Or those war-clouds that gather on the horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire;—how is their barbed strength bridled? what bits are these they are champing with their vaporous lips...

Ruskin’s image turns a storm-front into a living, mythic beast—“dragon-crested” and “tongued with fire”—to stress both the sublimity and the menace of natural power. The rhetorical question (“how is their barbed strength bridled?”) frames the clouds as forces that seem violent and willful, yet are in fact governed by unseen laws. The “bits” the clouds “champ” suggest harness and restraint: nature’s apparent ferocity is held in check by an order beyond human control. In Ruskin’s typical mode, the passage also implies a moral and aesthetic lesson: attentive looking reveals not only spectacle but structure, and the imagination (dragon, fire, bridling) is a legitimate instrument for conveying truths about power, fear, and the limits of human mastery.