gestion of the ludicrous in the
sudden passage from birds to Greek coins, to mills, to Walter Scott,
to millionaire malefactors,--a suggestion of acrobatic tumbling and
somersault; but he always got a hearing. In lecturing to the students
of a military academy he had the pleasing audacity to begin:

"Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came
unwillingly to-night, and many of you in merely contemptuous
curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say,
or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war";[20]

after which stinging challenge, one has no doubt, any feeling of
offense was swallowed up in admiration of the speaker's physical
courage.

[Sidenote: Influence of Carlyle upon Ruskin.]

[Sidenote: The unity of Ruskin's style.]

There can be little doubt that this later manner in which Ruskin
allowed his Puritan instincts to defeat his aestheticism, and indulged
to an alarming degree his gift of vituperation, was profoundly
influenced by his "master," Carlyle, who had long since passed into
his later and raucous manner. Carlyle's delight in the disciple's
diatribes probably encouraged the younger man in a vehemence of
invective to which his love of dogmatic assertion already rendered
him too prone. At his best, Ruskin, like Carlyle, reminds us of a
major prophet; at his worst he shrieks and heats the air. His high
indignations lead him into all manner of absurdity and self-contradiction.
An amusing instance of this may be given from _Sesame and Lilies_. In
the first lecture, which, it will be recalled, was given in aid of a
library fund, we find[21] the remark, "We are filthy and foolish enough
to thumb one another's books out of circulating libraries." His friends
and his enemies, the clergy (who "teach a false gospel for hire") and
the scientists, the merchants and the universities, Darwin and Dante,
all had their share in the indignant lecturer's indiscriminate abuse.
And yet in all the tropical luxuriance of his inconsistency, one can
never doubt the man's sincerity. He never wrote for effect. He may
dazzle us, but his fire is never pyrotechnical; it always springs from
the deep volcanic heart of him. His was a fervor too easily stirred and
often ill-directed, but its wild brilliance cannot long be mistaken for
the sky-rocket's; it flares madly in all directions, now beautifying,
now appalling, the night, the fine ardor of the painter passing into
the fie