he
high Anglican side, and the objections to episcopacy on the
Presbyterian, were alike untenable; and hoped that, when once these
differences--such little things he thought them--were arranged, a united
Church of England might become the nucleus of a world-wide federation of
Protestants, a _civitas Dei_, a New Jerusalem.

There were many who agreed with his aspirations: he received shoals of
letters from sympathizing readers, most of them praising his aims and
criticising his means. Others objected rather to his manner than to his
matter; the title savoured of levity, and an art-critic writing on
theology was supposed to be wandering out of his province. Tradition
says that the "Notes" were freely bought by Border farmers under a
rather laughable mistake; but surely it was no new thing for a Scotch
reader to find a religious tract under a catching title. There were a
few replies; one by Mr. Dyce, who defended the Anglican view with mild
persiflage and the usual commonplaces. And there the matter ended, for
the public. For Ruskin, it was the beginning of a train of thought
which led him far. He gradually learnt that his error was not in asking
too much, but in asking too little. He wished for a union of
Protestants, forgetting the sheep that are not of _that_ fold, and
little dreaming of the answer he got, after many days, in "Christ's Folk
in the Apennine."

Meanwhile the first volume of "Stones of Venice" had appeared, March,
1851. Its reception was indirectly described in a pamphlet entitled
"Something on Ruskinism, with a 'Vestibule' in Rhyme, by an Architect"
complaining bitterly of the "ecstasies of rapture" into which the
newspapers had been thrown by the new work:

"Your book--since reviewers so swear--may be rational,
Still, 'tis certainly not either loyal or national;"

for it did not join in the chorus of congratulation to Prince Albert and
the British public on the Great Exhibition of 1851, the apotheosis of
trade and machinery. The "Architect" finds also--what may surprise the
modern reader who has not noticed that many an able work has been
thought unreadable on its first appearance--that he cannot understand
the language and ideas:

"Your style is so soaring--and some it makes sore--
That plain folks can't make out your strange mystical lore."

He will allow the author to be quite right, when he finds something to
agree upon; but the moment a sore point is touched, then Ruskin is
"