Time, that has given and changed the plan, has also been at work with certain of the judgments of the book. (It is with the fifth volume we are especially dealing,--for this may fairly be regarded as the 'summing up' of the divers opinions scattered through the earlier portions of the work.) The author of a book long in hand becomes himself the president of a court of appeal, in which his own earlier sentences are to be reversed or confirmed. It is one of the results of the heat and passion of first opinions that they seem to be harshly and cruelly framed when the time comes to tone down and qualify them; and the question arises, was it indispensable to be so savage,--was it absolutely necessary that what seemed to be the sword of justice should be wielded so angrily and without the slightest tempering of mercy? Still is there worth in the author's apology, 'that the oscillations of temper and progressions of discovery ought not to diminish the reader's confidence in the book;' 'that unless important changes are occurring in his opinions continually all his life long, not one of those opinions can be on any questionable subject true; all true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment, therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree, not of a cloud.' So, then, come repentance and recantation. Mr. Ruskin's 'boy veneration for Rubens's physical art power,' and the 'strong expression of admiration for him, which to his great regret occur in the first volume,' are now solemnly withdrawn. Rubens is now only a 'healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased animal.' But the fault lies as much at the door of the time, as at that of the man. The Reformation had come and gone. The reformers had cast out the errors, and rent in twain the fallacies of the Roman Catholic Church. Then came a standing still; a paralysis of religion. The Evangelicals despised the arts; effete and insincere Roman Catholicism had lost its hold on men. The painters sunk into rationalism; they became men of the world, 'with no belief in spiritual existence, no interests or affections beyond the grave.' They painted religious subjects, of course; these were duly supplied as per order, especially martyrdom; they liked the vigorous cruelty of them, and painted atrocities with gusto, deeming they were illustrating religion; and they painted 'virgins in blue,' and 'St. Johns in red,' as many as were wanted,--but all utterly cold, and soul-less, and irreverential. 'Happily,' remarks Mr. Ruskin, 'there is just this difference between the men of this modern period and the Florentines or Venetians, that whereas the latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred subject, the Flemish and Dutch masters are always languid unless they are profane. Leonardo is only to be seen in the 'Cena'; Titian only in the 'Assumption'; but Rubens only in the 'Battle of the Amazons'; and Vandyck only at court; and he adds, his indignation