And there the matter ended, for the public.

For Ruskin, it was the beginning of a train of thought which led him far.

He gradually learnt that his error was not in asking too much, but in asking too little.

He wished for a union of Protestants, forgetting the sheep that are not of _that_ fold, and little dreaming of the answer he got, after many days, in "Christ's Folk in the Apennine." Meanwhile the first volume of "Stones of Venice" had appeared, March, 1851.

Its reception was indirectly described in a pamphlet entitled "Something on Ruskinism, with a 'Vestibule' in Rhyme, by an Architect" complaining bitterly of the "ecstasies of rapture" into which the newspapers had been thrown by the new work: "Your book--since reviewers so swear--may be rational, Still, 'tis certainly not either loyal or national;" for it did not join in the chorus of congratulation to Prince Albert and the British public on the Great Exhibition of 1851, the apotheosis of trade and machinery.