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Rusin started off his main literary career with a resounding defense of Turner  

Turner was for Ruskin the grates landscape painter of all time because argued  Rukisn he expressed the greatest number of the greatest ideas  


The ideas of beauty involved vital beauty ans TypicalBzty as


Typical beauty involved 

These ideas have a strong family resemblance to Plato's ideas 

Ruskin had read but he was fully imbued with Platonic doctrine 

We will start with an examination of Ruskin's first major early works and see how they lead up to the discovery of CC
That is with MP 1 and 2
These were published respectively in 1843 and 1845.

However to analyze these early works we will refer to a later text of Ruskin's , a passage from his introductory lecture to his lectures as Slade professor of art at Oxford
He is seeking to define the relation    art to morality and has recourse to a quotation from Plato's Republic, book
Plato is describing the daily surroundings of gardian class in an ideal republic



Start with Plato quote from Lectures on Art

This text dates from 1871, and it might be thought unreasonable to argue that there is any trace of a strong Platonic influence in MPI
Yet such is the case we believe
Ruskin's initial  intellectual nourishment was biblical and evangical, and is the main influence in MPI 

Yet Ruskin had come into contact with the classics in Oxford, Plato and Aristotle, and their influence we believe is already present in MPI, though only latent 

But MP I can be better understood if we recognize this influence 

Ruskin is arguing as if Turner's work had revealed in Nature Plato's world of forms, and fully exposed humanity to it.   

   

Ruskin uses the term ideas, and only fully expounds his 'aesthetic' theories in the second volume
The first volume concern mainly the idea of truth but some go the other ideas appear





Then unity in diversty, cloud, try to find moutain exemple  

Townsend on art as moral instrument

Platonic text : from lectures on art ...

But, in the second place, you will find in those books of the Polity, stated with far greater accuracy of expression than our English language admits, the essential relations of art to morality; the sum of these being given in one lovely sentence, which, considering that we have to-day grace done us by fair companionship,* you will pardon me for translating. “Must it be then only with our poets that we insist they shall either create for us the image of a noble morality, or among us create none? or shall we not also keep guard over all other workers for the people, and forbid them to make what is ill-customed, and unrestrained, and ungentle, and without order or shape, either in likeness of living things, or in buildings, or in any other thing whatsoever that is made for the people? and shall we not rather seek for workers who can track the inner nature of all that may be sweetly schemed;³ so that the young men, as living

* There were, in fact, a great many more girls than University men at the lectures. [1887.]

¹ [377 D. The passage translated (and condensed) by Ruskin is in Book iii. 401.]

² [For the Greek feeling, summed by Ruskin in this phrase, see below, pp. 403, 404.]

³ [The words “can . . . schemed” were put into capitals in 1887.]

II. THE RELATION OF ART TO RELIGION 49

in a wholesome place, may be profited by everything that, in work fairly wrought, may touch them through hearing or sight—as if it were a breeze bringing health to them from places strong for life?”

(There is also romantic ida of fusion with nature)

Chapter III Of Region Rain Cloud, § 16-17    

(Swept up into Energy land’s end  )

(Is Land’s End ill. in Electronic edition ? )

(See our slide could transfer to ….)

It is this untraceable,² unconnected, yet perpetual form, this fulness of character absorbed in universal energy, which distingusih nature and Turner from all their imitators. To roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and direction, is for the multitude; but to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous separate existence, of every wreath of writhing vapour, yet swept away

collection of Mr. John E. Taylor) is engraved by photogravure in vol. ii. of Turner and Ruskin. A portion of the foreground, engraved by Armytage from a drawing by Ruskin, is here given (plate facing p. 566, see note above, on p. liv.).]

¹ [Eds. 1 and 2 here insert, “like Fielding’s rain.”]

² [In eds. 1–4 a marginal note was added here:—§ 17: “The individual character of its parts.”]

Ch. IV                   OF TRUTH OF CLOUDS                            405

and overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us

“Be as a presence or a motion—one

Among the many there; and while the mists

Flying, and rainy vapours, call out shapes

And phantoms from the crags and solid earth,

As fast as a musician scatters sounds

Out of an instrument,”—¹

this belongs only to nature and to him.



Paraphrase :
The raincloud, first brought to general attention  offers particularly important examples of unity in diversity.



Add description pof raincloud

independance