But it needs imaginative sympathy to detect and describe the thought.

And when that sympathy was given to suffering, to widespread misery, to crying wrongs; joined also with an intense passion for justice, which had already shown itself in the defence of slighted genius and neglected art; and to the Celtic temperament of some highstrung seer and trance-prophesying bard; it was no wonder that Ruskin became like one of the hermits of old, who retreated from the world to return upon it with stormy messages of awakening and flashes of truth more impressive, more illuminating than the logic of schoolmen and the state-craft of the wise.
And then he began to take up an attitude of antagonism to the world, he who had been the kindly helper and minister of delightful art.

He began to call upon those who had ears to hear to come out and be separate from the ease and hypocrisy of Vanity Fair.

Its respectabilities, its orthodoxies, he could no longer abide.

Orthodox religion, orthodox morals and politics, orthodox art and science, alike he rejected; and was rejected by each of them as a brawler, a babbler, a fanatic, a heretic.