In art, Ruskin had enjoyed an unexampled training, which made him a consummate expert.
He had been a tutor of Balliol and a clergyman since 1842, and had devoted himself to the work of tuition with unexampled zeal.
Here, too, he published, in 1531, his most important work, the Chronica, Zeitbuch and Geschichtsbibel, largely a compilation on the basis of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), and in its treatment of social and religious questions connected with the Reformation, exhibiting a strong sympathy with heretics, and an unexampled fairness to all kinds of freedom in opinion.
Unfortunately several of these fertile tracts suffer severely from malaria (q.v.), and especially the great plain adjoining the Gulf of Tarentum, which in the early ages of history was surrounded by a girdle of Greek cities—some of which attained to almost unexampled prosperity—has for centuries past been given up to almost complete desolation.
Under the unnatural stimulus of these extra ordinary events, every branch of industry extended with unexampled rapidity.