lastly, _Fors Clavigera_ has declared the relation of these to each
other, and the only possible conditions of peace and honor, for low
and high, rich and poor..."

Ruskin has written remarkable descriptive prose. A severe English
critic, George Saintsbury, says of Ruskin's works "...they will he
found to contain the very finest prose (without exception and beyond
comparison) which has been written in English during the last half of
the nineteenth century... _The Stones of Venice_ ... is _the_ book of
descriptive prose in English, and all others toil after it in vain."

Ruskin could be severely plain in expression, but much of his earlier
prose is ornate and almost poetic. The following description of the
Rhone deserves to be ranked with the painter's art:--

"There were pieces of wave that danced all day as if Perdita were
looking on to learn; there were little streams that skipped like
lambs and leaped like chamois; there were pools that shook the
sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of overlaid
ripples, like crystal sand; here were currents that twisted the
light into golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise
enamel; there were strips of stream that had certainly above the
lake been mill streams, and were busily looking for mills to turn
again."[10]

CHARLES DICKENS, 1812-1870

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS. _From a photograph taken in America,
1868_.]

Life.--The first of the great Victorian novelists to make his mark
was Charles Dickens. This great portrayer of child life had a sad
painful childhood. He was born in 1812 at Landport, a district of the
city of Portsmouth, Hampshire, where his father was a clerk in the
Navy Pay Office. John Dickens, the prototype of Mr. Micawber, was a
kind, well-intentioned man, who knew far better how to harangue his
large household of children than how to supply it with the necessities
of life. He moved from place to place, sinking deeper into poverty and
landing finally in a debtors' prison.

The dreams of a fine education and a brilliant career, which the
future novelist had fondly cherished in his precocious little brain,
had to be abandoned. At the age of eleven the delicate child was
called upon to do his part toward maintaining the family. He was
engaged, at six-pence a week, to paste labels on blacking bottles. He
was poorly clothed, ill fed, forced to live in the cheapest place to
be found, and to associate with