lxxiv INTRODUCTION

The conclusion at which Ruskin arrived by the application of his Bible test to principles of Church government was that on a Protestant basis the re-union of the Churches was perfectly possible. The High Anglicans had only to renounce their pretensions to “Priesthood,” and the Presbyterians to waive their objections to Episcopacy, and then would the text be fulfilled-“And there shall be one fold and one Shepherd.” There was a difficulty still in the way-that of Baptismal Regeneration. But apart from this, it was soon made apparent that he had asked more than the rival Churches were willing to grant; but in after years it was to be borne in upon him that his error lay not in too much comprehension but in too much exclusion. “It amazes me to find,” he wrote in the Preface to the edition of 1875, “that, so late as 1851, I had only got the length of perceiving the schisms between sects of Protestants to be criminal and ridiculous, while I still supposed the schism between Protestants and Catholics to be virtuous and sublime.”

But this was a lesson still to come. For the moment Ruskin had enough to do to defend even his modest measure of comprehension. The publication of the pamphlet inundated him with correspondence, as he states in the preface to the Second Edition (p. 519); some of it, commendatory; but more of it, controversial. There were also published replies to his pamphlet (see p. 514)-among them one by his friend, William Dyce, the Royal Academician. The “Notes” had to be reprinted almost immediately. Reviews in the newspapers were numerous, and “letters to the editor” followed as is usual on the track of any religious or ecclesiastical controversy. To these letters and replies Ruskin did not make any published rejoinder.¹ He had another controversy and another pamphlet already on hand-Pre-Raphaelitism; and he did not resume the public discussion of sectarian topics till a much later date. But in private correspondence he replied to friendly critics, and it is some of these rejoinders that form the subject of Appendix I. to Part III. of this volume.

¹ Reviews of Sheepfolds appeared, among other places, in the Prospective Review, August 1851, vol. 7, pp. 335-343; Blackwood’s Magazine, September 1851, vol. 70, pp. 326-348 (a review of Modern Painters, vols. i. and ii., Seven Lamps, Stones of Venice, vol. i., and Sheepfolds); Quarterly Review, September 1851, vol. 89, pp. 307-332 (an article entitled “Puritanism in the Highlands,” Ruskin’s pamphlet being noticed on p. 323); Edinburgh Advertiser, April 22, 1851; Free Church Magazine, (Edinburgh), July 1851, vol. 8, pp. 196-202; and Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, May 1851, pp. 286-292: this article, reviewing also the Stones of Venice, vol. i., says (p. 292) “we hear that many agriculturists, especially in the Teviots and among the South Downs, have ordered it.”

[Version 0.04: March 2008]