To this book, then, commenced almost without a plan, time subsequently gave form and pattern. At a certain period of his labour Mr. Ruskin paused to map out the future of his work, to define the limits of his undertaking. But in examining the concluding volume it will be seen that the waywardness of the beginning characterizes also the end. Time has taken away its gift; the scheme has fallen through; the book ends; but the design it had gathered to itself as it advanced, which had budded out from it unexpectedly as it were, remains in a large measure uncompleted. Over the boundaries he had himself imposed, his eloquent diffuseness long since surged: the book doubled its promised length; and now the author stays his hand, turns from his toil, and leaves unfinished and shapeless the long-expected 'section on the sea,' holding out but vague promise of his ever being able to accomplish, even in a separate work, his intentions in regard to that portion of his project. It is almost of necessity that there should be deviation from the original planned economy of a work occupying more than a score of years; but Mr. Ruskin is more than ordinarily susceptible to vicissitude. It is part of his idiosyncrasy to start impulsively with an ill-digested project, and to run off the lines of his argument upon the slightest provocation and at the earliest opportunity. So that in his case time and his own temper have combined to exaggerate the vibration of his book. His manner of progression is very much what Mr. Assheton Smith's huntsman used to denominate 'zedding.' He cannot proceed straightforwardly. He must wander from the direct track; as a consequence, he is betrayed into all sorts of _culs de sac_, wrong turnings, and roundabout roads; and in the end, although much ground is gone over, very little advance is made. He is as the bee which does not make its final burglarious headlong plunge into the calyx until after a protracted course of circuitous buzzing and much prefatory waste of time: and this with all the insect's credit for industry. So over-perverse a traveller, so ultra-dilatory a bee as the author of _Modern Painters, must_ shorten his journey, _must_ leave much honey unfilched. He is as the army which commences in orderly retreat and ends in rabble-like riot and demoralization, gaining a place of safety at last, with the sacrifice of much baggage and treasure. So, as has been said, Mr. Ruskin flings away altogether a large division of his idea. In one place he writes,-- 'I find it convenient in this volume, and I wish I had thought of the expedient before, whenever I get into a difficulty to leave the reader to work it out;' and in another we are stopped by such a half-indolent half-arrogant, 'No Thoroughfare' as this. He has been discoursing on the leaf,--then follows an inquiry into the conditions of the stem. Then he tells us:--