“I venerate Ruskin”, said George Eliot, “as one of the great teachers of the age ; he teaches with the inspiration of the Hebrew prophet.” In the light of this encomium, briefly underline the core of Ruskin’s message in The Crown of Wild Olive.

Ruskin has been acclaimed as a great teacher and a prophet of the age. Like Hebrew prophet he exhorts his people to shun the path of evil and to adopt the path of righteousness and upright living. Almost all that he wrote conveys his moral message. Ruskin revolted against the gross materialistic attitude of the eighteenth century. Poetry has become mere polished exercise, life mere polished