to find himself famous. In the next few years four more volumes
were added to "Modern Painters," and the other notable series
upon art, "The Stones of Venice" and "The Seven Lamps of
Architecture," were sent forth.

Then, in 1860, when Ruskin was about forty years old, there came
a great change. His heaven-born genius for making the
appreciation of beauty a common possession was deflected from
its true field. He had been asking himself what are the
conditions that produce great art, and the answer he found
declared that art cannot be separated from life, nor life from
industry and industrial conditions. A civilization founded upon
unrestricted competition therefore seemed to him necessarily
feeble in appreciation of the beautiful, and unequal to its
creation. In this way loyalty to his mission bred apparent
disloyalty. Delightful discourses upon art gave way to fervid
pleas for humanity. For the rest of his life he became a very
earnest, if not always very wise, social reformer and a
passionate pleader for what he believed to be true economic
ideals.

There is nothing of all this in "The King of the Golden River."
Unlike his other works, it was written merely to entertain.
Scarcely that, since it was not written for publication at all,
but to meet a challenge set him by a young girl.

The circumstance is interesting. After taking his degree at
Oxford, Ruskin was threatened with consumption and hurried away
from the chill and damp of England to the south of Europe.
After two years of fruitful travel and study he came back