[1] _Præterita_. He was born February 8, 1819.

[2] Ruskin himself quotes a not very brilliant specimen in _Modern
Painters_, III, in "Moral of Landscape."

[3] _Præterita_, § 53.

[4] _The Mystery of Life._




II

THE UNITY OF RUSKIN'S WRITINGS


[Sidenote: Diversity of his writings.]

Ruskin is often described as an author of bewildering variety, whose
mind drifted waywardly from topic to topic--from painting to political
economy, from architecture to agriculture--with a license as
illogical as it was indiscriminating. To this impression, Ruskin
himself sometimes gave currency. He was, for illustration, once
announced to lecture on crystallography, but, as we are informed by
one present,[5] he opened by asserting that he was really about to
lecture on Cistercian architecture; nor did it greatly matter what the
title was; "for," said he, "if I had begun to speak about Cistercian