But if we return to that
Raphaelism to which he was so unjust, let us not fall into the old
error of intelligent reactionaries, that of ignoring our own debt to
revolutions. Ruskin could not destroy the market of Raphaelism, but he
could and did destroy its monopoly. We may go back to the Renaissance,
but let us remember that we go back free. We can picnic now in the ruins
of our dungeon and deride our deliverer.
But neither in Mr. Collingwood's book nor in Ruskin's own delightful
"Praeterita" shall we ever get to the heart of the matter. The work of
Ruskin and his peers remains incomprehensible by the very completeness
of their victory. Fallen forever is that vast brick temple of
Utilitarianism, of which we may find the fragments but never renew the
spell. Liberal Unionists howl in its high places, and in its ruins Mr.
Lecky builds his nest. Its records read with something of the mysterious
arrogance of Chinese: hardly a generation away from us, we read of a
race who believed in the present with the same sort of servile optimism
with which the Oriental believes in the past. It may be that banging his
head against that roof for twenty years did not improve the temper of
the prophet. But he made what he praised in the old Italian
pictures--"an opening into eternity."
FOOTNOTES:
[2] "The Life of John Ruskin." By W.G. Collingwood. London: Methuen.
QUEEN VICTORIA
Anyone who possesses spiritual or political courage has made up his mind
to a prospect of immutable mutability; but even in a "transformation"
there is something catastrophic in the removal of the back scene.
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