new
interest to the members of this University: but only that I might
obtain the sanction of their audience, for the enforcement upon
other minds of the truth, which--after thirty years spent in the
study of art, not dishonestly, however feebly--is manifest to me as
the clearest of all that I have learned, and urged upon me as the
most vital of all I have to declare."

He then distinguished between true and false art, the true depending
upon sincerity, whether in literature, music or the formative arts: he
reinforced his old doctrine of the dignity of true imagination as the
attribute of healthy and earnest minds; and energetically attacked the
commercial art-world of the day, and the notion that drawing-schools
were to be supported for the sake of the gain they would bring to our
manufacturers.

In this lecture we see the germ of the ideas, as well as the beginning
of the style, of the Oxford Inaugural course, and the "Eagle's Nest";
something quite different in type from the style and teaching of the
addresses to working men, or to mixed popular audiences at Edinburgh or
Manchester, or even at the Royal Institution. At this latter place, on
June 4th, Sir Henry Holland in the chair, he lectured on "The Present
State of Modern Art, with reference to advisable arrangement of the
National Gallery," repeating much of what he had said in "Time and Tide"
about the taste for the horrible and absence of true feeling for pure
and dignified art in the theatrical shows of the day, and in the
admiration for Gustave Dore, then a new fashion. Mr. Ruskin could never
endure that the man who had illustrated Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques"
should be chosen by the religious public of England as the exponent of
their sacred ideals.

In July after a short visit to Huntly Burn near Abbotsford, he went to
Keswick for a few weeks, from whence he wrote the rhymed letters to his
cousin at home, quoted (with the date wrongly given as 1857) in
"Praeterita" to illustrate his "heraldic character" of "Little Pigs" and
to shock exoteric admirers. Like, for example, Rossetti and Carlyle,
Ruskin was fond of playful nicknames and grotesque terms of endearment.
He never stood upon his dignity with intimates; and was ready to allow
the liberties he took, much to the surprise of strangers.

He reached Keswick by July 4, and spent his time chiefly in walks upon
the hills, staying at the Derwentwater Hotel. He wrote: