Now contemporary fiction must be subject to the same laws as past fiction, only its worth must vary according to the merits of the present novelists. But realism is not the sole end, nor even the chief end of artistic creations if it were, we should prize a photograph more than one of Turner's landscapes. We may very properly call it the natural - the human - element of a work of art, and no doubt it is this element which pleases us most in all masterpieces. We find it in the paintings of Raphael just as unmistakably as in those Meissonier or Duran. Ruskin begins, "Realism in any work of art. A presumably complete and untitled essay, possibly unpublished, on realism in art and its relation to morals. Twelve 5" x 8" pages written on 3 folded leaves, stitched together at the vertical fold, not signed but completely in Ruskin's hand.
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