gether repudiated. He should have recognised that Mill could speak as emphatically as himself of the injustice of the actual social order; and sympathised quite as much with the Socialist aspiration, if not with the Socialist solution. There was, undoubtedly, a radical antagonism of principle; but Ruskin was too passionately eager to distinguish between the stupid and selfish opponents, and men whose ability and genuine zeal he ought to have appreciated.[1]
Ruskin struck some sharp blows. The craftsmen still believed implicitly in their Diana of the Ephesians. Carlyle's huge growls had passed over men's heads like distant thunder, too vague to be effective. Ruskin meant to be the lightning, striking distinct and tangible points. He had, as he had showed in his other works, a singular power of putting nasty questions, of hitting weak points, exposing loose and wordy phrases, and generally making himself disagreeable to self-complacent phrasemongers. He succeeded in irritating, if not in convincing. For the time the respectable world shut its ears and kept him out of correct
- ↑ See Time and Tide, p. 167, for an assault upon Mill's 'wilful equivocations.' Ruskin's wrath prevented him from seeing that Mill, as was shown by his approval of land nationalisation,' was attacking 'landlordism' as sincerely as his critic.
