will be fewer attempts to establish philanthropic hospitals. If they will remember that "a flower is to be watched as it grows, in its association with the earth, the air, and the dew; its leaves are to be seen as they expand in the sunshine; its colors as they embroider the field or illumine the forest," there will be fewer efforts to transplant earth's children to social hotbeds. This is the present problem, and if Ruskin's fidelity and faith remain and overbalance his passionate unwisdom in their application, it will be well for the thousands to whom his prolific brain has spoken.

Here let Ruskin present his own explanation and apology. He says, in Præterita: "Often in my other books, and now once for all and finally here, I have to pray my readers to note that this continually increasing arrogance was not founded on vanity in me, but on sorrow. There is a vast difference, there is all the difference, between the vanity of displaying one's own faculties and the grief that other people do not use their own. Vanity would have led me to continue writing and drawing what every one praised, and disciplining my own already practiced hands into finer dexterities. But I had no thought but of learning more and teaching what truth I knew, assuredly then and ever since, for the student's sake, not my own fame's."

A notable instance of the strange inconsistencies of perception and emotion which characterized Ruskin's mind is seen in his essay on War, in the volume entitled The Crown of Wild Olive. In the opening paragraphs he says: "All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war; no great art ever yet rose on earth but among a nation of soldiers." After quoting Egypt and Greece as evidences of the truth of his statement, he says: "You are to remember, in passing to the next phase of history, that though you must have war to produce art, you must also have much more than war, namely, an art instinct or genius in the people; and that, though all the talent for painting in the world won't make painters of you unless you have the gift for fighting as well, you may have the gift for fighting and none for painting. 'It may be so,' I can suppose that a philanthropist might exclaim. Perish then the arts, if they can flourish only at such a cost. What worth is there in toys of canvas and stone if compared to the joy and peace of artless domestic life?' And the answer is: Truly, in themselves, none. But as expressions of the highest state of the human spirit their worth is infinite. As results they may be worthless, but as signs they are above price. For it is an assured fact that, whenever the faculties of men are at their fullness, they must express themselves in art; and to say that a state is without such an expression is to say that it is sunk from its proper level of manly nature. So that, when I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It was very strange to me to discover this, and very dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together I found to be wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of life only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning and of peace and plenty and of peace and civilization, but I found that those were not the words which the Muse of History coupled together; that on her lips the words were peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and corruption, peace and death. I found, in brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace, taught by war and deceived

by peace, trained by war and betrayed by peacein a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace. Yet now note carefully, in the second place, it is not all war of which this can be said. It is not the ravage of a barbarian wolf flock nor the habitual restlessness and rapine of mountaineers, as on the old borders of Scotland; nor the occasional struggle of a strong, peaceful nation for its life, as in the wars of the Swiss with Austria; nor the contest of merely ambitious nations for extent of power, as in the wars of France under Napoleon or the just terminated war in America [the civil war in the United States]. None of these forms of war build anything but tombs. But the creative and foundational war is that in which the natural instincts of self-defense are sanctified by the nobleness of the institutions and purity of the households which they are appointed to defend. To such war as this all men are born; in such war as this any man may happily die; and forth from such war as this have arisen throughout the extent of past ages all the highest sanctities and virtues of humanity."

Ruskin was addressing the men of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. In closing, after pleading with them to live clean and manly lives, and after apostrophizing the mothers, wives, and lovers of these men, he says: "But truly, if it might be, I, for one, would fain join in the ca dence of hammer strokes that should beat swords into plowshares; and that this can not be is not the fault of us men. It is your fault, wholly yours. Only by your command or by your permission can any contest take place among us. And the real, final reason for all the poverty, misery, and rage of battle throughout Europe is simply that you women, however good, however religious, however self-sacrificing for those you love, are too selfish and too thoughtless to take pains for any creature out of your own immediate circles. You fancy that you are sorry for the pains of others. Now I just tell you this, that if the usual course of war, instead of unroofing peasants' houses and ravaging peasants' fields, merely broke china upon your own drawing-room tables, no war in civilized countries would last a week. I tell you more, that at whatever moment you choose to put a period to war you could do it with less trouble than you take any day to go out to dinner. You know, or at least you might know if you would think, that every battle you hear of has made many widows and orphans. We have none of us, truly, heart enough to mourn with these. But at least we might put on the outer symbols of mourning with them. Let but every Christian lady who has conscience toward God vow that she will mourn, at least outwardly, for his killed creatures. Your praying is useless and your churchgoing mere mockery of God if you have not plain obedience in you enough for this. Let every lady in the upper classes of civilized Europe simply vow that while any cruel war proceeds she will wear black, a mute's black, with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse for or evasion into prettiness-I tell you again, no war would last a week. And, lastly, you women of England are all now shrieking with one voice you and your clergymen together because you hear of your Bibles being attacked. If you choose to obey your Bibles, you will never care who attacks them. It is just because you never fulfill a single downright precept of the Book that you are so careful for its credit, and just because you don't care to obey its whole words that you are so particular about the letters of them. The Bible tells you to dress plainly, and you are mad for finery; the Bible tells you to have pity on the poor, and you