Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/382

 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 &quot; Cabinet of Reason.&quot; 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. &quot; In an earlier age,&quot; 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.&quot; 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 &quot; believed nothing.&quot; 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 &quot; Christian Catholic,&quot; but explained that this was &quot; in the wide and eternal sense &quot; (including Pagans and Agnostics). He spoke of taking &quot;the Lord s Supper,&quot; but Sir E. T. Cook shows at length that this refers to 692