ut fishing. He held to an almost brutal realism in everything, and
preached his doctrine whether men would hear or whether they would
forbear. He soon rallied a little coterie of artists about him, and
formed a school styled the Pre-Raphaelites. The principal founder of the
school was Dante Gabriel Rossetti, since better known as a poet than an
artist. He held his little court in London for many years, and a great
number of young men sat at his feet. His chief supporters at first were
Holman Hunt and Millais. These latter soon left Rossetti far behind in
execution; but Rossetti was the soul of the movement. He had received
his inspiration directly from Ruskin. Among the reminiscences of this
art movement are Oscar Wilde and the esthetes of London to-day, with
their "symphonies" in blue and their "arrangements" in yellow, and the
hideous females who go about London drawing-rooms in limp dresses of
sulphur color and sage green loosely hanging from their shoulders, after
the manner of ancient Greece. But they have had real artists among
them,--these apostles of the sunflower and knights of the lily,--and
although some of the better class have repudiated the antics of their
followers, the movement known as Pre-Raphaelitism has really been an
artistic success.

Ruskin followed the "Modern Painters" in due time with his "Seven Lamps
of Architecture" and his "Stones of Venice." They were masterpieces of
eloquent description and rhetoric. No such vivid writing had been seen
for many a day, and no such zeal and earnestness. The wealth of gorgeous
imagery was dazzling; the declamation imparted to it the eloquence of an
earlier day, and the lofty thought and moral purpose were peculiarly the
author's own. The books exerted a remarkable influence. He has written
much since, but he has never reached the height he attained in those
earlier books.

As he grew older, he grew dogmatic and crotchety in the extreme. He
imitated Carlyle in his scoldings, and indeed was much influenced by
Carlyle in many ways. He has always been an impracticable theorist, and
in these latter years he has put forth a thousand foolish and subversive
vagaries. People have not taken him quite seriously for some time. They
laugh at his follies, ridicule his philanthropic schemes,--of which he
has an infinite number, for he is a man of the kindest heart,--they tell
excruciating stories of his colossal self-conceit, and they go home and
read his books because no