f buyers.
After three years the price was raised to tenpence. In 1875 the first
thousands of the earlier numbers were sold: "the public has a very long
nose," Mr. Ruskin once said, "and scents out what it wants, sooner or
later." A second edition was issued, bound up into yearly volumes, of
which eight were ultimately completed. Meanwhile the work went on,
something in the style of the old Addison _Spectator_; each part
containing twenty pages, more or less, by Ruskin, with added
contributions from various correspondents.

The charm of "Fors" is neither in epigram nor in anecdote, but in the
sustained vivacity that runs through the texture of the work; the
reappearance of golden threads of thought, glittering in new figures,
and among new colours; and throughout all the variety of subject a unity
of style unlike the style of his earlier works, where flowery rhetorical
passages are tagged to less interesting chapters, separately studied
sermonettes interposed among the geology, and Johnson, Locke, Hooker,
Carlyle--or whoever happened to be the author he was reading at the
time--frankly imitated. It was always clever, but often artificial; like
the composition of a Renaissance painter who inserts his _bel corpo
ignudo_ to catch the eye. In "Fors," however, the web is of a piece, all
sparkling with the same life; though as it is gradually unwound from the
loom it is hard to judge the design. That can only be done when it is
reviewed as a whole.

At the time, his mingling of jest and earnest was misunderstood even by
friends. The author learnt too painfully the danger of seeming to trifle
with cherished beliefs. He forswore levity, but soon relapsed into the
old style, out of sheer sincerity: for he was too much in earnest not to
be frankly himself in his utterances, without writing up to, or down to,
any other person's standard.

Ruskin did not wish to lead a colony or to head a revolution. He had
been pondering for fifteen years the cause of poverty and crime, and the
conviction had grown upon him that modern commercialism was at the root
of it all. But his attacks on commercialism--his analysis of its bad
influence on all sections of society--were too vigorous and
uncompromising for the newspaper editors who received "Fors," and even
for most of his private friends. There were, however, some who saw what
he was aiming at: and let it be remarked that his first encouragement
came from the highest quarters. Just as Sydne