INTRODUCTION xxxix

a manner” as to test architecture by its influence on the life of the workman.¹

The critic of the Athenæum (September 1), though by no means abandoning his facetious hostility to the author, yet confessed that he was sorry when he came to the end of the book:-

“It has given us some violent, yet withal pleasant, exercise. We had been taken up as by some enchanter’s wand-whirled through whole regions of fancy and thought,-now lifted to the skies, now dashed down again,-and in fact on arriving at last on terra firma we scarcely knew to what realms the author had or had not conducted us. ... On the whole, however, by merely stirring up the subject, and courting an investigation into true and rightful elementary principles, Mr. Ruskin’s work, were it three times as full of eccentricities as it is, must do good, and we hope lasting, service.”

Many architects and architectural writers were, as might be expected, contemptuous or indignant, or both; and Ruskin was denounced as impracticable or mad. A good answer to this line of criticism was supplied at the time in the Ecclesiologist (October 1849, vol. x. pp. 111-120), the organ of the Cambridge Camden Society:-

“It was not to be an architect’s vade mecum that this volume was written; its aim is to discover the mighty principles which made ancient art what it was, and to commend the same to us. And we willingly give our testimony that Mr. Ruskin has with marvellour intelligence and force accomplished this aim.”

More reasonable was the wrath of some of the ecclesiastical journals-such as the Rambler: a “Catholic Journal and Review” (July 1849, vol. iv. pp. 193-201), which fell foul of the author’s “intolerance and over-bearing spirit”-a criticism which, as we shall see, was in after years entirely endorsed by Ruskin himself, who in the case of this book as in that of some others was among the sanest, and not the least severe, of the critics. He would not have quarrelled greatly with the following exhortation with which the Guardian (June 6, 1849) concluded a long and otherwise favourable review:-

“He has himself stated, in impressive and not timid words, that primal necessity, that law of stint and measure, from which even the works of the Divine Architect have not been exempted; which nothing in nature or art can violate, and live. Original and creative powers he has shown-we want

¹ September 1851, vol. lxx. pp. 326-348: an article on the new editions of Modern Painters, vols. i. and ii.; the Seven Lamps; Stones of Venice, vol. i. ; and the Construction of Sheepfolds.

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