5 A MOTHER'S CARE JOHN RUSKIN JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900), the most eloquent and original of English art critics, was born in London. His father, a wealthy wine merchant of considerable culture, gave his son every advantage of travel and education. A year after his graduation from Oxford University, Ruskin wrote the first volume of his Modern Painters. In charming sentences he undertook to show that the later landscape painters, especially Turner, excelled the old masters. Other volumes were added to the first, and in these the critic examined many types of painting. In his books Ruskin is distinguished for his love of the beautiful in nature and in art, for his sympathy with the "toilers on sea and land,” and for his teaching that the only true wealth is wealth of mind and soul. He spent a fortune in trying to improve man's bodily surroundings. He spent his life in an effort to uplift 15 the minds and hearts of men. 10 We scarcely ever, in our study of education, ask this most essential of all questions about a man, What patience had his mother or sister with him? And most men are apt to forget it themselves. 20 Pardon me for speaking of myself for a moment; if I did not know things by my own part in them, I would not write of them at all. You know that people sometimes call me a good writer; others like to hear me speak. Well, my own impression 25 about this power, such as it may be, is that it was born with me, or gradually gained by my own study. It is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise, by which, year after year, my mother forced me to learn all the Scotch paraphrases by heart, and ever so many chapters of 5 the Bible besides, allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced; while every sentence was required to be said over and over again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect a struggle between us of about three weeks, 10 concerning the accent of the "of" in the lines Shall any following spring revive The ashes of the urn? I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true instinct for rhythm (being wholly careless 15 on the subject both of urns and their contents), on reciting it, "The ashes of the urn." It was not, I say, till after three weeks' labor that my mother got the accent laid upon the "ashes" to her mind. But had it taken three years, she would have done 20 it, having once undertaken to do it. And, assuredly, had she not done it, I had been simply an avaricious picture collector, or perhaps even a more avaricious money collector, to this day; and had she done it wrongly, no afterstudy would ever have enabled me 25 to read so much as a single line of verse. THE DEATH OF SAMSON JOHN MILTON JOHN MILTON (1608-1674), often ranked as the greatest English poet next to Shakespeare, was born in Broad Street, London. His father, though a Puritan, was a lover of art and literature, and himself a poet of no mean ability. Milton says, "My father 5 designed me while yet a child to the study of polite literature, which I embraced with such avidity that, from the twelfth year of my age, I hardly ever retired to my rest from my studies till midnight." During his seven years at Cambridge his beauty and fastidious habits won him the nickname “The Lady of Christ's 10 College." After five years of further study at his country home, Horton, he traveled for fifteen months, staying longest in Dante's beloved Florence. he In 1639 the rising storm of civil war between Charles the First 15 and Parliament brought him home. For the next twenty years wrote in defense of Parliament and of Cromwell's government, of which he was Latin secretary. When the Stuart family was restored in 1660, Charles offered to let him hold his position if he would uphold monarchy. Mil20 ton answered, "I will die consistently with my character." 25 During the rest of his life he lived in retirement and composed Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, the greatest epic poems of the English language. The blindness which darkened these years did not abate his energy nor quench his genius. It is certain that this author (Milton), when in a happy mood and employed on a noble subject, is the most wonderfully sublime of any poet in any language, Homer and Lucretius and Tasso not excepted. - HUME. Of his poetry it would require a tongue like his own to speak 30 the praise; it invigorates the understanding, it purifies the affections, it lifts up the heart to God. — ROBERT SOUTHEY. There are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust we know how to prize; and of these was Milton. MACAULAY. Messenger. Occasions drew me early to this city; The building was a spacious theater, Half round on two main pillars vaulted high, The other side was open, where the throng On banks and scaffolds under sky might stand: The feast and noon grew high, and sacrifice 5 10 15 20 Had filled their hearts with mirth, high cheer, and 25 wine, When to their sports they turned. Immediately |