something of the sort at the time, however, we did not value the privilege as we ought, and I am afraid it was we who jeered at the rustic: the Professor being absent—be it understood. Many of the disciples met at the weekly open breakfasts at the Professor's rooms in Corpus; and he was glad of a talk to them on other things beside drawing and digging. Some were attracted chiefly by the celebrity of the man, or by the curiosity of his humorous discourse; but there were a few who partly grasped one side or other of his mission and character. The most brilliant undergraduate of the time, seen at this breakfast table, but not one of the diggers, was W. H. Mallock, afterwards widely known as the author of 'Is Life Worth Living?' He was the only man, Professor Ruskin said, who really understood him-referring to 'The New Republic.' But while Mallock saw the reactionary and pessimistic side of his Oxford teacher, there was a progressist and optimistic side which does not appear in his Mr. Herbert.' That was discovered by another man whose career, short as it was, proved even more influential. Arnold Toynbee was one of the Professor's warmest admirers and ablest pupils and in his philanthropic work the teaching of Unto this Last' and 'Fors' was illustrated-not exclusively -but truly. 'No true disciple of mine will ever be a Ruskinian' (to quote 'St. Mark's Rest ;) he will follow, not me, but the instincts of his own soul, and the guidance of its Creator.' Like all energetic men, Mr. Ruskin was fond of setting other people to work. One of his plans was to form a little library of standard books (Bibliotheca Pastorum') suitable for the kind of people who, he hoped, would join or work under his St. George's Company. The first book he chose was the Economist' of Xenophon, which he asked two of his young friends to translate. To them and their work he would give his afternoons in the rooms at Corpus, with curious patience in the midst of pre-occupying labour and severest trial; for just then he was lecturing at the London Institution on the Alps*-reading a paper to the Metaphysical Societyt-writing the Academy Notes of 1875, and 'Proserpina,' etc.—as well as his regular work at 'Fors,' and the St. George's Company was then taking definite form;and all the while the lady of his love was dying under the most tragic circumstances, and he forbidden to approach her. At the end of May she died. On the 1st of June the Royal party honoured the Slade Professor with their visit— little knowing how valueless to him such honours had become. He went north and met his translators at Brantwood to finish the Xenophon,-and to help dig his harbour and cut coppice in his wood. He prepared a preface; but the next term was one of greater pressure, with the twelve lectures on Sir Joshua Reynolds to deliver. He wrote, after Christmas :— 'Now that I have got my head fairly into this Xenophon business, it has expanded into a new light altogether; and I think it would be absurd in me to slur over the life in one paragraph. A hundred things have come into my head as I arrange the dates, and I think I can make a much better thing of it—with a couple of days' work. My head would not work in town-merely turned from side to side-never nodded (except sleepily). I send you the proofs just to show you I'm at work. I'm going to translate all the story of Delphic answer before Anabasis: and his speech after the sleepless night.' Delphic answers-for he was just then brought into contact with spiritualism'; and sleepless nights-for the excitement of overwork was telling upon him-were becoming too frequent in his own experience; and yet he could stop to explain himself, with forbearance, in answer to remarks on the aforesaid proofs :-' I had no notion you felt that flaw so The Simple Dynamic Conditions of Glacial Action among the Alps,' March 11, 1875. Social Policy based on Natural Selection,' May 11. On a posting tour through Yorkshire. He made three such tours in 1875-southward in January, northward in June and July, and outhward in September: and another northward in April and May, seriously, or would have written at once. I should never call inspired prophecy "Classical," - nor the Sermon on the Mount-nor the like of it. All inspired writing stands on a nobler authority. "Hail thou that art highly favoured " does not contain constant truth, for all,-but instant truth -for Mary. If we criticise it as language, or "Scripture' writing-we must do so in its Greek or Roman words. But "quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit Ab Dîs plura feret" is classic, Eternal truth, in the best possible words. Whereas, "if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out" is not constant truth unless received in a certain temper and admitting certain conditions. It is then much more than constant truth. Scripture and Writing-Picture and Painting are always used by me as synonymous terms.' The lectures on Reynolds went off with éclat,* in spite of less pains bestowed on their preparation. The brilliancy of rhetoric, the magic of oratory, the astonishing reaches of thought, were utterly unlike the teaching of the scribes or Pharisees of modern times. It was no imitable trick of intellectual power which transmuted the scribbled jottings of his MS. for this series into the magnificent flow of rolling paragraph and rounded argument, that thrilled a captious audience with unwonted emotion, and almost persuaded many a careless or cynic hearer to abjure his worship of muscle or of brain for the nobler gospel of the Ethereal Ruskin.' In spite of strangeness, and a sense of antagonism to his surroundings, which grew from day to day, he did useful work which none other could do in the University, and wielded an enormous influence for good. That this was then acknowledged was proved by his re-election, early in 1876: but his third term of three years was a time of weakened health. The cause of it, the greatest sorrow of his life, we have just revealed. At the time, the public put it down to disappointed egotism, or whatever they fancied. But repeated absence from his post and inability to fulfil his duties made it obviously his wisest course, at the end of that third term, to resign the Slade Professorship. * Nov. 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 25, and 27; 1875. CHAPTER IV. ST. GEORGE AND ST. MARK. (1875-1877.) 'A curious volume, patch'd and torn, Perplexed her with a thousand things,— And the Covenantal Ark.' KEATS. N the book his Bertha of Canterbury was reading at twilight on the Eve of St. Mark, Keats might have been describing 'Fors.' Among its pages, fascinating with their golden broideries of romance and wit, perplexing with mystic vials of wrath as well as all the Seven Lamps and Shekinah of old and new Covenants commingled, there was gradually unfolded the plan of 'St. George's Work.' The scheme was not easy to apprehend; it was essentially different from anything then known, though superficially like several bankrupt Utopias. Mr. Ruskin did not want to found a phalanstery, or to imitate Robert Owen or the Shakers. That would have been practicable—and useless. He wanted much more. He aimed at the gradual introduction of higher aims into ordinary life: at giving true refinement to the lower classes, true simplicity to the upper. He proposed that idle hands should reclaim waste lands; that healthy work and country homes should be offered to townsfolk who would come out of the gutter.' He asked landowners and employers to furnish opportunities for such reforms; which would involve no elaborate organization nor unelastic rules ;-simply the one thing needful, the refusal of Commercialism. As before, he scorned the idea that real good could be done by political agitation. Any government would work, he said, if it were an efficient government. No government was efficient unless it saw that every one had the necessaries of life, for body and soul; and that every one earned them by some work or other. Capital—that is, the means and material of labour, should therefore be in the hands of the Government, not in the hands of individuals: this reform would result easily and necessarily from the forbidding of loans on interest. Personal property would still be in private hands; but as it could not be invested and turned into capital, it would necessarily be restricted to its actual use, and great accumulation would be valueless. This is, of course, a very sketchy statement of the groundwork of Fors,' but to most readers nowadays as comprehensible as, at the time of its publication, it was incomprehensible. For when, long after 'Fors' had been written, Mr. Ruskin found other writers advocating the same principles and calling themselves Socialists, he said that he too was 8 Socialist. But the Socialists of various sects have complicated, and sometimes confused, their simple fundamental principles with various ways and means; to which Mr. Ruskin could not agree. He had his own ways and means. He had his private ideals of life, which he expounded, along with his main doctrine. He thought, justifiably, that theory was uscless without practical example; and so he founded St. George's Company (in 1877 called St. George's Guild) as his illustration. The Guild grew out of his call, in 1871, for adherents: and by 1875 began to take definite form. Its objects were |