abbeys, I should have been sure to get on crystals presently; and if
I had begun upon crystals, I should soon have drifted into
architecture." Those who conceive of Ruskin as being thus a kind of
literary Proteus like to point to the year 1860, that of the
publication of his tracts on economics, as witnessing the greatest
and suddenest of his changes, that from reforming art to reforming
society; and it is true that this year affords a simple dividing-line
between Ruskin's earlier work, which is sufficiently described by the
three titles, _Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and
_The Stones of Venice_, and his later work, chiefly on social subjects
such as are discussed in _Unto This Last, The Crown of Wild Olive_,
and _Fors Clavigera_. And yet we cannot insist too often on the
essential unity of this work, for, viewed in the large, it betrays one
continuous development. The seeds of _Fors_ are in _The Stones of
Venice_.

[Sidenote: Underlying idea in all his works.]

The governing idea of Ruskin's first published work, _Modern Painters,
Volume I_, was a moral idea. The book was dedicated to the principle
that that art is greatest which deals with the greatest number of
greatest ideas,--those, we learn presently, which reveal divine
truth; the office of the painter, we are told,[6] is the same as that
of the preacher, for "the duty of both is to take for each discourse
one essential truth." As if recalling this argument that the painter
is a preacher, Carlyle described _The Stones of Venice_ as a "sermon
in stones." In the idea that all art, when we have taken due account
of technique and training, springs from a moral character, we find the
unifying principle of Ruskin's strangely diversified work. The very
title _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, with its chapters headed