DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0190
VS
JOHN RUSKIN.
not in Dublin only but in the breadth and in the corners
of the world. But as his audience expected to hear
about “art,” and not about the mysteries of life, he
closes the lecture in his old manner, with all the splendid
confidence of teaching, demonstrating the cause of the
good fortune of this art and of the disaster of that, put-
ting away once more what he confessed to be the un-
answerable, for the exposition of what he held to be
the answerable, question. In a delightful passage (what
wonder that his hearers wanted to hear it ?) he recurs
to the contrast of the Lombardic Eve—the barbarous
carving that had a future, with the Angel (it was an
Irish angel, by the way), the barbarous design that had
no possible artistic future and was the end of its own
futile attempt: these had been described in The Two
Paths. Here is Ruskin leaving the Mystery for the
Lesson. But, strange to say, if ever he has explained
in vain, registered an inconsequence, committed himself
to failure, it has been in the generous cause of possible
rescue—it has been in the Lessor},
JOHN RUSKIN.
not in Dublin only but in the breadth and in the corners
of the world. But as his audience expected to hear
about “art,” and not about the mysteries of life, he
closes the lecture in his old manner, with all the splendid
confidence of teaching, demonstrating the cause of the
good fortune of this art and of the disaster of that, put-
ting away once more what he confessed to be the un-
answerable, for the exposition of what he held to be
the answerable, question. In a delightful passage (what
wonder that his hearers wanted to hear it ?) he recurs
to the contrast of the Lombardic Eve—the barbarous
carving that had a future, with the Angel (it was an
Irish angel, by the way), the barbarous design that had
no possible artistic future and was the end of its own
futile attempt: these had been described in The Two
Paths. Here is Ruskin leaving the Mystery for the
Lesson. But, strange to say, if ever he has explained
in vain, registered an inconsequence, committed himself
to failure, it has been in the generous cause of possible
rescue—it has been in the Lessor},