Later, however, he saw good in it, as a breaking away from academic trammels; while he recognized the earnest enthusiasm of the little band of artists and artist-poets, as well as their technical dexterity and brilliance.

" "That may be," he replied, "but you must remember, madam, that up to this time the young lady had been subjected to the most conventional trammels, and that her young nature had just burst out into temporary freedom and true life.

At the outset of his career Ruskin, as is well known, was led to take up a defence of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and the contemporary school of English landscape-painting against the foreign trammels, which had fastened themselves upon modern art, and especially to prove the superiority of modern landscape-painters over the old masters.

Instead of the fetters of the past, binding mankind in loathsome trammels of ignoranceinstead of the darkness that broods over a subjugated worldof terrors that rend agonized souls with horrible torturesI bring peace, freedom, light, progress.

To Chaucer, however, are we indebted for the first effort to emancipate the British muse from the ridiculous trammels of French diction, with which, till his time, it had been the fashion to interlard and obscure the English language.