Excerpt from The North British Review, Vol. 36: February-May, 1862 Looking, then, at Mr Ruskin's writings as a whole, it is no flattery to say that he is the greatest writer on art in the English language, - indeed, in any language but unqualified praise must there end. He has attempted to write on many things besides but on little else has he written well or truly. Eloquent and ingenious he always is; but take him away from art, and he seems to us ignorant and delusive. To do him anything like justice, we must first look at him exclusively as the subtle critic of art, and the eloquent exponent of nature. It will be a less pleasing, but yet a necessary task, to see into what errors he runs himself, and would lead his readers, when he announces his opinions on metaphysics, literature, history, and society. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.