Selections From the Works of John Ruskin

an's good." The main part of the volume was composed at Venice in the winter of 1851-52, though it did not appear until the end of July, 1853. His work on architecture, including The Seven Lamps, it will be noted, intervenes between the composition of the second and third volumes of Modern Painters ; and Kuskin himself always looked upon the work as an interlude, almost as an interruption. But he also came to believe that this digression had really led back to the heart of the truth for all art. Its main theme, as in The Seven Lamps of Architecture, is its illustration of the principle that architecture expresses certain states in the moral temper of the people by and for whom it is produced. It may surprise us to-day to know that when Euskin wrote of the glories of Venetian architecture, the common " professional opinion was that St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace were as ugly and repulsive as they were contrary to rule and order." In a private letter Gibbon writes of the Square of St. Mark's as " a large square decorated with the worst architecture I ever saw." The architects of his own time regarded Ruskin's opinions as dictated by wild caprice, and almost evincing an unbalanced mind. Probably the core of all this architectural work is to be found in his chapter " On the Nature of Gothic," in the main reproduced in this volume. And we find here again a point of fundamental significance? that his artistic analysis led him inevitably on to social inquiries. He proved ...