His schooling was irregular and not successful. At 15 he was sent for two years to the day-school of the Rev. T. Dale of Peck ham, and at 17 he attended some courses in literature at King's college, London. In painting he had lessons from Copley Fielding and afterwards from J. D. Harding. But in the incessant travelling, drawing, collecting specimens and composition in prose and verse he had gained but a very moderate classical and mathematical knowledge when he matriculated at Oxford; nor could he ever learn to write tolerable Latin. As a boy he was active, lively and docile ; a good walker, but ignorant of all boyish games, as naïve and as innocent as a child; and he never could learn to dance or to ride. He was only saved by his intellect and his fine nature from turning out an arrant prig. He was regarded by his parents, and seems to have regarded himself, as a genius.
At the age of 17 he saw Adele, the French daughter of Monsieur Domecq, Mr. Ruskin's partner, a lovely girl of fifteen. John fell rapturously in love with her ; and, it seems, the two fathers seriously contemplated their marriage. The young poet wooed the girl with poems, romances, dramas and mute worship, but received nothing except chilling indifference and lively ridicule. To the gay young beauty, familiar with Parisian society, the raw and serious youth was not a possible parti. She was sent to an English school, and he occasionally saw her. His unspoken passion lasted about three years, when she married the Baron Duquesne. Writ ing as an old man, long after her death, Ruskin speaks of his early love without any sort of rapture. But it is clear that it deeply coloured his life, and led to the illness which for some two years interrupted his studies and made him a wanderer over Europe.
As the father was resolved that John should have everything that money and pains could give, and should one day be a bishop at least, he entered him at Christ Church, Oxford, as a gentle man-commoner—then an order reserved for men of wealth and rank. Ruskin's Oxford career, broken by the two years passed abroad, was not very full of incident or of usefulness. Both he and his college took kindly the amazing proceeding of his mother, who left her husband and her home to reside in Oxford, that she might watch over her son's health. The one success of his Oxford career was the winning the Newdigate Prize by his poem "Salsette and Elephanta," which he recited in the Sheldonian Theatre (June 1839). Two years of ill-health and absence from home ensued. And he did not become "a Graduate of Oxford" until 1842, in his 24th year, five years after his first entrance at the university. In
fact, his desultory school and college life had been little more than an interruption and hindrance to his real education—the study of nature, of art and of literature. Long before Ruskin published books he had written for various periodicals on architectural and other subjects.
After leaving Oxford, Ruskin set to work steadily at Herne Hill on the more elaborate defence of Turner, which was to become his first work. Modern Painters, vol. i., by "a Graduate of Oxford," was published May 1843, when the author was little more than twenty-four. It was vehemently attacked by the critics, and coolly received by the painters. Even Turner was somewhat discon certed; but the painter was now known to both Ruskins, and they freely bought his pictures. The family then went again to the Alps, that John might study mountain formation and "Truth" in landscape. In 1845 he was again abroad in Italy, working on his Modern Painters, the second volume of which appeared in 1846. He had now plunged into the study of Bellini and the Venetian school, Fra Angelico and the early Tuscans, and he visited Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Padua, Verona and Venice, passionately devoting himself to architecture, sculpture and painting in each city of north Italy. He wrote a few essays for the Quarterly Review and other periodicals, and in 1849 (aet. 3o) he published The Seven Lamps of Architecture, with his own etchings, which greatly increased the reputation acquired by his Modern Painters.
On April 1 o, 1848, a day famous in the history of Chartism, Ruskin was married at Perth to Euphemia Chalmers Gray, a lady of great beauty, of a family long intimate with the Ruskins. The marriage, we are told, was arranged by the parents of the pair, and was a somewhat hurried act. It was evidently ill-assorted, and brought no happiness to either. They travelled, lived in Lon don, saw society, and attended a "Drawing-room" at Buckingham Palace. But Ruskin, immersed in various studies and projects, was no husband for a brilliant woman devoted to society. No particulars of their life have been made public. In 1854 his wife left him, obtained a nullification of the marriage under Scots law, and ultimately became the wife of John Everett Millais. John Ruskin returned to his parents, with whom he resided till their death ; and neither his marriage nor the annulling of it seems to have affected seriously his literary career.