and nervous, with a soft, genial eye, a mouth thin and severe, and a
voice that, though rich and sweet, yet had a tendency to sink into a
plaintive and hopeless tone." Later on in years we have this verbal
portrait from a disciple of the great art-teacher, occurring in an
inaugural address delivered before the Ruskin Society of Glasgow: "That
spare, stooping figure, the rough-hewn, kindly face, with its mobile,
sensitive mouth, and clear deep eyes, so sweet and honest in repose, so
keen and earnest and eloquent in debate!"

When the fifth and last volume of "Modern Painters" was finally off his
hands, Mr. Ruskin not only engaged, as we have seen, in occasional
lecturing, but began (1861) to add a prolific series of
_brochures_--many of them with quaint but significant titles--to his
already stupendous mass of writing. Their subjects were not alone
aesthetics, but now treated of ethical, social, and political questions,
the prophetic declarations and earnest appeals of a man of wide and
varied culture, deep thought, and large experience. The attempted
alliance of political economy with art was a novel undertaking in that
sixth lustrum of the past century, even by a man of Mr. Ruskin's
eminence and fame in the world of letters. But Mr. Ruskin was a bold and
earnest man, as well as a genius; and he had too much to tell his
heedless, _laissez-faire_ age to keep silent on themes, remote as they
were from those he had hitherto taught, and of which he desired to
deliver his soul, whatever ridicule it might provoke and however adverse
the criticism levelled against him. His humanity and moral sense were
outraged by the manner in which the mass of his countrymen lived, and
trenchant was his castigation of this and eager as well as righteous his
desire to amend their condition and elevate and inspire their minds. As
an economist, it is true, there was not a little that was false as well
as eccentric in what he preached; moreover, much of his counsel was