A History of English Literature

Before falling silent, Ruskin wrote an enchanting autobiography,Praeterita,a

lucid vision of the lost paradise of his childhood: his protected upbringing, learning

the Bible by heart with his mother; private education; reading Byron; Oxford (not

much use to him); learning to draw (very well). Travel opened his eyes: in a carriage

specially built with a seat for young John to see out from, the Ruskins visited the

houses of clients (his father was a sherry-importer, a partner of Pedro Domecq), and

then toured Normandy, Switzerland and northern Italy. He studied geology, walked

and sketched in the Alps or in Scotland. In Praeterita, the reformer’s remaining wish

268 8 · THE AGE AND ITS SAGES

‘Contrasted Residences for
the Poor’, one of the 23-year-
old A. W. Pugin’s Contrasts:
or, a parallel between the
noble edifices of the
fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and similar
buildings of the present day;
shewing the present decay of
taste(1836; rev. edn 1841).
The modern poorhouse is a
rational and economical
House of Correction, like
Bentham’s Panopticon (see p.
266). In the poorhouse, the
diet of gruel, the turnkey and
the dissectionist’s suppliers
anticipate Dickens. In
contrast, the medieval
monastic almshouse below
gives the Poor Man hearty
food, loving care and a
Christian burial. In 1836
Pugin’s designs helped
Charles Barry win the
competition to rebuild the
Palace of Westminster,
destroyed in a fire. Pugin was
the leading architect of the
Gothic Revival. His principles
anticipate those of Ruskin, his
craft techniques those of
William Morris, and his
functionalism anticipates the
theory and practice of the
founders of modernism.