ter.

"Don't read any of those modern books, and don't be bothered with talking in company. Is it possible to waste time more ignominiously? Keep to Carey, and study every line and idea of it, till you know the contents and meaning of every book--and then spell out any bits you especially like in the original.

"Do you know French well enough to read French Plays? They're the prettiest and pleasantest things in the world for rest, after Dante!"

He was so patient with the soul-searchings of the young, probably realizing that the most serious and earnest young people are just the ones who afterward develop quite a respectable sense of humor and proportion. And he was so practical in his

advice:

"I'm greatly delighted with your letter and very happy that I can make you so happy-and glad above all that you are happy, without being made anything else than heaven made you. You must get your back stronger; mind you don't strain it at lawn tennis. Dance all you can before 12 o'clock, then come away, and don't sit in a draught. And mind, when you've learned to cook that you do cook: and-this is very particular-don't read any more George Eliot but Scott continually, and more old-fashioned poetry-George Herbert's 'Church Porch' to begin with, and Spenser's minor poems. And write to me if anything bothers or puzzles you-I mean in life, not letters-and if I can help I will, but my general advice will be 'Forget it or let it alone!""

Two days later he wrote:

"I never meant you were to forget anything you thought it your duty to remember -but only things that teased you. I'll write you any quantity of tasks, and put you to any quantity of paces when the time comes-meantime-meantime, make yourself strong and rest you merry.

When he was lecturing on "The Pleasures of England" at Oxford, I was living in a neighboring town, and he bade me come to hear him in the following delicious letter:

"I wonder if you're little enough to go in my breast pocket! I don't in the least know how else to get you in. For I've made a

The authorities permitted, and accompanied by an irreproachably decorous maid I went to Oxford to spend one of the fullest and happiest days it has ever been my lot to enjoy. There was a great deal of spoiling in it, for he took me himself from Woodstock Road (where he was staying with his art master, Mr. Macdonald) to the lecture theatre, and made me feel an honored guest all the time. Even without all the personal joy of him the lecture was an impressive experience. The theatre was crowded from floor to ceiling by an audience unusually representative. Youth and maiden, matron and scholar, artist and scientist, all pressed shoulder to shoulder, listening with a hushed intensity almost trance-like, their common gaze focussed upon the gracious stooping figure of the lecturer, who, golden-voiced, with flowing gown flung back from the eager nervous hands, hands ever moving in suppressed gesticulation, stood in the waning sunshine of that wintry afternoon, gravely challenging certain of the "Pleasures of England."

There was no pomp of rhetoric, no throwing down of controversy's glove, no straining at effect by startling statement; the quiet, almost monotonous voice held the attention by virtue of its message, not by means of any varied or dramatic inflection. He looked an old man even then, for, although his face was fair and fresh-complexioned, with singularly few lines, there was a great deal of gray in both long, straight, brown hair and beard, though both were at that time more brown than gray. He always emphasized his speech with forcible, quick gesture, and his eyes, even at that time, were the youngest eyes I have ever seen in adult face, blue and clear like a child's, with a child's large, direct gaze.

The lecture over, he carried me off to Sir

Henry Acland's room, where there was quite a gathering of interesting and famous folk, among them Lady Brassey, of "Sunbeam" fame, stout, weather-beaten, with opals big as acorns at her ears; Prof. Max Müller's beautiful daughter, Mrs. Conybeare; Sir Henry himself, genial and delightful; and Dean Liddel, of Christ Church, who seemed to quintessentialize in his extremely handsome presence every quality lending most grace to donnish dignity. But never for one moment did Mr. Ruskin neglect his little guest. I poured out tea for everybody, and was so immensely interested that I forgot to be shy. It was characteristic, too, that he did not forget the maid who came up with me, but instructed "Baxter," his indispensable man-servant, to show her the lions of Oxford, so that she enjoyed herself almost as much as I did.

A fortnight later he wrote: "Could you come, I wonder, with your maid, just as you did before, next Saturday and I would find time to be played to?"

Of course I went, and this time he was at Balliol staying with the master, Mr. Benjamin Jowett, of whom he always spoke as the "sweetest of men" and for whom he felt a very sincere affection. Mr. Jowett had an entirely beneficent influence over his great guest, and it was pretty to see how gently and imperceptibly he led the conversation away from too exciting topics, and directed his numerous enthusiasms into channels least likely to disturb the established order of the university.

