INTRODUCTION xliii

The Guardian, it may be remarked, was especially indignant with Ruskin’s “bigotry” against Catholics, and the reader of this volume must allow that he was not exactly conciliatory towards the High Church party, from whom, owing to their interest in the Gothic Revival, he might otherwise have expected the largest measure of support.¹ Still less had he been conciliatory to the architectural profession. Protests from that quarter abounded in the periodical press,² and found further expression in a satirical pamphlet by “an Architect.”³ The following extracts from its “Vestibule” will suffice to show the kind of thing:-

“Your book-since reviewers so swear-may be rational,

Still, ’tis certainly not either loyal or national ...

You rip up reputations, great names you mow down,

And ride roughshod over most folks of renown...

O Ruskin! most ruthless, can aught e’er be ruder

Than your scurvy remarks on our old English Tudor?...

Your style is so soaring-and some it makes sore-

That plain folks can’t make out your strange mystical lore...

Of eloquence, you, John, no doubt are the model,

Wherefore more is the pity you deal so in twaddle.”

An extract from the prose part of the pamphlet is worth giving as illustrating the professional prejudice against which Ruskin had to fight in his vindication of the earlier Venetian buildings. At the end of the brochure there is a list, showing a merry wit, of “Works promised but not yet produced.” It is headed as follows:-

An Attempt to demonstrate the loveliness of St. Mark’s at Venice.-By a Candidate for St. Luke’s.⁴

numbers of the Examples of the Architecture of Venice, though the two last parts are somewhat better than the first. But powerful and well cast shadows do not reconcile us to uninteresting and poor architecture.”

¹ Compare Vol. VIII. p. xlvi.

² See, for instance, two articles, contributed to The Builder of May 10 and 24, 1851, under the title “Ruskin and his Reviewers” from the point of view of a professional architect, and challenging the favourable opinions of the volume expressed in other periodicals. The writer was specially indignant at Ruskin’s admiration of so “grotesque a pile” as St. Mark’s. The editorial review in The Builder (March 22, 1851) had been complimentary: “Those who open Mr. Ruskin’s new volume, expecting (through its pretty title) to find descriptions and comments on the structures of the sea-girt town, in the brilliant and forcible language of the Oxford graduate,-the city of poetry and art described by an artist and a poet,-will probably feel disappointed; but we caution them against hastily shutting it,-and will promise (however we may differ in various respects with the author) an ample return, in the shape of pleasure and instruction, for any time they may bestow upon its mastery.”

³ Something on Ruskinism; with a “Vestibule” in Rhyme. By an Architect-London: Robert Hastings, 13 Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn, 1851, large 12mo, pp. 51.

⁴ It may perhaps be well to explain, for the benefit of readers who are not Londoners, that St. Luke’s is a lunatic asylum (Old Street, City Road).

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