sketched, arranged collections of minerals,
prepared Turner's pictures for the National Gallery, became professor
of art at Oxford University, and wrote and lectured on art and social
subjects. His later activities, before his health gave way, were in
many respects similar to those of a twentieth-century social-service
worker. The realization of the misery that overwhelmed so much of
human life caused him to turn from art to consider remedies for the
evils that developed as the competitive industries of the nation
expanded. He endeavored to improve the condition of the working
classes in such ways as building sanitary tenements, establishing a
tea shop, and forming an altruistic association, known as St. George's
Guild. Nearly all his inheritance of L180,000 was expended in such
activities. The royalties coming from the sale of his books supported
him in old age.

Ruskin suffered from periods of mental depression during his last
years, which were spent at Brantwood on Coniston Water in the Lake
District. He died in 1900 at the age of eighty-one and was buried in
the cemetery at Coniston.

Art Works.--Ruskin published the first volume of _Modern Painters_
in 1843, the year after he was graduated from Oxford, and the fifth
and last volume, seventeen years later, in 1860. Many of his views
changed during this period; but he honestly declared them and left to
his readers the task of reconciling the divergent ideas in _Modern
Painters_. The purpose of this book was, in his own words, "to declare
the perfectness and eternal beauty of the work of God; and test all
works of man by concurrence with, or subjection to that."

_Modern Painters_ contains painstaking descriptions of God's handiwork
in cloud formation, mountain structure, tree architecture, and water
forms. In transferring these aspects of nature to canvas, Ruskin shows
the superiority of modern to ancient painting. He emphasizes the moral
basis of true beauty, and the necessity of right living as a
foundation for the highest type of art. Perhaps _Modern Painters_
achieved its greatest success in freeing men from the bondage of a
conventional criticism that was stifling art, in sending them direct
to nature as a guide, and in developing a love for her varied
manifestations of beauty.

Two of Ruskin's works on architecture, _The Seven Lamps of
Architecture_ (1849) and _The Stones of Venice_ (1851-1853), had a
decided effect on British taste in building. The three