THE DIVERTING HISTORY OF JOHN GILPIN ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE JOHN RUSKIN. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. JOHN RUSKIN is an English writer who has puzzled some people because, becoming famous as a critic of art, he concerned himself more earnestly as he grew older with the question how men and women should live so as to make the world in which they lived beautiful. He was born February 8, 1819, the year in which James Russell Lowell was born. His father was a rich wine-merchant who lived in London, but both he and his wife were of Scotch descent. John Ruskin was their only child, and they not only gave him the best education they could find, his mother especially making him thoroughly acquainted with the Bible, but from early years they treated him as their companion, took him on long journeys in the family chaise, and when he had been graduated at Oxford, carried him to the continent and showed him Switzerland and Italy. When he was twelve years old a friend gave him a copy of Samuel Rogers's poem, Italy, illustrated by Turner, an English artist, who was a friend of his father. His love of art was stimulated by the pictures and with all that he saw of Turner's work, and though when a boy and youth he seemed to care more about writing poetry than anything else, he was really feeding all the time his love of beauty. He studied painting, and began himself to paint. One day he read, in Blackwood's Magazine, a harsh criticism of Turner. He sprang indignantly to the defence of the great painter, but as he plunged into his task, he found himself |