CHAPTER I.
"UNTO THIS LAST" (1860-1861) At forty years of age Ruskin finished "Modern Painters." From that time art was sometimes his text, rarely his theme.

He used it as the opportunity, the vehicle, so to say, for teachings of wider range and deeper import; teachings about life as a whole, conclusions in ethics and economics and religion, to which he sought to lead others, as he was led, by the way of art.
During the time when he was preaching his later doctrines, he wished to suppress the interfering evidences of the earlier.

He let his works on art run out of print, not for the benefit of second-hand booksellers, but in the hope that he could fix his audience upon the burden of his prophecy for the time being.

But the youthful works were still read; high prices were paid for them, or they were smuggled in from America.
And when the epoch of "Fors" had passed, he agreed to the reprinting of all that early material.

He called it obsolete and trivial; others find it interestingly biographical--perhaps even classical.
This year, then, 1860, the year of the Italian Kingdom, of Garibaldi, and of the beginning of the American war, marks his turning point, from the early work, summed up in the old "Selections," to the later work.
Until he was forty, Mr.Ruskin was a writer on art; after that his art was secondary to ethics.