John Ruskin
The Two Paths
(IDB Productions July 6, 2019)
The Two Paths
THE TWO PATHS
BEING
LECTURES ON ART, AND ITS APPLICATION TO DECORATION AND
MANUFACTURE DELIVERED IN 1858-9.
LECTURE I.
THE DETERIORATIVE POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART OVER
NATIONS.
An Inaugural Lecture, Delivered at the Kensington Museum,
January, 1858.
As I passed, last summer, for the first time, through the north of
Scotland, it seemed to me that there was a peculiar painfulness in its
scenery, caused by the non-manifestation of the powers of human art. I
had never travelled in, nor even heard or conceived of such a country
before; nor, though I had passed much of my life amidst mountain
scenery in the south, was I before aware how much of its charm depended
on the little gracefulnesses and tendernesses of human work, which are
mingled with the beauty of the Alps, or spared by their desolation. It
is true that the art which carves and colours the front of a Swiss
cottage is not of any very exalted kind; yet it testifies to the
completeness and the delicacy of the faculties of the mountaineer; it
is true that the remnants of tower and battlement, which afford footing
to the wild vine on the Alpine promontory, form but a small part of the
great serration of its rocks; and yet it is just that fragment of their
broken outline which gives them their pathetic power, and historical
majesty. And this element among the wilds of our own country I found
wholly wanting. The Highland cottage is literally a heap of gray
stones, choked up, rather than roofed over, with black peat and
withered heather; the only approach to an effort at decoration consists
in the placing of the clods of protective peat obliquely on its roof,
so as to give a diagonal arrangement of lines, looking somewhat as if
t
THE TWO PATHS
BEING
LECTURES ON ART, AND ITS APPLICATION TO DECORATION AND
MANUFACTURE DELIVERED IN 1858-9.
LECTURE I.
THE DETERIORATIVE POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART OVER
NATIONS.
An Inaugural Lecture, Delivered at the Kensington Museum,
January, 1858.
As I passed, last summer, for the first time, through the north of
Scotland, it seemed to me that there was a peculiar painfulness in its
scenery, caused by the non-manifestation of the powers of human art. I
had never travelled in, nor even heard or conceived of such a country
before; nor, though I had passed much of my life amidst mountain
scenery in the south, was I before aware how much of its charm depended
on the little gracefulnesses and tendernesses of human work, which are
mingled with the beauty of the Alps, or spared by their desolation. It
is true that the art which carves and colours the front of a Swiss
cottage is not of any very exalted kind; yet it testifies to the
completeness and the delicacy of the faculties of the mountaineer; it
is true that the remnants of tower and battlement, which afford footing
to the wild vine on the Alpine promontory, form but a small part of the
great serration of its rocks; and yet it is just that fragment of their
broken outline which gives them their pathetic power, and historical
majesty. And this element among the wilds of our own country I found
wholly wanting. The Highland cottage is literally a heap of gray
stones, choked up, rather than roofed over, with black peat and
withered heather; the only approach to an effort at decoration consists
in the placing of the clods of protective peat obliquely on its roof,
so as to give a diagonal arrangement of lines, looking somewhat as if
t
- ISBN
- 1776789016 / 9781776789016
- Weight
- 3.5 oz.
- Dimensions
- 7.5 x 5.5 in.
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