DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0072
6o
JOHN RUSKIN.
From the ending of this volume, which refers to
the Crimean War, the reader should carry two phrases
briefer and more concentrated than is usual with an
author so bent on exposition. One is “the sunlight
of deathbeds,” and the other (on the sudden faults
of nations) “ For great, accumulated . . . cause, their
foot slides in due time.” And this is memorable as
the note of a watcher of public things :—
“ I noticed that there never came news of the ex-
plosion of a powder-barrel . . . but the Parliament lost
confidence immediately in the justice of the war; re-
opened the question whether we ever should have
engaged in it, and remained in a doubtful and repentant
state of mind until one of the enemy’s powder-barrels
blew up also.”
Defending himself against the not unrighteous charge
that he not only neglected but scorned German phil-
osophy, Ruskin avers, in his Appendix, that he is right
to condemn “by specimen” :—
“ He who seizes all that he plainly discerns to be
valuable, and never is unjust but when he cannot honestly
help it, will soon be enviable in his possessions, and
venerable in his equity.”
The humorous phrase takes us on many years, to Fiction
Fair and Foul, in the Nineteenth Century, where Ruskin
related his refusal to be troubled to read a certain
novel he had heard praised; the “situation” of the
story, they told him, was that of two people who had
“ compromised themselves in a boat ” ; foul and foolish.
JOHN RUSKIN.
From the ending of this volume, which refers to
the Crimean War, the reader should carry two phrases
briefer and more concentrated than is usual with an
author so bent on exposition. One is “the sunlight
of deathbeds,” and the other (on the sudden faults
of nations) “ For great, accumulated . . . cause, their
foot slides in due time.” And this is memorable as
the note of a watcher of public things :—
“ I noticed that there never came news of the ex-
plosion of a powder-barrel . . . but the Parliament lost
confidence immediately in the justice of the war; re-
opened the question whether we ever should have
engaged in it, and remained in a doubtful and repentant
state of mind until one of the enemy’s powder-barrels
blew up also.”
Defending himself against the not unrighteous charge
that he not only neglected but scorned German phil-
osophy, Ruskin avers, in his Appendix, that he is right
to condemn “by specimen” :—
“ He who seizes all that he plainly discerns to be
valuable, and never is unjust but when he cannot honestly
help it, will soon be enviable in his possessions, and
venerable in his equity.”
The humorous phrase takes us on many years, to Fiction
Fair and Foul, in the Nineteenth Century, where Ruskin
related his refusal to be troubled to read a certain
novel he had heard praised; the “situation” of the
story, they told him, was that of two people who had
“ compromised themselves in a boat ” ; foul and foolish.