INTRODUCTION xxxix

and what fruit I had had of the joy of it, which had passed away, and of the hard work of it; and I felt nothing but discomfort in looking back; for I saw that I had always been working for myself in one way or another. Either for myself, in doing things that I enjoyed, i.e. climbing mountains, looking at pictures, etc.; or for my own aggrandisement and satisfaction of ambition, or else to gratify my affections in pleasing you and my mother, but that I had never really done anything for God’s service. Then I thought of my investigations of the Bible and found no comfort in that either, for there seemed to me nothing but darkness and doubt in it; and as I was thinking of these things the illness increased upon me, and my chest got sore, and I began coughing just as I did at Salisbury, and I thought I was going to have another violent attack at once, and that all my work at Venice must be given up. This was about two in the morning. So I considered that I had now neither pleasure in looking to my past life, nor any hope, such as would be any comfort to me on a sick-bed, of a future one. And I made up my mind that this would never do.

“So after thinking a little more about it, I resolved that at any rate I would act as if the Bible were true; that if it were not, at all events I should be no worse off than I was before; that I would believe in Christ, and take Him for my Master in whatever I did; that assuredly to disbelieve the Bible was quite as difficult as to believe it; that there were mysteries either way; and that the best mystery was that which gave me Christ for a Master. And when I had done this I fell asleep directly. When I rose in the morning the cold and cough were gone; and though I was still unwell, I felt a peace and spirit in me I had never known before, at least to the same extent; and the next day I was quite well, and everything has seemed to go right with me ever since, all discouragement and difficulties vanishing even in the smallest things....”

The religious tone and moral purpose which govern the argument and inspire the appeal in The Stones of Venice came from the very heart of the man. They were at once his inspiration and his encouragement:-

“The fact is” (he writes) “one’s days must be either a laying up of treasure or a loss of it; life is either an ebbing or a flowing tide; and every night one must say. Here is so much of my fortune gone-irrevocably-with nothing to restore it or to be given in exchange for it; or, Here is another day of good service done and interest got, good vineyard digging, for which very assuredly ‘whatsoever is right, that I shall receive’” (Letter to his father, April 14, 1852).

The longer passage just cited indicates some unsettlement of Ruskin’s

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]