At Rome they visited old Mr. Severn, and then went homeward by way of Verona, where Ruskin wrote an account of the Cavalli monuments for the Arundel society, and Venice, where he returned to the study of Carpaccio. At Rome he had been once more to the Sistine, and found that on earlier visits the ceiling and the Last Judgment had taken his attention too exclusively. Now that he could look away from Michelangelo he become conscious of the claims of Botticelli's frescoes, which represent, in the Florentine school, somewhat the same kind of interest that he had found in Carpaccio. He became enamoured of Botticelli's Zipporah, and resolved to study the master more closely. On reaching home he had to prepare "The Eagle's Nest" for publication; in the preface he gave special importance to Botticelli, and amplified it in lectures on early engraving, that Autumn;[27] in which I remember his quoting with appreciation the passage on the Venus Anadyomene from Pater's "Studies in the Renaissance" just published.
This sudden enthusiasm about an unknown painter amused the Oxford public: and it became a standing joke among the profane to ask who was Ruskin's last great man. It was in answer to that, and in expression of a truer understanding than most Oxford pupils attained, that Bourdillon of Worcester wrote on "the Ethereal Ruskin,"—that was Carlyle's name for him:—
"To us this star or that seems bright,
And oft some headlong meteor's flight
Holds for awhile our raptured sight.
"But he discerns each noble star;
The least is only the most far,
Whose worlds, may be, the mightiest are."
The critical value of this course however, to a student of art-history, is impaired by his using as illustrations of Botticelli, and of the manner of engraving which he took for standard, certain plates which were erroneously attributed to the artist. "It is strange," he wrote in despair to Professor Norton, "that I hardly ever get anything stated without some grave mistake, however true in my main discourse." But in this case a fate stronger than he had taken him unawares. The circumstances do not extenuate the error of the Professor, but they explain the difficulties under which his work was done. The cloud that rested on his own life was the result of a strange and wholly unexpected tragedy in another's.
It was an open secret—his attachment to a lady, who had been his pupil, and was now generally understood to be his fiancée. She was far younger than he; but at fifty-three he was not an old man; and the friends who fully knew and understood the affair favoured his intentions and joined in the hope, and in auguries for the happiness for which he had been so long waiting. But now that it came to the point the lady finally decided that it was impossible. He was not at one with her in religious matters. He could speak lightly of her evangelical creed—it seemed he scoffed in "Fors" at her faith. She could not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. To her, the alternative was plain; the choice was terrible: yet, having once seen her path, she turned resolutely away.[28]
Meanwhile, in the bitterest despair he sought refuge as he had done before, in his work. He accepted the lesson, though he, too, could not recant; still he tried to correct his apparent levity in the renewed seriousness and more earnest tone of "Fors," speaking more plainly and more simply, but without concession. He wrote on the next Christmas Eve to an Aberdeen Bible-class teacher:
"If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say to them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to trouble themselves about what they ought not to do, but about what they ought to do. The condemnation given from the Judgment Throne—most solemnly described—is all for the undones and not for the dones. People are perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but unless they are doing its reverse energetically, they do it all day long, and the degree does not matter. Make your young hearers resolve to be honest in their work in this life. Heaven will take care of them for the other."
That was all he could say: he did not know there was another life: he hoped there was: and yet, if he were not a saint or a Christian, was there any man in the world who was nearer to the kingdom of Heaven than this stubborn heretic?
His heretical attitude was singular. He was just as far removed from adopting the easy antagonism of science to religion as from siding with religion against science. In a paper singularly interesting—and in his biography important—on the "Nature and Authority of Miracle," read to the Metaphysical Society (February 11, 1873), he tried to clear up his position and to state a qualified belief in the supernatural.