hat might promote the cause he had
at heart.

Already at the end of 1854 he had given three lectures, his second
course, at the Architectural Museum, specially addressed to workmen in
the decorative trades. His subjects were design and colour, and his
illustrations were chiefly drawn from mediaeval illumination, which he
had long been studying. These were informal, quasi-private affairs,
which nevertheless attracted notice owing to the celebrity of the
speaker. It would have been better if his addresses had been carefully
prepared and authentically published; for a chance word here and there
raised replies about matters of detail in which his critics thought they
had gained a technical advantage, adding weight to his father's desire
not to see him "expose himself" in this way. There were no more lectures
until the beginning of 1857.

On January 23rd, 1857, he spoke before the Architectural Association
upon "The Influence of Imagination in Architecture," repeating and
amplifying what he had said at Edinburgh about the subordinate value of
proportion, and the importance of sculptured ornament based on natural
forms. This of course would involve the creation of a class of
stone-carvers who could be trusted with the execution of such work. Once
grant the value of it, and public demand would encourage the supply, and
the workmen would raise themselves in the effort.

A louder note was sounded in an address at the St. Martin's School of
Art, Castle Street, Long Acre (April 3rd, 1857), where, speaking after
George Cruikshank, his old friend--practically his first master--and an
enthusiastic philanthropist and temperance advocate, Ruskin gave his
audience a wider view of art than they had known before: "the kind of
painting they most wanted in London was painting cheeks red with
health." This was anticipating the standpoint of the Oxford Lectures,
and showed how the inquiry was beginning to take a much broader aspect.

Another work in a similar spirit, the North London School of Design,
had been prosperously started by a circle of men under Pre-Raphaelite
influence, and led by Thomas Seddon. He had given up historical and
poetic painting for naturalistic landscape, and had returned from the
East with the most valuable studies completed, only to break down and
die prematurely. His friends, among them Holman Hunt, were collecting
money to buy from the widow his picture of Jerusalem from the Mount of
Olives, to present it to t