Shortly after this Mr. Ruskin came to stay a few days with my mother on his way north, and the spoiling that we all got was enough to turn the heads of the soberest lassies. It is impossible to give any adequate picture in words of his simplicity and kindness. He was undoubtedly impressive; his personnel was striking; his manner and mode of expression at once scholarly and aristocratic, in a fashion seldom attained to now, even by genius. He spoke exactly as he wrote (and in later life seldom rewrote a sentence), but with this difference -that, whereas in his published work he was by no means careful as to whom he might offend, in conversation, whether as guest or host, he always seemed to defer to his friends. Young people found this attitude especially delightful and speedily lost all awe of him, while they realized intensely

the reality of the spirit of reverence that he himself says is "the chief joy and power of life."

His first visit was one long festa, for he was the least exacting and most giving of guests. One thing only did he demand, that we had not provided for him-a steady table in his bedroom. On arrival he called me into his room, and pointing with comical dismay at the usual spindly-legged bedroom writing-table, exclaimed: "My dear, it has got to support several hundredweight of books as well as my old arm and hand; I'm sure its poor legs will give way." And he was quite boyishly pleased when we produced from the kitchen regions a thicklegged, solid little oak table with a drawer. A number of Fors "Rosy Vale," was written at that table, and I write at it now. It never went downstairs any more after his visit.

He had with him at that time a great many drawings of Miss Greenaway's, and in the evening, after dinner, sitting well under the light, surrounded by his adoring little friends, he would show them to us, one by one, expatiating upon their many charms. I vividly recall one, a big oblong sketch in pencil with single washes of color, in which some fifty "exquisite girlettes" are bearing aloft a huge muffin "for the professor's tea."

One member of the family, a little boy of nine, was in bed with a bad cold during Mr. Ruskin's visit, so greatly to his disappointment, did not see him, but hearing that the invalid was a scholarly small boy, who solaced his seclusion by perpetual reading of Pope's "Homer" the master sent him, after he left, a most beautiful edition of that work. He believed in giving young people valuable things to take care of, and when he departed insisted on leaving with us a priceless box of uncut opals to look at "every day for a week," that we might realize their wonderful and varying color; and well do I remember my mother's supreme thankfulness when at the end of the appointed time the gems were sent back to him by registered post..

He also left us his mother's copy of Miss Edgeworth's "Harry and Lucy," with injunctions that my mother should read it aloud to us, or make one of us read it aloud, every evening. We stood it for over a week, then rose in a body, refused to hear any

more, and wrote to him to confess our mutiny. Of course he forgave us, and

wrote:

"Yes, I liked your letter immensely, and Mama was ever so good to make you write it. But I'm afraid the new song, though it must be ever so pretty, must be ever so sad. Also I'm sure T. is forgetting me fast-oh! dear-that horrid college! If only Mama and you and she could come here to college for a little bit, what times we might have! and what singing! not as it was getting dark, but with the birds in the morning. I am so glad Arthur likes Pope's 'Iliad.' If T. likes that, she may take it instead of 'Harry and Lucy.'

"Has she mastered the barometer yet? College indeed!!!"

Nothing gave him more pleasure than to listen to folk-songs of any and every people, and I could always bring him from his room at any minute by opening the drawing-room door and beginning to play softly the first bars of a little Spanish lullaby that he loved. The others were not equally delighted by my powers in this respect, and T., his special favorite, threatened to lock the piano and lose the key if I dared to go near it, after dinner, when she wanted to talk to him.

During his visit he spoke a great deal of the lady-the "Rosie" of Præteritawhose tragic death in 1875 closed for him a volume that had at one time contained his highest hopes and aspirations. So much has been said of her in one place and another that it is no breach of confidence to quote this beautiful description of her, written at the end of '84. "Rose was tall and brightly fair, her face of the most delicately chiselled beauty-too severe to be entirely delightful to all people-the eyes gray, and when she was young, full of play; after the sad times came, the face became nobly serene-and of a strange beauty-so that once a stranger seeing her for the first time said 'she looked like a young sister of Christ's.'

There is no question whatever that he did realize how great his influence was over girls and women, and that he used it always in a sane and noble fashion. This, one of his most serious letters, written just before I was married, will show:

'You do help me intensely by caring so much and by telling me how greatly I still can influence the hearts of women for all

good. For, indeed, it is a mighty gift and blessing this, if I can use it wisely; and I have not words enough to thank your mother for her goodness and trust in saying she would let you come if you could help me.

