may go on. At all events I hope to find an
Alpine rose or two."

In June, 1866, the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford was vacant; and
Ruskin's friends were anxious to see him take the post. He, however,
felt no especial fitness or inclination for it, and did not stand. Three
years later he was elected to a Professorship that at this time had not
been founded.

After spending June in the Oberland, he went homewards through Berne,
Vevey and Geneva, to find his private secretary with a bundle of begging
letters, and his friend Carlyle busy with the defence of Governor Eyre.

In 1865 an insurrection of negroes at Morant Bay, Jamaica, had
threatened to take the most serious shape, when it was stamped out by
the high-handed measures of Mr. Eyre. After the first congratulations
were over another side to the question called for a hearing. The Baptist
missionaries declared that among the negroes who were shot and hanged
_in terrorem_ were peaceable subjects, respectable members of their own
native congregations, for whose character they could vouch; they added
that the gravity of the situation had been exaggerated by private enmity
and jealousy of their work and creed. A strong committee was formed
under Liberal auspices, supported by such men as John Stuart Mill and
Thomas Hughes, the author of "Tom Brown's Schooldays"--men whose motive
was above suspicion--to bring Mr. Eyre to account.

Carlyle, who admired the strong hand, and had no interest in Baptist
missionaries, accepted Mr. Eyre as the saviour of society in his West
Indian sphere; and there were many, both in Jamaica and at home, who
believed that, but for his prompt action, the white population would
have been massacred with all the horrors of a savage rebellion. Ruskin
had been for many years the ally of the Broad Church and Liberal party.
But he was now coming more and more under the personal influence of
Carlyle; and when it came to the point of choosing sides, declared
himself, in a letter to the _Daily Telegraph_ (December 20th, 1865), a
Conservative and a supporter of order; and joined the Eyre Defence
Committee with a subscription of L100. The prominent part he took, for
example, in the meeting of September, 1866, was no doubt forced upon him
by his desire to save Carlyle, whose recent loss and shaken nerves made
such business especially trying to him. Letters of this period remain,
in which Carlyle begs Ruskin to "be diligent, I bid you!"--and so on,