ally characteristic, and compatible with general
greatness of mind, just as the weak love of fences, and dislike of
mountains, were found compatible with Dante's greatness in other
respects.

Farther: as the admiration of mankind is found, in our times, to have
in great part passed from men to mountains, and from human emotion to
natural phenomena, we may anticipate that the great strength of art
will also be warped in this direction; with this notable result for
us, that whereas the greatest painters or painter of classical and
mediaeval periods, being wholly devoted to the representation of
humanity, furnished us with but little to examine in landscape, the
greatest painters or painter of modern times will in all probability
be devoted to landscape principally: and farther, because in
representing human emotion words surpass painting, but in representing
natural scenery painting surpasses words, we may anticipate also that
the painter and poet (for convenience' sake I here use the words in
opposition) will somewhat change their relations of rank in
illustrating the mind of the age; that the painter will become of more
importance, the poet of less; and that the relations between the men
who are the types and firstfruits of the age in word and work,--namely,
Scott and Turner,--will be, in many curious respects, different from
those between Homer and Phidias, or Dante and Giotto.[119]

[112] _Clouds_, 316-318; 380 ff.; 320-321.

[113] _Ephesians_ ii, 12.

[114] Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us."

[115] Pre-Raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase
of art, in no wise considered in this chapter. Blake was sincere,
but full of wild creeds, and somewhat diseased in brain. [Ruskin.]

[116] Gower Street, a London street selected as typical of modern
ugliness.

Gaspar Poussin [1613-75], a French landscape painter, of the
pseudo-classical school.

[117] Of course this is meant only of the modern citizen or
country-gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old
Florence. I leave it to others to say whether the "neglect of the
art of war" may or may not, in a yet more fatal sense, be predicated
of the English nation. War, _without_ art, we seem, with God's help,
able still to wage nobly. [Ruskin.]

[118] See _David Copperfield_, chap. 55 and 58. [Ruskin.]

[119] Ruskin proceeds to discuss Scott as he has discussed Homer.
The chapter on Turner tha