"But first, nothing can help me in the deep loss of the souls who are far away instead of near me as they were once-neither in the mere languor and gloom of declining life-and even supposing that it were possible, it would not be the least right for you to give up other duties. There is no one for whom we are to give up everything but Christ, and Christ is with you in your mother and your lover. So put all these pitying thoughts out of your mind, and make me happy by being yourself so, in carrying out with so good a helpmate, the ideas of simple and benevolent life you have learnt from

me.

"Supposing I were-all that I have tried to teach others to be-I should be quite happy in thinking of going to Rose. It is failing faith and miserable sense of failure which cause all my suffering, and they can be fought with by none but myself."

As befitted ardent disciples of Ruskin, we spent our honeymoon in Italy, and Florence was made particularly delightful by letters of introduction from him to Mrs. and Miss Alexander ("Francesca") in their beautiful old house close to the church of Santa Maria Novella. These Boston ladies had already for many years made Italy their home, but Mrs. Alexander had lost no whit of her shrewd New England humor, and was full of quaint, caustic wit, and good stories: and they were, like all Americans of their class, untiringly kind and hospitable.

It is difficult to describe Francesca except as entirely "other worldly"; but in no sense that could imply withdrawal or detachment from her kind. She had love and charity enough in her great heart to encircle the whole world, but the serene rightness of her spirit shines through all her work. And no one could watch her at that work, so deft of hand, so certain in every delicate touch of pen or paper-"the total strength of her intellect and fancy being concentrated in this engraver's method"— without feeling that here, indeed, was one who dwelt continuously amid "the peace that passeth understanding.”

Of course I went faithfully into Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce, bearing my little red books and striving faithfully to see all their wonders with other eyes than my own; a painful and generally useless proceeding, which usually ends in headache and irritability. One morning my companion, having caught a bad cold by long tarrying in an extremely cold church (in April, Italian churches are really dreadfully cold), declined to accompany me to the interior of Santa Croce, electing rather to sit on a bench muffled in a great coat, outside in the sun, while I pursued my enthusiastic studies according to the plan laid down in "Mornings in Florence." He declared afterward that he looked so dejected and forlorn that kindly strangers took him for a povero and bestowed soldi upon him-but this is by the way.

I had just reached the tomb of Gallileus de Gallilei, and was straining my eyes to see anything of the "right and lovely lines" whose beauty my book proclaimed-for indeed they were exceeding faint-when I looked up and found another student also bearing her little red book, standing on the other side of the tomb. Our eyes met, and we smiled, and the stranger said slowly: "I guess Mr. Ruskin sees a good deal more in these old graves than we should ever see, if we studied them with a microscope, every inch of them—from now to Thanksgiving. D'you think it's much good looking and looking for what isn't there for us, anyway?" Oh, blessed Yankee common sense! I flew out to the chill-taker and bore him off to sit in the sun at Fiesole. We told the story afterward to Mr. Ruskin himself, and he quite agreed with the American lady. At Venice I found this letter awaiting

me:

"This is just to say I was very glad of your letter, and infinitely amused and pleased by all you did and said and felt at Francesca's, and rather cross at your having been so vexed at having no letter from me on your wedding-day. Just think at sixty-six how many wedding letters a man who has had lots of girl pets must have had to write, and how well he knows them all to be waste-paper, and that more depends on a girl's attending to how much sugar her husband likes in his tea than on all the pious and poetical effusions of her whole dynasty of friends and well-wishers.

"But I wrote A. as nice a letter as I could, and that was much better, and I really hope to have a great deal of joy in you both. Take care of each other and don't tire yourselves in the hot weather, and don't try to admire Tintoret for my sake, but look well at the Paradiso. I hope the day will come when we shall all be flying about like that, just where we like to."

The letter to "A" that he referred to was indeed so beautiful that I cannot forbear to quote the last paragraph, characteristic as it is of the temper of his mind throughout his long, beneficent life.

"This has been a very happy and helpful day to me, and your letter gives a very lovely rose colour to it all. It is a deep honour and joy to me to be able to add to the hope, for you both, of this beginning of new thoughts and ways, an old man's testimony that this world is as much God's world as the world to come-for those who know how to love."

