as a morbid art because it had arisen, according to
his theory, in a morbid state of society; with Ruskin everything must
finally yield to the testimony of his artistic sense: everything which
he likes must be legitimated, everything which he dislikes must be
condemned; and for this purpose the system of artistic morality must for
ever be altered, annotated, provided with endless saving-clauses, and
special cases. And all this the more especially as, in the course of his
studies, Ruskin frequently perceives that things which on superficial
acquaintance displeased him, are in reality delightful, in consequence
of which discovery a new legislation is required to annul their previous
condemnation and provide for their due honour. Thus, having conceived a
perhaps exaggerated aversion (due, in great part, to the injustice of
his adversaries) to the manner of representing the nature of certain
Dutch painters of the 17th century, Ruskin immediately formulated a
theory that minute imitation of nature was base and sinful; and when
he conceived a perhaps equally exaggerated admiration for the works of
certain extremely careful and even servile English painters of our own
times, he was forced to formulate an explanatory theory that minuteness
of work was conscientious, appreciative, and distinctly holy. Had he
been satisfied with mere artistic value, he need only have said that the
Dutch pictures were ugly, and the English pictures beautiful; but having
once established all artistic judgment upon an ethical basis, it became
urgent that he should invent a more or less casuistic reason, something
not unlike the _distinguo_ by means of which the Jesuit moralists
rendered innocent in their powerful penitents what they had declared
sinful in less privileged people, to explain that, under certain
circumstances, minute imitation was the result of insolence and apathy,
and in other cases the sign of humility and appreciation. Again, having
been instinctively impressed by the coldness and insipidity of the
schools of art which ostensibly refused to copy individual nature, and
professed to reproduce only the more important and essential character
of things, Ruskin annihilated these idealistic conventionalists by a
charge of impious contempt for the details of individual peculiarities
which God had been pleased to put into his work; and when, on the other
hand, his growing love for mediaeval art and for mysticism began to draw
him towards the