Excerpt from Four Great Teachers: John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Robert Browning John ruskin is the son of a London merchant, and was born in the year 1819. He thus writes of himself Who am I, that I should challenge you, the squires of England, do you ask? My mother was a sailor's daughter, and, please you, one of my aunts was a baker's wife, the other a tanner's and I don't know much more about my family, except that there used to be a green grocer of the name in a small shop near the Crystal Palace. Something of my early and vulgar life, if it interests you, I will tell in next 'fors' in this one it is indeed my business, poor gipsy herald as I am, to bring you such a challenge, though you should hunt and hang me for it. Mr. Ruskin's father came over the Border in search of fortune. He came up to London. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.