RUSKIN CENTENARY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 199, 17 May 1919, Page 7

RUSKIN CENTENARY

CELEBRATION IN LONDON. A public meeting in celebration of tho centenary of the birth of John Huskin was held on February 8 at the rooms of .the Royal Society of Arts, John Street, Adelphi. Lord Br,Wo was in (he chair. Sir. Conrad Dressler's bust of Huskin was placed at the front of the platform, with a wreath of laurels and snowdrops hanging beneath it. A similar wreath was sent to Westminster Abbey.

Sir Herbert Warren, in a message to the meeting on behalf of "friends of like loyal memory in Ruskin's own Oxford," said that .Ruskin was assuredly among the great Oxford name 3 of any century. He was also one of the benefactors of Oxford, They still had his drawing school, and tho drawing master idiom Ruskin himself appointed, Mr. Alexander Macdonald, ivas still its presiding genius. Tho message of truth and beauty which Ituskin delivered had to-day not less but in ore value. AVe did well to read again the inspiring pages of this Plato of our nJition. He was not only a scholar but a seer.

Lord Bryce said that tlio.se who did not remember the pre-Ruskinian ego could hardly understand with what different eyes everybody since the publication of ''Modern' Painters" bad looked upon pictures and how different they iiad thought of the things pictures wcro made to represent. Buskin was a great interpreter of. nature.' In many respects he was the bast successor of Wordsworth. The Rev. H. D. Ilawnsley had asked him to point out tat people would do well to pav attention to projects likely to injure the scenery of our country which from time to time came before the latiutc, and to give their support to tho efforts which'were being made to prevent this injury. Ruskin had doubled the enjoyment wo took in cities like Venice and Florence by tho way in which lie had taught us to interpret the paintings thore and their relation to the history of these'cities. Later in his life Ruskin turned to subjects which belonged to Ihe sphere of social ethics. Then. Jm showed himself an extraordinary vitalising force. He owed a good deal to Carlyle. but what he derived from Carlyle was changed in the process and made a more, direct, sympathetic, and emotional appeal to many people than it did as stated by Cavlyle himself. It was perhaps in this way that Buskin had most affected the voiinger half of the; generation to which jie belonged. He had been the parent of many movements, many new currents of opinion, which had been playing backwards and forwards during the last 25 or 30 years. .. He had been criticised as .wayward and inconsistent. But the inconsistencies of a man of genius were the marks of his greatness. He Saw things in different aspects and ■ many 1 ielite; mid for this we ought to be grateful.