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teaching, and have therefore, in great measure, done justice to the gifts with which they were intrusted. They stand at opposite poles, marking culminating points of art in both directions; between them, or in various relations to them, we may class five or six more living artists who, in like manner, have done justice to their powers. I trust that I may be pardoned for naming them, in order that the reader may know how the strong innate genius in each has been invariably accompanied with the same humility, earnestness, and industry in study.

25. It is hardly necessary to point out the earnestness or humility in the works of William Hunt;¹ but it may be so to suggest the high value they possess as records of English rural life, and still life. Who is there who for a moment could contend with him in the unaffected, yet humorous truth with which he has painted our peasant children? Who is there who does not sympathise with him in the simple love with which he dwells on the brightness and bloom of our summer fruit and flowers? And yet there is something to be regretted concerning him: why should he be allowed continually to paint the same bunches of hot-house grapes, and supply to the Water Colour Society a succession of pineapples with the regularity of a Covent Garden fruiterer? He has of late discovered that primrose banks are lovely, but there are other things grow wild besides primroses: what undreamt-of loveliness might he not bring back to us, if he would lose himself for a summer in Highland foregrounds; if he would paint the heather as it grows, and the foxglove and the harebell as they nestle in the clefts of the rocks, and the mosses and bright lichens of the rocks themselves. And then, cross to the Jura, and bring back a piece of Jura pasture in spring;

¹ [William Henry Hunt, of the Old Water-Colour Society (1790-1864). Ruskin had already called frequent attention to his qualities-to his “keen eye for truth,” in Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 616); to his “pure Naturalism,” in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi. § 60. For later references, see General Index; for his too frequent painting of grapes, see Academy Notes, 1856 (Old Water-Colour Society, Nos. 256, 271).]

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