[Gutenberg 46426] • Ruskin Relics

"This is all very well," said a visitor, after looking over the sketches and books of the Ruskin Museum at Coniston, "but what the public would prefer is to see the chair he sat in." Something tangible, that brings before us the person, rather than his work, is what we all like; for though successful workers are continually asking us to judge them by what they have done, we know there is more. We want to see their portraits; their faces will tell us—better than their books—whether we can trust them. We want to know their lives by signs and tokens unconsciously left, before we fall down and worship them for what, after all, may be only a lucky accident of success. They cry out indignantly that this should not be; but so it is.

Relics of heroes even the ancient Romans treasured. Relics of saints our forefathers would fight for and die for. Relics of those who in modern times have made our lives better and brighter we need not be ashamed of preserving. And among relics I count all the little incidents, the by-play of life, the anecdotes which betray character, so long as they are truly told and "lovingly," as George Richmond said about his portrait of Ruskin. "Have not you flattered him?" asked the severe parents. "No; it is only the truth lovingly told."

In his study you see two chairs; one, half-drawn from the table, with pen and ink laid out before it, where he used to sit at his writing; the light from the bay window coming broadly in at his left hand, and the hills, when he lifted his eyes, for his help. The other, by the fireside, was the arm chair into which he migrated for those last ten years of patience, no longer with his own books but others' books before him. Then, turning to the chapter on his Music, you can see the chair by the drawing-room table, in which, making a pulpit of it, he preached his baby sermon—"People, be dood!"