norton of February 28, 1879, about this "Sors Horatiana."

Letter 88, ultimately dated "February 8, 1880" (Vol. XXIX. p. 381)—the first Letter after his illness.

By which term, it should be understood, Ruskin at this time meant all forms of Interest.

work very bad for me without a doubt," he noted later (July 13); "some letters too have made me angry-worst of all."

3

Other people were made angry at this time, as we shall hear in a later volume, by a characteristic letter which Ruskin wrote (October 1880) in connexion with his candidature for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University. He had been put forward as the "Conservative" candidate in opposition to John Bright, but he signally failed to play the party game, and was badly beaten. The publication at this time of his scattered letters to the press during a period of forty years, under the title Arrows of the Chace, attracted much attention, and perhaps encouraged all sorts and conditions of people and newspapers to "draw" him on every conceivable subject. It is to this period also (1879, 1880) that the foundation of "Ruskin Societies" in Manchester, Glasgow, London, and many other places belongs. They had a considerable effect in spreading Ruskin's influence and increasing the circulation of his books, which, it should be remembered, had for many years neither been advertised nor noticed in the newspapers. Owing to the fact that Ruskin did not now send free copies of his books for review, the professedly literary journals made no reference whatever to anything that was written by one of the foremost literary men of the time. The Ruskin Societies and "Ruskin Reading Guilds" came in this matter to the rescue; but the necessary penalty of increasing vogue was a great addition to the burden of Ruskin's correspondence. He might wish, in times of illness, to shut himself off from the world, but the world declined to be a party to the arrangement.

It had been well, I wrote above, if Ruskin could have found peace in untroubled skies; but this also the fates forbade. No man was ever more sensitive than he to physical impressions from external nature; for indeed physical and spiritual light was to him the same, and never was there a man who lived more largely in the contemplation of sky and cloud, of lake and flowers and hills. The physical

1 Vol. XXXIV.

2 Bright, 1127; Ruskin, 813.

3 The first to be formed was "The Ruskin Society (Society of the Rose), Manchester," 1879; the Hon. Sec. was Mr. F. W. Pullen (for whom, see Vol. XXIV. p. 423); its first "Annual Report" is dated May 1880. "The Ruskin Society of Glasgow," also established in 1879, issued in 1882 a valuable Report on the Homes of the People. "The Ruskin Society of Birkenhead" was founded in 1881; and "The Ruskin Society of London" in the same year: its first Hon. Sec. was Mr. W. H. Gill (for whom, see Vol. XXX. p. 240). Liverpool, Sheffield, and Birmingham founded similar societies at later dates. In 1887 a "Ruskin Reading Guild' was established, with branches in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bradford, Oxford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Arbroath, Elgin, Dundee, and Armagh.

66

corruption of the heavens by "The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century "-a very real phenomenon, as we shall see1-was to Ruskin as the darkening of a spiritual light. There were, of course, as he records in his lectures,2 days of serene weather and of wholesome storm, and at such times his mental moods responded to the genial touch. These were times when he was able, as he says in the diary (February 26, 1880), to gain "so much of life out of the night." But records of the "plague-wind" become ominously persistent. Some of these records are printed in his lectures; a few others may here be added: 3

"(January 5, 1880.)-Came down at a quarter to nine into the dark room, with a drenching fog over all heaven and earth.

"(January 6.)-This is quite, as far as I can remember, the most miserable January I ever passed. To-day, pouring small rain, after a yesterday's unbroken fog, and miserably dark.

"(January 8.)-Deadly fog-rain these three days, without a gleam; to-day, Manchester smoke, with the usual devilry of cloud moving fast in rags, with no wind."

The depression seemed to be lightened by the French tour in the autumn of the year (p. xxiv.). But he had overtaxed his strength. On return to Brantwood, he soon found himself "much beaten and tired, and must positively take to the rocks and grass again for a while" (December 26). The depression gathered once more, and was deepened by sleepless nights and dreams-"grotesque, terrific, inevitable," he calls them (January 9, 1881). And, presently, the troubled night of dreams passed into his days.

At the end of February 1881 Ruskin was for the second time laid prostrate by what he afterwards described as "terrific delirium." The fever lasted for a month, and his recovery seemed as complete as it was speedy. "On the 22nd March," he notes, "I was down in my study writing business letters, and yesterday, the 7th April-the third anniversary of my coming down to study after my first illness-I was walking in the wood for good three hours with as good strength as I've ever felt. The first primrose out, too-no bigger than this [sketch], but very delightful. And the first soft sunshine of the year, lasting into far twilight." But the recovery was not complete. The patient gave himself little chance. "I don't feel any need," he wrote to Professor 1 Introduction to Vol. XXXIV.

2 The Storm-Cloud, § 34 (Vol. XXXIV. p. 35).

These are selected (from innumerable entries of the kind in the diaries) because they appear on the proof-sheets of The Storm-Cloud.

Norton (April 26), "for doing or nothing doing as I'm bid! but on the contrary, am quite afloat again in my usual stream." He was always doing something, but he was restless and irritable and could do nothing long. "He is almost as active as ever," wrote his secretary, Laurence Hilliard, "and is just now deeply interested in some experimental drainage of a part of his little moor, which he hopes to be able to cultivate; but he seems more and more to find a difficulty in keeping to any one settled train of thought or work, and it is sad to see him entering almost daily upon new schemes which one cannot feel will ever be carried out. So far as he will allow us, we try to help him, but the influence of any one of those around him is now very small, and has been so ever since the last illness."1. The diary shows that this was a time of great mental excitement, bordering sometimes upon collapse. Yet from time to time he was able to make progress with his with his many books. "I begin the last twelfth of year," he writes in the diary (December 1), "in which I proceed, D.V., to finish Amiens ii. and Proserpina vii.; and in the year I shall have done, in spite of illness, three Amiens, one Proserpina, and the Scott paper for Nineteenth, besides a good deal of trouble with last edition of Stones of Venice; but, alas, what a wretched year's work it is! and even that not finished yet! But then there was some good drawing in spring." The second part of The Bible of Amiens was finished, and the third began, a few days later. His mind was busy, too, with the general plan of Our Fathers, but he found concentration difficult. "I must do it," he notes, "a stitch here and a patch there" (December 18). He was, however, listless and depressed. The diary records many a day of "hesitations, shifts, and despairings," and the dread of what had been and might be once more stood not far behind. "Terribly languid," he wrote on January 15, "but better so than in that dangerous excitement which came on me in October, I hope, for the last time, since I shall never encourage it again." But it was not so to be. Shortly afterwards Ruskin went up to London, and on February 7 he took the chair at a lecture on "Modern. Sports" given by his friend, Frederick Gale,2 and, in the excitement of change of work, he believed himself to have conquered danger. "No," he wrote from London,-"I won't believe any stories about over-work. It's impossible when one's in good heart and at really pleasant things. I've a lot of nice things to do, but the heart fails,-after lunch,

1 Letter to C. E. Norton, in Letters of John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton, vol. ii. pp. 171–172.

2 See a letter to him in a later volume.