the birthplace of Turner.

[Sidenote: His beauty of style often distracts from the thought.]

But none knew better than Ruskin that a style so stiff with ornament
was likely to produce all manner of faults. In overloading his
sentences with jewelry he frequently obscures the sense; his beauties
often degenerate into mere prettiness; his sweetness cloys. His free
indulgence of the emotions, often at the expense of the intellect,
leads to a riotous extravagance of superlative. But, above all, his
richness distracts attention from matter to manner. In the case of an
author so profoundly in earnest, this could not but be unfortunate;
nothing enraged him more than to have people look upon the beauties of
his style rather than ponder the substance of his book. In a passage
of complacent self-scourging he says:

"For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the
misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not
without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing
so, until I was heavily punished for this pride by finding that
many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their
meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such language--if
indeed it ever were mine--is passing away from me; and whatever I
am now able to say at all I find myself forced to say with great
plainness."[18]

[Sidenote: His picturesque extravagance of style.]

But Ruskin's decision to speak with "great plainness" by no means made
the people of England attend to what he said rather than the way he