thical impulse; his interest passes
from art to conduct. It is also the period in which he began his
career as lecturer, his chief interest being the social life of his
age.

[Sidenote: Ruskin's increasing interest in social questions.]

By 1860, he was publishing the papers on political economy, later
called _Unto this Last_, which roused so great a storm of protest
when they appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ that their publication
had to be suspended. The attitude of the public toward such works
as these,--its alternate excitement and apathy,--the death of his
parents, combined with the distressing events mentioned above,
darkened Ruskin's life and spoiled his interest in everything that
did not tend to make the national life more thoughtfully solemn.

"It seems to me that now ... the thoughts of the true nature of
our life, and of its powers and responsibilities should present
themselves with absolute sadness and sternness."[4]

His lectures as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, a post which he
held at various times from 1870 to 1883, failed to re-establish his
undistracted interest in things beautiful.

[Sidenote: Triumph of the reformer over the art-critic.]

The complete triumph of the reformer over the art-critic is marked by
_Fors Clavigera_, a series of letters to workingmen, begun New Year's
Day, 1871, in which it was proposed to establish a model colony of
peasants, whose lives should be made simple, honest, happy, and even
cultured, by a return to more primitive methods of tilling the soil
and of making useful and beautiful objects. The Guild of St. George,
established to "slay the dragon of industrialism," to dispose of
machinery, slums, and discontent, consumed a large part of Ruskin's
time and money. He had inherited a fortune of approximately a million
dollars, and he now began to dispose of it in various charitable
schemes,--establishing tea-shops, supporting young painters, planning
model tenements, but, above all, in elaborating his ideas for the
Guild. The result of it all--whatever particular reforms were effected
or manual industries established--was, to Ruskin's view, failure, and
his mind, weakening under the strain of its profound disappointments,
at last crashed in ruin.

[Sidenote: Death in 1900.]

It is needless to follow the broken author through the desolation
of his closing years to his death in 1900. Save for his charming
reminiscences, _Praeterita_, his work was do