he
was at work again in his new study, looking out upon the quiet meadow
and grazing cows of Denmark Hill, and rapidly throwing into form the
fresh impressions of the summer. He was strongly influenced by the
sermons of Canon Melvill--the same preacher whom Browning in his youth
admired--a good orator and sound analytic expositor, though not a great
or independent thinker. Osborne Gordon had recommended him to read
Hooker, and he caught the tone and style of the "Ecclesiastical Polity"
only too readily, so that much of his work of that winter, the more
philosophical part of vol. ii., was damaged by inversions, and
Elizabethan quaintness as of ruff and train, long epexegetical
sentences, and far-sought pomposity of diction. It was only when he had
waded through the chaos which he set himself to survey, that he could
lay aside his borrowed stilts, and stand on his own feet in the Tintoret
descriptions--rather stiff, yet, from foregone efforts.

This volume, like the first, was completed in the winter, in one long
spell of hard work, broken only by a visit to Oxford in January as the
guest of Dr. Greswell, Head of Worcester, at a conference for the
promotion of art. Smith and Elder accepted the book on Mr. J.J. Ruskin's
terms (so his wife wrote), for they had already reported it as called
for by the public. The first volume was going into a third edition.

When his book came out he was away again in Italy, trying to show his
father all that he had seen in the Campo Santo and Giotto's Tower, and
to explain "why it more than startled him." The good man hardly felt the
force of it all at once. And there were little passages of arms and some
heart-quaking and head-shaking, until Mr. Dale, the old schoolmaster,
wrote that he had heard no less a man than Sydney Smith mention the new
book in public, in the presence of "distinguished literary characters,"
as a work of "transcendent talent, presenting the most original views,
in the most elegant and powerful language, which would work a complete
revolution in the world of taste." When he returned home it was to find
a respectful welcome. His word on matters of Art was now really worth
something, and before long it was called for. The National Gallery was
comparatively in its infancy. It had been established less than
twenty-five years, and its manager, Mr. Eastlake (afterwards Sir
Charles), had his hands full, what with rascally dealers in forged old
masters, and incompetent pict