Beauty" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_. Between the author
who wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths in
painting, "This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done,
for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to
his race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separate
mission, and if they discharge it honourably ... there will assuredly
come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall
shine before men, and be of service constant and holy,"[8] and the
author who wrote, "That country is the richest which nourishes the
greatest number of noble and happy human beings,"[9] or, "The
beginning of art is in getting our country clean, and our people
beautiful,"[10]--between these two, I say, there is no essential
difference. They are not contradictory but consistent.

[Sidenote: Art dependent upon personal and national greatness.]

Amidst the maze of subjects, then, which Ruskin, with kaleidoscopic
suddenness and variety, brings before the astonished gaze of his
readers, let them confidently hold this guiding clue. They will find
that Ruskin's "facts" are often not facts at all; they will discover
that many of Ruskin's choicest theories have been dismissed to the
limbo of exploded hypotheses; but they will seek long before they find
a more eloquent and convincing plea for the proposition that all great
art reposes upon a foundation of personal and national greatness.
Critics of Ruskin will show you that he began _Modern Painters_ while
he was yet ignorant of the classic Italians; that he wrote _The Stones
of Venice_ without realizing the full indebtedness of the Venetian to
the Byzantine architecture; that he proposed to unify the various
religious sects although he had no knowledge of theology; that he
attempted a reconstruction of society though he had had no scientific