In 1843 appeared the first volume of '_Modern Painters: their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters_. By a Graduate of Oxford.' A further volume was issued three years afterwards, to accompany an extended and amended edition of the first. A ten years' pause, and third and fourth portions were given to the world. Then came 1860, and the final volume. Not, as the author avowed, that his subject was concluded, for 'he had been led by it into fields of infinite inquiry, where it was only possible to break off with such imperfect results as may at any given moment have been attained.' He stopped because he must stop at some time or other. The future art-writings of Mr. Ruskin will no longer bear the collective title of _Modern Painters_. Perhaps that is all that the 'finis' at the end of the fifth volume really amounts to. In his fifth volume, Mr. Ruskin has narrated the history of the birth and growth of his book. He has ascribed to himself from his earliest years, 'the gift of taking pleasure in landscape.' This, he says, 'I assuredly possess in a greater degree than most men, it having been the ruling passion of my life, and the reason for the choice of its field of labour.' Certain articles in a review condemnatory of the pictures of Turner offended keenly so ardent an admirer of the king of landscape painters. Mr. Ruskin addressed a letter to the editor of the review, 'reprobating the matter and style of those critiques, and pointing out their dangerous tendency;' for 'he knew it to be demonstrable that Turner was right and true, and that his critics were wrong, false, and base.' The letter grew to be a book; the defence expanded into an attack. What began as a few comments upon a particular branch of painting ended in being the most elaborate English dissertation upon art, in its widest and weightiest significance. The title originally selected for the book was _Turner and the Ancients_; and it was not then proposed to refer in it to any other modern painter than Turner. But the design enlarged,--'The title was changed, and notes on other living painters inserted in the first volume, in deference to the advice of friends; probably wise, for unless the change had been made, the book might never have been read at all.' So writes the author in his last pages; and returning to his first love, it is hard to say whether from fickleness or from constancy he adds, 'So far as I am concerned, I regretted the change then, and regret it still.'