ung man 'very
eloquent and distinguished-looking, tall, fair, and slender, with a
gentle playfulness, and a sort of pretty waywardness that was quite
charming.' Sydney Dobell, again, in 1852, discovered an earnestness
pervading every feature, giving power to a face that otherwise
would be merely lovable for its gentleness. And, finally, one who
visited him at Denmark Hill characterized him as emotional and
nervous, with a soft, genial eye, a mouth 'thin and severe,' and a
voice that, though rich and sweet, yet had a tendency to sink into
a plaintive and hopeless tone,"--_Literary World_, May 19, 1893.]

"And now for the style of the lecture.... Properly speaking, there
were two styles essentially distinct, and not well blended,--a
speaking and a writing style; the former colloquial and spoken
off-hand; the latter rhetorical and carefully read in quite a
different voice,--we had almost said intoned.... He has a
difficulty in sounding the letter 'r'; [and there is a] peculiar
tone in the rising and falling of his voice at measured intervals,
in a way scarcely ever heard except in the public lection of the
service appointed to be read in churches. These are the two things
with which, perhaps you are most surprised,--his dress and manner
of speaking--both of which (the white waistcoat notwithstanding)
are eminently clerical. You naturally expect, in one so
independent, a manner free from conventional restraint, and an
utterance, whatever may be the power of voice, at least expressive
of a strong individuality; and you find instead a Christ Church man
of ten years' standing, who has not yet taken orders; his dress and
manner derived from his college tutor, and his elocution from the
chapel-reader."

The lectures were a summing up, in popular form, of the chief topics of
Ruskin's thought during the last two years. The first (November 1)
stated, with more decision and warmth than part of his audience
approved, his plea for the Gothic Revival, for the use of Gothic as a
domestic style. The next lecture, given three days later, went on to
contrast the wealth of ornament in mediaeval buildings with the poor
survivals of conventionalized patterns which did duty for decoration in
nineteenth-century "Greek" architecture; and he raised a laugh by
comparing a typical stonemason's lion with a real tige