a
sufficient consent, by leading artists." As a first step the author
asked for the elementary rules of drawing. For his own contribution he
showed the value of the "pure line," such as he had used in his own
early drawings. Later on, he had adopted a looser and more picturesque
style of handling the point; and in the "Elements of Drawing" he had
taught his readers to take Rembrandt's etchings as exemplary. But now he
felt that this "evasive" manner, as he called it, had its dangers. And
so these papers attempted to supersede the amateurish object lesson of
the earlier work by stricter rules for a severer style; prematurely, as
it proved, for the chapters came to an end before the promised code was
formulated. The same work was taken up again in "The Laws of Fesole";
but the use of the pure line, which Ruskin's precepts failed to enforce,
was, in the end, taught to the public by the charming practice of Mr.
Walter Crane and Miss Greenaway.

A lecture at the Camberwell Working Men's Institute on "Work and Play"
was given on January 24th, 1865; which, as it was printed in "The Crown
of Wild Olive," we will notice further on. Various letters and papers on
political and social economy and other subjects hardly call for separate
notice: with the exception of one very important address to the Royal
Institution of British Architects, given May 15th, "On the Study of
Architecture in our Schools."

CHAPTER V

"ETHICS OF THE DUST" (1865)

Writing to his father from Manchester about the lecture of February 22,
1859--"The Unity of Art"--Ruskin mentions, among various people of
interest whom he was meeting, such as Sir Elkanah Armitage and Mrs.
Gaskell, how "Miss Bell and four young ladies came from Chester to hear
me, and I promised to pay them a visit on my way home, to their apparent
great contentment."

The visit was paid on his way back from Yorkshire. He wrote:

"WINNINGTON, NORTHWICH, CHESHIRE.

"12 _March_, 1859.

"This is such a nice place that I am going to stay till Monday: an
enormous old-fashioned house--full of galleries and up and down
stairs--but with magnificently large rooms where wanted: the
drawing-room is a huge octagon--I suppose at least forty feet
high--like the tower of a castle (hung half way up all round with
large and beautiful Turner and Raphael engravings) and with a
baronial fireplace:--and in the evening, brightly lighted, with the