144

JOHN RUSKIN.

of natural law, yet turned their eyes away and ruled
the lines of their tartan; who, having in sight the
soft gloomy purple of their heather and the soft brown
of their streams, chose to put that yellow line between
that blue and that red—the hardest colours of all
men’s invention ? I want such a phrase as Ruskin
alone could give me to denounce the hatred of nature
and the contempt of life which the plaid could be
made to prove. And see what significance he attaches
to the mere straying from nature in the Hindoo!
“ He draws no plant, but only a spiral.” But the
Scot loved the plant not enough to draw even a spiral;
he ruled straight lines.
If I have treated this book with controversy, it was
impossible to do otherwise. But out of its treasures
of wisdom take the page in praise of Titian which ends
with the passage: “Nobody cares much at heart
about Titian; only there is a strange undercurrent of
everlasting murmur about his name, which means the
deep consent of all great men that he is greater than
they,” and so on to the end. For wit take this, from
the important section of the lecture on “ Modern Manu-
facture and Design,” that partly condemns the usual
teaching of symmetry :—
“ If you learn to draw a leaf well, you are taught . . .
to turn it the other way, opposite to itself; and the
two leaves set opposite ways are called ‘a design.’ . . .
But if once you learn to draw the human figure, you
will find that knocking two men’s heads together does
not necessarily constitute a good design.”