e practical evidence of it was the throng
of visitors to the family seats of Herne Hill and Denmark Hill, in the
then London suburbs, where Ruskin long had his home, and by the
attentions and honor paid to their son by universities, academies, and
public bodies, as well as by many eminent personages and the
intellectual _elite_ of the nation. Among those with whom the young
celebrity was then ultimate and reckoned among his admiring
correspondents were, besides Turner (who died in 1851) and the chief
artists of the time, the Carlyles and the Brownings, Mary Russell
Mitford, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Monckton Milnes (Lord
Houghton), Charles Eliot Norton, Lady Trevelyan (Macaulay's sister),
Whewell, Maurice, Kingsley, Dr. John Brown (author of "Rab and his
Friends"), Tennyson, and Dean Milman. To these might be added many
notable foreigners whom he either met with in his continental travels or
who were attracted to him by a lively interest in his writings. In his
home, thanks to a wealthy and indulgent father, he was surrounded with
every comfort, short of luxury, if we except under the latter the large
sums expended on the purchase of "Turners" and many famous foreign
pictures, and a vast and increasing collection of favorite books and
other treasures and curios.

Of the author's home-life we get many delightful reminiscences in
"Praeterita," with entertaining talks of his childhood days, his
youthful companions, his toys and animate pets, his early playful
adventures in authorship, and other garrulities with which, late in life
when the work, as it remains, was incompletely put together, he beguiled
the weariness and feebleness of old age. But we are anticipating, for we
are writing of Ruskin when his hand was yet on the plough, and the
plough was still in the furrow, and half a long life's arduous work was
yet before him. At this era, no brain could well have been more active
or fuller of philanthropies than his, for we approach the second period
of his life's grand activities,--the era of a new departure in the
interests that occupied him and the herculean tasks he set himself
to do.

Before recording some of the achievements of this time and glancing at
the inciting causes of the transition which marks the era we have now
reached, let us note the demands made upon Mr. Ruskin's thought and
labor by universities and public institutions, whose audiences desired
to have him appear before them in person a