directly socialistic in its trend, repugnant in large degree to his
English readers and hearers; but all this was atoned for by the honesty
and philanthropy of his motives, by his phenomenal fervor and eloquence,
and by the literary beauty and charm of every page he wrote.
Nevertheless, as in Carlyle--for in these depreciations the style of the
seer of Chelsea was deeply upon him--the note of calamity and the wail
of despair are too much in evidence in Ruskin's writings at this period,
while, like Carlyle also, he was equally precipitate and impulsive in
his attacks on things as they were. Yet in the economic condition just
then of England, and in the circumstances environing the labor world,
there was, possibly, justification for the rebukes and objurgations of
onlookers of the type of both of these men, and very humanitarian as
well as practically helpful were Ruskin's counsel and aid to labor and
to all who sought to raise and expand their outlook and better their
condition in life. Towards politics Ruskin was never drawn, but had he
been more prosaic and less given to anathematizing, most valuable would
have been his aid in legislation at this era of political and moral
reform. But if political science, or science in any other of its
branches or departments, did not come within his purview, great was the
revolution he wrought in the working-man's surroundings, and immense the
illumination he shed upon industry and on the spirit in which the
laborer should think and work.

Referring to Ruskin at this period of his career, and to his influence
as a social and moral exhorter, Frederic Harrison, from whom we have
already quoted, has an admirable passage on "Ruskin as Prophet," [2]
which, as it is presumably too little known, we take pleasure in
embodying in these pages.

[Footnote 2: "Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates," by