His later volumes, then, are filled with this moral teaching and also take up the errors of the social conditions of the period. Old age pensions, state education, radical improvements in the houses and home life of the common people were among the needs which he saw, now accomplished, but then regarded as rampant and foolish socialism.
In his style, as in his theories, there is a tendency to exaggerate, a fault that is common among reformers, as in the cases of Dickens and Carlyle. But the lofty ideals which he maintained and the grace and power of his style far more than atone for the occasional error of overstatement. In "Præterita," a brilliant autobiographical fragment, he accounts for the rare clarity and beauty of his style, for it was his custom for many years during his childhood and youth to read the Bible through aloud to his mother every year in daily selections. The simplicity and majesty of the Biblical language left its impress on his own prose.
His economic theories have not been adopted in England or elsewhere, but he himself lived up to them and spent his whole fortune in the philanthropic endeavor to put his plans for the betterment of the working classes into operation. In spite of the fact that his fortune was great and that he received as much as $20,000 a year royalty from the sale of his works in his latter days, his property at the time of his death was inconsiderable.
THE MAN
1. What was Ruskin's education; his position in the world?
2. In what two rôles did he appear?
3. What cardinal doctrine did he preach?
4. What extraneous elements did he attempt to read into art?
5. At what university was he successively student and professor?
6. Was he merely a theorist in the matter of public reform?