room, and a shilling under each. The shillings he told me were England, France, and Spain. 'Hey presto cockalorum!' cried the Doctor, and lo, on uncovering the shillings, which had been dispersed each beneath a separate hat, they 5 were all found congregated under one. I was no politician at five years old, and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown; but as also I was no conjuror, it amazed me beyond measure. . . From that time, when10 ever the Doctor came to visit my father, 'I plucked his gown to share the gocd man's smile'; a game at romps constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry playfellows. Our unequal companionship varied somewhat as to sports as I grew older; but it did not last long: my senior 15 playmate died in his forty-fifth year, when I had attained my eleventh. . . . In all the numerous accounts of his virtues and foibles, his genius and absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance of the world, his compassion for another's woe' was always predominant; and my trivial story 20 of his humoring a froward child weighs but as a feather in the recorded scale of his benevolence."

Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain, if you like-but merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of 25 the poor pensioners weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him; think of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph-and of the wonderful and unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave it. His humor delighting us still, his 30 song fresh and beautiful as when first he charmed with it, his words in all our mouths, his very weaknesses beloved and familiar-his benevolent spirit seems still to smile upon us, to do gentle kindnesses, to succor with sweet charity, to soothe, caress, and forgive, to plead with the fortunate for 35 the unhappy and the poor.

John Ruskin.

1819-1900.

SELECTIONS FROM MODERN PAINTERS.

THE SKY.

(From Modern Painters, Vol. I., 1843.)

It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we 5 least attend to her. There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organisation; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered if once in three days, or there- 10 abouts, a great, ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And instead of this there is not a moment of any day of our lives when nature is not producing scene 15 after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty that it is quite certain it is all done for us and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest 20 or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel them

if he be always with them: but the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not

5 it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together, almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tender10 ness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations: we look upon all by 15 which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the Supreme that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accident, 20 too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, 25 it has been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south and smote upon their summits until they melted and 30 mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? has passed, unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross or 35 what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the

All

clash of the hail nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earthquake nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice. They are but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature which can only be addressed through lamp-black and lightning. 5 It is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep and the calm and the perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily and yet vary eternally, which are never wanting and never repeated, which 10 are to be found always yet each found but once; it is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given. These are what the artist of highest aim must study; it is these, by the combination of which his ideal is to be created; these, of which so little notice is 15 ordinarily taken by common observers that I fully believe, little as people in general are concerned with art, more of their ideas of sky are derived from pictures than from reality, and that if we could examine the conception formed in the minds of most educated persons when we talk of clouds, it 20 would frequently be found composed of fragments of blue and white reminiscences of the old masters.

RUNNING WATER.

(From the same.)

When water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky bed much interrupted by hollows, so that it can rest every now and then in a pool as it goes along, it does not acquire a 25 continuous velocity of motion. It pauses after every leap, and curdles about, and rests a little, and then goes on again; and if in this comparatively tranquil and rational state of mind it meets with any obstacle, as a rock or stone, it parts on each side of it with a little bubbling foam, and goes round; 30 if it comes to a step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and then, after a little splashing at the bottom, stops again to take breath. But if its bed be on a continuous slope, not much interrupted

by hollows, so that it cannot rest, or if its own mass be so increased by flood that its usual resting-places are not sufficient for it but that it is perpetually pushed out of them by the following current before it has had time to tranquilize 5 itself, it of course gains velocity with every yard that it runs; the impetus got at one leap is carried to the credit of the next, until the whole stream becomes one mass of unchecked, accelerating motion. Now, when water in this state comes to an obstacle, it does not part at it, but clears it like a race10 horse; and when it comes to a hollow, it does not fill it up and run out leisurely at the other side, but it rushes down into it and comes up again on the other side, as a ship into the hollow of the sea. Hence the whole appearance of the bed of the stream is changed, and all the lines of the water altered in 15 their nature. The quiet stream is a succession of leaps and pools; the leaps are light and springy and parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing when they tumble into the pools; then we have a space of quiet curdling water and another similar leap below. But the stream when it has gained an 20 impetus takes the shape of its bed, goes down into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a swing, not foaming nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong sea-wave, and comes up again on the other side, over rock and ridge, with the ease of a bounding leopard; if it meet a rock three or 25 four feet above the level of its bed, it will often neither part nor foam, nor express any concern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth dome of water, without apparent exertion, the whole surface of the surge being drawn into parallel lines by its extreme velocity; so that the whole river has the appear30 ance of a deep and raging sea, with this only difference, that the torrent-waves always break backwards, and sea-waves forwards. Thus, then, in the water which has gained an impetus, we have the most exquisite arrangements of curved lines, perpetually changing from convex to concave, and vice 35 versa, following every swell and hollow of the bed with their modulating grace, and all in unison of motion, presenting perhaps the most beautiful series of inorganic forms which nature can possibly produce; for the sea runs too much into