694 Daft McGregor. This was a Scotchman, Sir George McGregor, who, in 1822, was the leader of an expedition to found a colony in Costa Rica, which resulted in failure.

695 Costa Rica's everglades. Costa Rica is a country of Central America, having a republican form of government. Everglades are low, swampy tracts of land covered with a growth of tall

grass.

696 Taygetus. A mountain in the southern part of Greece, on the Gulf of Messenia.

697 Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks. Mainote is from Maina, a province of Greece, which furnished Prince Ypsilanti, a patriot in the struggle for freedom against Turkey, with many followers. 701 Gauge. A standard of measure.

707 Vendue. An auction.

719 Palimpsest. Parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.

723 Monographs. A monograph is an account or description of a single thing or class of things.

727 Mournful cypresses. See note on line 204.

728 Amaranths. The amaranth is an imaginary flower supposed never to fade.

739 Aloe flowers. The aloe is a plant which grows in the warm climates of the old world, and is especially abundant in South Africa. Among the Mohammedans, particularly in Egypt, aloe branches are hung over the street door as a token that the dweller therein has returned from a pilgrimage.

741 Truce of God. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries a compact was made by which the barons were forbidden by the Church to do any fighting from Thursday until Monday, or during Advent or Lent, or on any of the principal fast or feast days. The practice gradually fell into disuse as the rulers of the various countries became more powerful.

747

Flemish pictures. The Flemish paintings were usually of the interiors of homes.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

RUSKIN

John Ruskin, it has been well said, is the creator of a new class of literature the literature of art. His position is not strictly that of an artcritic. Mr. Ruskin would probably decline the title of a popularizer of art, for he has set himself sternly against popular notions. And yet that has been his real service to the reading public. He has been a sympathetic and passionate interpreter of certain schools and sides of art. His mission has been that of an educator of the public taste. Himself an artist with both pen and pencil, and a master of beautiful descriptive prose, he has awakened a love for art in thousands who have never seen so much as a photograph of the buildings, pictures, and statues that he writes about, but whom he has taught to perceive new beauties in sea and sky, in the leaves, rocks, and flowers, which are every one's gallery.

Born in 1819, the only son of a rich London wine-merchant, and educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, Ruskin gave token of artistic tastes while still an undergraduate.

Modern Painters, by a Graduate of Oxford, was begun as a letter to the editor of a review, but grew under the author's hand into a volume, and, before he was through with it, into five volumes. The first was published in 1843, when Ruskin was in his twenty-fourth year; the fifth and last only in 1860, when he was already an established authority in art, and had lived to see the revolution in taste, started by his early writings, an accomplished fact. For ten years after the publication of the second volume of Modern Painters, he devoted himself, he said, "to the single purpose of enabling himself to judge rightly of art."

If Modern Painters is Ruskin's epoch-making book in many respects his most important and characteristic book The Stones of Venice is, upon the whole, his masterpiece, and is certainly his most formal and systematic work.

In 1867, Ruskin was appointed lecturer on art at Cambridge, and in 1869 Slade professor of art at Oxford. This chair he twice held, but resigned because of the vote endowing vivisection in the university. His published books and pamphlets are some forty in number, and touch upon many subjects besides art — mythology, poetry, political economy, philanthropy, and social science. His excursions into the fields of social and political philosophy have caused a great deal of exasperation or of amusement in his readers, according to their tempers; but it is to be feared that they have not added much to his own fame. He has a quarrel with modern society, and his later writings show Carlyle's influence both in thought

and style. Modern England, he complains, is altogether hideous. The sky is poisoned and blackened by acids and smoke from factories, the streams are polluted by sewage, iron ships are destroying seamanship. He would like to tear up all the railroads in Wales, and most of those in England, and pull down the city of New York. He could not live two months in America, because there are no castles here. Two American girls who were in the same railway carriage with him while crossing the Apennines, instead of admiring the noble scenery, kept their blinds down all the way, ate candy, and read French novels. This illustrates the crudity and barbarism of a young civilization. Also, the mob in Los Angeles have been murdering Chinamen, etc. He hates democracy, calls himself a "king's man," and tory, and at the same time a kind of communist; that is, he wants a strong paternal government, which shall establish national workshops, and regulate the prices of labor and commodities. His ideal state is mediæval, a beneficent commune; not more liberty, but more guidance, rule, and protection.

