INTRODUCTION xxxvii

private fortunes, to which only a brief reference need here be made. His wife left him in April 1854; returned to her parents, and immediately instituted a suit. Ruskin declined to put in any answer, and went abroad with his parents in May. The marriage (which in many respects had not been happy) was annulled on July 15, and a year later, on July 3, 1855, Millais was married at Bowerswell to Euphemia Chalmers Gray.¹

Ruskin and his parents returned from abroad early in October 1854, and resumed their old life together at Denmark Hill. The summer tour is noticed in another volume, in connexion with other tours which also were seed-time, as it were, for the later volumes of Modern Painters. His feelings and attitude at this time are best expressed in a letter to Miss Mitford:-

“DENMARK HILL,

“Tuesday afternoon,

“3rd October, ’54.

“DEAR MISS MITFORD,-Four hours ago we arrived happily at home, by God’s blessing well, all of us-after five months’ wandering. Two letters were put into my hand when I arrived, and the first I opened was yours, and the first words my eye fell upon:” ‘The only fear is, lest I should do too much!’

“Could any happier, kinder, sweeter welcome have been given me?

“Indeed, among the many causes of gratitude which I have to number before God to-night, it is not one of the least that He permits me to look forward still to the pleasure of your friendship, to

Ecclesiastic and Theologian, October 1854, No. 22 (N. S.), pp. 473-481 (a review of Lectures 1 and 2); January 1855, No. 25, pp. 1-5 (a review of Pre-Raphaelitism and the Edinburgh Lectures 3 and 4); the Christian Reformer, February 1855, vol. 11 (N. S.), pp. 69-80 (a review of the Edinburgh Lectures and the Stones of Venice); the Eclectic, January 1856, vol. 11 (N. S.), pp. 1-20; and the London Quarterly, January 1857, vol. 7, pp. 478-501 (an article, entitled “Gothic Art,” containing a review of the Lectures). Most of these reviews were favourable. It is interesting to note that one of them (The New Monthly, p. 418) questioned “whether Mr. Ruskin judged well in aiding and abetting the current craze for public lectures.” Blackwood was even more bitter than usual. The book was “the keystone in the arch of Mr. Ruskin’s absurdities.” “We can only be sorry for him.” “We confess that the excessive puppyism and calm pretension of this book has considerably raised our bile.” The writer seems to have been present at the Lectures, and says (p. 740): “He is by no means qualified by nature for a public appearance on a rostrum, and he committed an egregious error in attempting to act as his own rhapsodist.” He had “a bad delivery, a pedantic manner, and a monotonous voice.”

¹ It will thus be seen that Mr. Frederic Harrison is altogether wrong in stating that the time of the Edinburgh Lectures “was ill-chosen for a public appearance, whilst he was a party to a matrimonial suit” (John Ruskin, English Men of Letters Series, 1902, p. 83). He is also wrong in stating that the suit was brought “in the Scotch court” (p. 57).

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