RUGGIERI
BUSKIN
German the Letters of Junius. For a time
he co-operated with Karl Marx, but would
not follow him into Socialism. He opened
a bookshop at Leipzig in 1847, and the
authorities closed it in 1851. They also
suppressed a journal, Die Reform, which
he founded at Berlin. In fact, Euge was,
at the triumph of reaction, expelled from
Germany, and he spent his later years in
the respectable position of non-resident
master to various schools at Brighton.
He maintained his Rationalism to the end,
translating into German Buckle s History
of Civilization, and contributing a volume
(New Germany, 1854) to Holyoake s
" Cabinet of Reason." D. Dec. 31, 1880.
RUGGIERI, Cosmo, Italian astrologer. Ruggieri was an astrologer whom Catherine de Medici brought to Paris and installed at her court. In that atmosphere of gross superstition and fanaticism Ruggieri must have concealed his ideas about religion very carefully. It was only when he lay on his death-bed that his views were dis covered. He declared himself an Atheist, and jeered at the monks and priests ; and the populace dragged his body through the mud. D. 1615.
RUSKIN, John, M.A., LL.D., writer and reformer. B. Feb. 8, 1819. Ed. private tutor, private school Camberwell, King s College, and Oxford (Christ Church). In his earlier years Ruskin was educated by his mother, a woman of deep piety, and his father, a London wine merchant with great taste for art and letters. Their influence remained over his whole life. They intended that he should enter the Church, but he turned instead to art and poetry. At Oxford he was deeply influenced by Greek art and literature. His health broke, and he travelled for some years. He took up the defence of Turner s paint ings, and this led to the commencement of his first notable book, Modem Painters, the first volume of which, published in 1843, was brilliantly successful. In the next ten years he leisurely continued this G91
work, wrote The Seven Lamps of Architec
ture (1849) and The Stones of Venice
(1851-53), and deepened his considerable
knowledge of geology. In the later fifties
he began to take a keen interest in the
London Working Men s College, and for
the rest of his life was devoted to political
economy and social progress. Unto This
Last began to appear in the Cornhill in
1860, and so shocked the wealthy that
Thackeray had to suspend publication.
Munera Pulveris appeared in 1862, Sesame
and Lilies in 1865, and The Crown of Wild
Olive and Ethics of the Dust in 1866.
Fors Clavigera began as a monthly in
1871, when he retired to Coniston. He
founded an Art School at Oxford, a museum
at Sheffield, a Guild of St. George with
various agricultural communities (which
failed), and by pen and lecture sustained
a noble struggle for the workers of England.
Few wealthy men have led a life of such
unselfish strain. " In an earlier age,"
says Sir E. T. Cook in the Diet. Nat. Biog.,
he might have become a saint. In his
own age he spent himself, his time, and
his wealth in trying to illuminate and
ennoble the lives of others." During the
finest period of his life Ruskin was a vague
Theist, not far removed from Agnosticism.
Augustus Hare (Story of My Life, ii, 484)
says that Ruskin told him about 1860 that
he " believed nothing." The entirely Greek
spirit of Ethics of the Dust, and such
passages as that in the introduction to the
Crown of Wild Olive, show him far removed
from Christianity at this time. The
Spiritualist frauds of the seventies seduced
him to believe again in personal immor
tality (as he told Holman Hunt), and he
began to profess himself a Christian in a
very broad sense ; but the details given in
Sir E. T. Cook s Life of Buskin (2 vols.,
1911) show that he never rejoined the
Church. He called himself a " Christian
Catholic," but explained that this was " in
the wide and eternal sense " (including
Pagans and Agnostics). He spoke of
taking "the Lord s Supper," but Sir E. T.
Cook shows at length that this refers to
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