Mark's, "And what effect has this splendour on those who pass
beneath it?"--and it will be noticed on referring to "The Two
Boyhoods," that, in seeking to define the difference between Giorgione
and Turner, the author instinctively has recourse to distinguishing
the _religious_ influences exerted on the two in youth.
[Sidenote: Underlying idea a moral one.]
Now it is clear that a student of the relation of art to life, of work
to the character of the workman and of his nation, may, and in fact
inevitably must, be led in time to attend to the producer rather than
to the product, to the cause rather than to the effect; and if we
grant, with Ruskin, that the sources of art, namely, the national
life, are denied, it will obviously be the part, not only of humanity
but of common sense, for such a student to set about purifying the
social life of the nation. Whether the reformation proposed by Ruskin
be the proper method of attack is not the question we are here
concerned with; our only object at present being to call attention to
the fact that such a lecture as that on "Traffic" in _The Crown of
Wild Olive_ is the logical outgrowth of such a chapter as "Ideas of
Beauty" in the first volume of _Modern Painters_. Between the author
who wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths in
painting, "This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done,
for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to
his race.
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