road and swept London crossings. Further than this, he started a model tea-shop; he founded collections of art at Oxford and Cambridge; he insisted that his books should be beautifully printed, and for that purpose established the printing house at Orpington; and he gave Miss Octavia Hill the money necessary to support her scheme of poor-relief. He soon gave away, in fact, all of the £157,000 left him by the rich winemerchant. All over England the traveler runs across little institutions of orderly, honest labor, founded by Ruskin. Far up Tilberthwaite Ghyll, among the mountains of the Lake District, one may buy linen at a cottage industry which received its first impulse from him.

Much the greatest of his projects, however, was the Company of St. George, set forth in Fors Clavigera, a series of letters to workingmen. The idea of this company, which was scarcely more than a project, was based on three Material things- Pure Air, Water, and Earth; and on three Immaterial things - Admiration, Hope, and Love. "The task of St. George," says Mr. Frederic Harrison, "was to slay the dragon of Industrialism; to deliver the people from all the moral and physical abominations of city life, and plant them again on the soil of an England purified from steam, from filth, and from destitution. In this regenerated country there were to be no competition, no engines, no huckstering, no fraud, no luxury, no idleness, no pernicious journalism, no vain erudition or mechanical book-learning." In course of time "Bishops" and "Centurions," to satisfy Ruskin's Tory taste, were to be introduced; and wine was allowed, if it was more than ten years old! The effort failed indeed, after seven years of thought and work; but it was the vanguard of the better class of socialistic movements

which have followed, the first futile effort of an earnest lover of mankind to do the work of the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, in his attitude toward steam and cities Ruskin soon grew bitter; his voice was often shrill and querulous. The truth is that it was the natural cry of the forlorn hope, and a very sad cry. Consider the odds against him. In the first place his health, always' weak, had suffered grievously from several severe lung afflictions. Next, his projects were chiefly failures; his single efforts against the "dragon of Industrialism" seemed unavailing; and it cost him dear to care so much and yet to fail. Further, he was again disappointed in love. Far back, in 1858, he had given drawing lessons to one Rosie La Touche, aged ten, and as years went on he fell in love with her, after his wont. She, however, was a Roman Catholic, and could not think, says Mr. Collingwood, of being "yoked with an unbeliever." So in 1872 she refused him. Three years later she died, and he, by way of consolation, fell into a half-delirious love of a vision of St. Ursula. The disappointment in 1840 was serious enough; but the suffering of the old man in 1872 is pathetic beyond words. But this is not all. The death of his father in 1864 and his mother in 1871 did not leave so sensitive a nature unscarred. Still more, he suffered in 1878 from a mental malady, during the attacks of which he may hardly be held responsible for his utterances. Lastly, repelled by the Calvinism of his youth, bewildered by the turmoil of religious opinion caused by the war between dogma and science, he had fallen, along with Carlyle and other free-thinkers, into fits of pessimism when it seemed as if nothing could save the world. Is it to be wondered at that he grew queru

lous? His life at this time has been compared to Swift's, without the savage cynicism, but with all the tragic, forlorn despair. Indeed, he saw the sad likeness himself. "The peace in which I am at present," he wrote to Professor Charles E. Norton, " is only as if I had buried myself in a tuft of grass on a battlefield wet with blood."

Towards the end, happily, there came over him a serener mood. His health improved slightly, and he amused himself with writing Præterita (1885–89), suggested by Professor Norton. When his mother died he gave up the house at Denmark Hill, London, where the family had lived since 1843, and bought Brantwood, on Lake Coniston. Here, under the kind care of his cousin, Mrs. Arthur Severn, he spent his last days peacefully, reading, entertaining visitors, and filling the simple mountain folk with his kindliness. He passed many hours, it is said, gazing wistfully across the lake toward the mountain, Coniston Old Man. He was now out of the maelstrom and on the quiet stream, "too full for sound or foam." He died quietly, January 20, 1900, and was buried, without pomp or black pall, both of which he detested, in Coniston churchyard.

Yet those who know only the last years of Ruskin too often think of him as a gentle, venerable man. Through the greater part of his life his spirit was tossed within him. In his turbulence and his unattained ideals, when one remembers the frail, suffering body and mind, lies the tragic touch that gives his prophecy sublimity. For he was a prophet — alone with Carlyle the greatest of the century. However critics may disagree as to the rightness of his views on art and sociology, all are unanimous that his spirit was right,

that his influence was beneficent. The twentieth century will probably not establish a St. George's Company, but it must look for inspiration to the man who could dream of such a company. "I grew," he says in Præterita, "also daily more and more sure that the peace of God rested on all the dutiful and kindly hearts of the laborious poor; and that the only constant form of pure religion was in useful work, faithful love, and stintless charity."

MATTHEW ARNOLD

If one were asked to select a typical Englishman of the nineteenth century, several reasons could be urged for the choice of Matthew Arnold. He had the physical characteristics; he was a large, handsome man, intensely fond of the outdoor life, and a real lover of nature. He belonged to that upper middle class which has produced England's finest men and women. He loved the beaten cause, and was profoundly attached to Oxford as "the home of beaten causes," as the citadel of conservatism. He loved the English Church. No one has paid a higher tribute to the English nobility in its best estate than Arnold paid in his illustration of a passage in Homer by the anecdote of Lord Granville. He was more than conservative in his admiration of the classics and in his insistence upon their value for education and culture. Yet throughout his life Matthew Arnold was the most persistent and effective critic of English life and English temperament. He named the upper classes "barbarians," and railed at the great middle class as "Philistines." He did more to undermine the dogmas of his own church than those scientific opponents of religion whose attitude he so deplored. He lauded the very qualities, say of the French or of the German mind, at which Englishmen were wont to scoff, and poured remorseless satire on that inaccessibility to ideas which marked his countrymen. Breaking away from the practice of English poets, he maintained that the beauty of the whole poem should be achieved