Word: oldes
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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...JOHN RUSKIN has been spending the greater portion of his life in endeavoring to free the world from an old idea, that works of art should be admired for their own apparent power, for the force with which they strike the observer. In place of this notion, he has labored to introduce a taste for art measured by definite rules and lines...
...immense culture requisite to become master of the Ruskin mode of thought may at first appear a desirable objective point. But reflection cannot fail to show that, where one attains the desired end, a hundred advance on the path only so far as to upset their faith in their old ideas of art. These substitute in its place such a doubt of their power to appreciate works of true genius, and such a fear lest their ignorance of some technical point may lead them into some un-Ruskinian expression of admiration, that the pleasure which they feel in contemplating masterpieces...
This principle holds good in more than one branch of education. Modern improvement, not content with overthrowing the old prejudices of the art-world, has crept in among us in another form, and has, almost unnoticed, taken control of our classical education...
...long since classical instruction here rested on a basis entirely different from the present. The works of the grand old thinkers of Greece and Rome were read, not as etymological and grammatical puzzles, but for their beauties of idea and of expression. The student was not asked to rack his brains and search the grammar for the peculiar technical reason for an uncommon use of a subjunctive, or to give a long dissertation on the ground of a Grecian author's choice of the infinitive with av instead of the optative. It was supposed that the average student had sufficient...
...classic literature of antiquity was read for itself. The student could then realize the true beauties of the work in his hands; and a knowledge of construction would come of itself from familiarity with the pages of the model writers of old. One did not read Latin and Greek with the view of becoming a pedagogue. One read them with enthusiasm and pleasure, as they should be read, as a means of elegant culture; and the student of those days graduated with a lively admiration, if not a decided taste and love, for those grand old pages which had been...