Of all his writings the best known and most popular is The King of the Golden River. And it is said that he wrote it in a moment of relaxation to amuse a company of children, with no thought that it would one day be read and studied by thousands of people all over the world who know nothing at all about his other writings.

KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER

SOUTH WEST WIND

In a far-off corner of Styria there was, in old time, a valley of the most surprising richness and fertility. It was surrounded, on all sides, by steep and rocky mountains, rising into peaks. These peaks were always covered with snow, and from them flowed 5 many streams and waterfalls.

One of these waterfalls fell to the westward, over the face of a cliff so high that long after the sun had set to everything else and all below was darkness, his beams still shone full upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of gold. The people of the 10 neighborhood called it the Goden River.

Strange to tell, however, none of the streams ran into the valley itself. They all fell on the other side of the mountains and wound away through broad plains and by busy cities.

But the clouds were drawn so constantly to the snowy hills, 15 and rested so softly over the rounded hollow, that in time of drought and heat, when all the country round was burnt up, there was rain in the little valley.

Its crops were so heavy, and its hay so high, and its apples so red, and its grapes so blue, and its honey so sweet, that it was a 20 marvel to everyone who beheld it, and the people called it the Treasure Valley.

This little valley belonged to three brothers - Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the two elder brothers, were very ugly men. They had overhanging eyebrows and small, dull 25 eyes, which were always half shut, so that you couldn't see into them, but always imagined they saw very far into you.

The brothers lived by farming in the Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were.

They killed everything that did not pay for its eating. They 30 shot the blackbirds, because they pecked the fruit; they poisoned the crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen; and smothered the locusts, because they only sang all summer in the lime-trees. They worked their servants without any wages, till they would not work any more. Then they quarrelled with them, and turned 35 them out of doors without paying them.

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It would have been very odd, if, with such a farm, and such a manner of farming, these men had not become very rich; and very rich they did become.

They always managed to keep their corn till they could sell it 5 for twice its value. They had heaps of gold lying about on their floors; but were never known to give a penny or a crust in charity. They grumbled at paying taxes; and constantly were, in a word, so cruel and mean that they were called by all with whom they had any dealings, the "Black Brothers."

The youngest brother, Gluck, however, was wholly unlike his elder brothers both in looks and in nature. At this time he was only twelve years old, fair, blue-eyed, and kind to every living thing.

He did not, of course, love his brothers very well, or rather, they 15 did not love him. He was their cook, when there was anything to cook, and this was not often; for the brothers were hardly less sparing with themselves than with other people. At other times he used to clean the shoes, and the floors, or wash the dishes.

Things went on in this way for a long time. At last came a very 20 wet summer, and everything went wrong in the country around. The hay had hardly been got in, when the rivers overflowed and the haystacks were floated bodily down to the sea. The vines were cut to pieces with the hail. The corn was killed by a black blight. But in Treasure Valley, as usual, all was safe. As it had 25 rain when there was rain nowhere else, so it had sun when there was sun nowhere else. Thus everybody had to come to buy corn at the farm.

The Black Brothers asked whatever price they liked; and the people had to pay it, except the very poor people, who could only 30 beg. Several of these starved at the very door of the Black Brothers.

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It was now drawing toward winter, and was very cold. The two elder brothers had gone out, and little Gluck was left to watch the roast meat, and keep anybody from coming in.

Gluck sat quite close to the fire, for it was raining very hard, and the kitchen walls were by no means dry or comfortable looking. He turned and turned the meat, till it was quite brown and tender.

"What a pity," thought Gluck, "my brothers never ask anybody to dinner. I'm sure, when they have such a nice piece of 40 mutton as this, and nobody else has so much as a piece of dry bread, it would do their hearts good to have somebody eat it with them."