16. +Dickens’s Style.+-- His style is easy, flowing, vigorous, picturesque, and humorous; his power of language is very great; and, when he is writing under the influence of strong passion, it rises into a pure and noble eloquence. The scenery-- the external circumstances of his characters, are steeped in the same colours as the characters themselves; everything he touches seems to be filled with life and to speak-- to look happy or sorrowful,-- to reflect the feelings of the persons. His comic and humorous powers are very great; but his tragic power is also enormous-- his power of depicting the fiercest passions that tear the human breast,-- avarice, hate, fear, revenge, remorse. The great American statesman, Daniel Webster, said that Dickens had done more to better the condition of the English poor than all the statesmen Great Britain had ever sent into the English Parliament. 17. JOHN RUSKIN, the greatest living master of English prose, an art-critic and thinker, was born in London in the year 1819. In his father’s house he was accustomed “to no other prospect than that of the brick walls over the way; he had no brothers, nor sisters, nor companions.” To his London birth he ascribes the great charm that the beauties of nature had for him from his boyhood: he felt the contrast between town and country, and saw what no country-bred child could have seen in sights that were usual to him from his infancy. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and gained the Newdigate prize for poetry in 1839. He at first devoted himself to painting; but his true and strongest genius lay in the direction of literature. In 1843 appeared the first volume of his +Modern Painters+, which is perhaps his greatest work; and the four other volumes were published between that date and the year 1860. In this work he discusses the qualities and the merits of the greatest painters of the English, the Italian, and other schools. In 1851 he produced a charming fairy tale, ‘The King of the Golden River, or the Black Brothers.’ He has written on architecture also, on political economy, and on many other social subjects. He is the founder of a society called “The St George’s Guild,” the purpose of which is to spread abroad sound notions of what true life and true art are, and especially to make the life of the poor more endurable and better worth living. 18. +Ruskin’s Style.+-- A glowing eloquence, a splendid and full-flowing music, wealth of phrase, aptness of epithet, opulence of ideas-- all these qualities characterise the prose style of Mr Ruskin. His similes are daring, but always true. Speaking of the countless statues that fill the innumerable niches of the cathedral of Milan, he says that “it is as though a flight of angels had alighted there and been struck to marble.” His writings are full of the wisest sayings put into the most musical and beautiful language. Here are a few:--