Whatever his devotees may have done, Mr. Ruskin himself would never, even to please his pets, pretend either interest or admiration which he did not feel. And there are, perhaps, persons who will wholeheartedly sympathize with the following sentiments:

"Indeed I'm sorry to have grieved you and A. I knew I should, but couldn't help it. I can't pretend to care for things I don't care for. I don't care for babies. Rather have an objection to them. Have no respect for them whatsoever. Like little pigs ever so much better. Here's my little woodwoman come down to fetch me my faggots; she's got nine piglets to take care of and her whole heart is set on them, and I call her Pigwiggina, and inquire for her family very anxiously every day-but you really mustn't expect me to care for inferior beings."

His heart smote him even then, though, for he writes a little later:

"But indeed you sent me a quite dreadful little shriek when I said I didn't like babies, and you never wrote me a word more, and I was very unhappy about it, and very thankful for the letter to-day."

For pigs he undoubtedly had great respect, which can best be explained by quoting from "Præterita": "I became so resigned to the adoption of my paternally chosen crest as to write my rhymed travelling letters to Joan most frequently in my

heraldic character of "Little Pig," or, royally plural, "Little Pigs," especially when these letters took the tone of confessions, as, for instance, from Keswick in 1857:

"When little Pigs have muffins hot,

And take three quarters for their lot,
Then, little pigs-had better not."

In the following winter it was arranged that we should go and see him after Christmas, taking with us his much-loved T., and he writes: "It would be a real charity and hospital-nurse help and healing if A. and you could come and bring T. any time this winter for as long as you could.

"I shall not write to T. about it, leaving you to plead with her father for me. Perhaps a little for her. The absolute rest and change of Brantwood surely would be good for her. And it is very lovely in winter. No such icicles and frost work anywhere as our lake streams and cascades give, and you would so help me with my school music. I mean to think of it as a reality and rejoice in it."

So did we, and the actual joy of the visit was enhanced tenfold by such a foretaste of welcome as the following:

"This is a Christmas present for me in deed. Mousie, A., and T., all three of you! "I do really love A. as I never did a pet's husband yet. He has been so good and sweet and right and sensible and sympathetic all in one. And you shan't be too jealous of T.-just the least bit-or else I shall be getting jealous of A.

"So many thanks for all, and please give my most true thanks to Mr. W., and say I do trust he will be pleased with all he hears from Brantwood. You come at exactly the best time to help me in my Christmas plans of little festas for the school children-and stay all the days you can, please. You'll see I want you to when you come.

"The happiest times to you both at Christmas and the New Year, and the rest I'll wish by word of mouth.”

People have often asked me what Brantwood was like "was it very artistic?" and I knew they were picturing an abode similar to those depicted in "The House Beautiful" or "The Connoisseur," full of highart furniture and decorated in the style associated with the name of William Morris. I have had to disabuse their minds of this idea completely. Brantwood was full of

beautiful things, certainly, but it was furnished with Early Victorian solidity and comfort: much of the furniture quite frankly plain-looking if not actually ugly; all of it for service, and most of it of a period generally condemned as singularly lacking in graceful design. The house has every natural advantage of situation; all Mr. Ruskin had added was architecturally beautiful, but it was not what we consider nowadays a beautiful house.

Days at Brantwood went by on winged. feet, for the host could never do enough to promote the happiness of his guests, and was practically at their service all day long. He rose at six, and had got through most of the business of the day by the time he met his guests at breakfast at ten o'clock. With breakfast came the post-bag, most weighty proof of the penalties of greatness. The number of parcels, to say nothing of letters, from all sorts of people, was truly fatiguing to contemplate. Sketches, whole galleries of them; poems-how we groaned under the poems! Manuscripts awaiting criticism (our host might have been the editor of a popular magazine), and letters, some admirative, some remonstrating, not to say impertinent (I remember one beginning "Dear but Peppery Mr. Ruskin" from some familiar unknown), upon every conceivable and inconceivable topic.

The known handwritings were speedily sorted out, and a certain pretty ritual was gone through every morning. One letter was always eagerly sought for and read first, that from the "Joanie" of "Præterita." I am quite sure that he could not have got through his day had that loved letter gone amissing. From the time that she came to his mother in their home at Denmark Hill, a girl of seventeen, her tenderness and devotion had never failed him. All such as were admitted to intimate intercourse with Mr. Ruskin could not fail to know how his "more than daughter" stood between him and every preventable distress with tenderest and most discriminating affection. It is quite impossible to overestimate the value to him of this beautiful, unchanging, filial love.

There were sunshine and snow during that happy visit to Brantwood, and Mr. Ruskin was able to lead the way bravely on many a mountain climb. But even if it

*Mrs. Arthur Severn.