lxxii INTRODUCTION

III

The next Part of this volume takes us to a different thread in the web of Ruskin’s life, though this, too, was destined indirectly to work out in the direction of social service. The Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds was, as we have already learnt, an excursus on The Stones of Venice (Vol. IX. p. 437). The Gothic Revival in England was, it will be remembered,¹ largely associated with a Catholic revival, Roman and Anglican. Ruskin, on the other hand, was at this time a strong and even a bigoted Protestant. It was essential from his point of view to dissociate the two movements; the more so because Pugin, with whose works Ruskin’s architectural writings had some superficial kinship, was a convert to Roman Catholicism, and made it his object to “lure” men “into the Romanist Church by the glitter of it.”² It was as a protest against this movement that Ruskin gave an aggressively anti-Romanist tone to many passages in The Seven Lamps and The Stones of Venice. But, again: his historical references to the Venetian State, and its hostility to the Papal power, had led him to remark on the proper functions of Church and State, a subject to which Catholic Emancipation, at this time bitterly opposed by Ruskin, had given additional cogency. The first line of thought led him to examine in a spirit of critical hostility the basis of Priestly claims; the second, to examine the basis of anti-Episcopalian doctrines. The result was a treatise on the principles of Church organisation-or, as we may call it with reference to its drift, an essay towards Protestant re-union. The architectural title was a natural play on words, suggested by the circumstances in which the essay originated; it was an appendix to The Stones of Venice, printed separately “for the convenience of readers interested in other architecture than that of Venetian palaces.”³ Those Border farmers, however, who, having bought the pamphlet under the idea that it was a manual of husbandry, cried out that they had been deceived, were not perhaps entirely without excuse.⁴

Although this pamphlet on Church organisation was thus written in a particular connexion, the subject had long been in Ruskin’s mind. He refers at the outset (§ 1) to pages in his private diary, and examination shows that the questions discussed in the pamphlet had

¹ See Vol. VIII. p. xlvi.; Vol. X. p. lv.

² See Vol. IX. p. 437.

³ Vol. IX. p. 437 n.

⁴ “It is a very capital joke indeed,” writes Ruskin to his father (Oct. 20, 1853), “Archie’s sending my pamphlet to the farmer. I hope it may do him good.” And see p. lxxiv. n.

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