This queer late-coming prose of Mr. Ruskin (including the revised
and condensed issue of the Stones of Venice, only one
little volume of which has been published, or perhaps ever will
be) is all to be read, though much of it appears addressed to
children of tender age. It is pitched in the nursery-key, and
might be supposed to emanate from an angry governess. It is,
however, all suggestive, and much of it is delightfully just.
There is an inconceivable want of form in it, though the author
has spent his life in laying down the principles of form and
scolding people for departing from them; but it throbs and
flashes with the love of his subject--a love disconcerted and
abjured, but which has still much of the force of inspiration.
Among the many strange things that have befallen Venice, she has
had the good fortune to become the object of a passion to a man
of splendid genius, who has made her his own and in doing so has
made her the world's. There is no better reading at Venice
therefore, as I say, than Ruskin, for every true Venice-lover can
separate the wheat from the chaff. The narrow theological spirit,
the moralism a tout propos, the queer provincialities and
pruderies, are mere wild weeds in a mountain of flowers. One may
doubtless be very happy in Venice without reading at all--without
criticising or analysing or thinking a strenuous thought. It is
a city in which, I suspect, there is very little strenuous
thinking, and yet it is a city in which there must be almost as
much happiness as misery. The misery of Venice stands there for
all the world to see; it is part of the spectacle--a
thoroughgoing devotee of local colour might consistently say it
is part of the pleasure. The Venetian people have little to call
their own--little more than the bare privilege of leading their
lives in the most beautiful of towns. Their habitations are