ABSTRACT
Ruskin in The Bible of Amiens and St. Mark’s Rest returned not to the Gothic alone but more broadly to the narration and interpretation of history. Ruskin’s mental movement to the beginning of The Bible of Amiens and the step which led him to the title of the series to which it belonged, Our Fathers Have Told Us, he recorded in his diary in some detail, and his words revealed the first point of contact between The Bible of Amiens and a particular kind of autobiographical reflection. The Bible of Amiens was configured to display in part a range of tolerances, a pattern of different forms of open-mindedness and acceptance, a number of features marking a considerable distance between Ruskin in the early 1880s, and Ruskin's of the past. In The Bible of Amiens Ruskin inscribed distance he believed he had travelled since he had written, as he called it in that same Preface, ‘with the presumption of a youth’.
