elyan's sister, Mrs. Hilliard, to
chaperone the same young ladies, and three servants with them. They
started on April 27th; stayed awhile at Meurice's to see Paris; and at
Geneva, to go up the Saleve, twice, in bitter black east wind. Then
across the Simplon to Milan. After a month at Venice and Verona, where
he recurred to his scheme against inundation, then ridiculed by _Punch_,
but afterwards taken up seriously by the Italians, they went to
Florence, and met Professor Norton. In the end of June they turned
homewards, by Pisa and Lucca, Milan and Como, and went to visit their
friend Marie of the Giessbach.

At the Giessbach they spent a fortnight, enjoying the July weather and
glorious walks, in the middle of which war was suddenly declared between
Germany and France. The summons of their German waiter to join his
regiment brought the news home to them, as such personal examples do,
more than columns of newspaper print; and as hostilities were rapidly
beginning, Ruskin, with the gloomiest forebodings for the beautiful
country he loved, took his party home straight across France, before the
ways should be closed.

August was a month of feverish suspense to everybody; to no one more
than to Ruskin, who watched the progress of the armies while he worked
day by day at the British Museum preparing lectures for next term.
This was the course on Greek relief-sculpture, published as "Aratra
Pentelici."[23] It was a happy thought to illustrate his subject
from coins, rather than from disputed and mutilated fragments;
and he worked into it his revised theory of the origin of art--not
Schiller's nor Herbert Spencer's, and yet akin to theirs of the
"Spieltrieb,"--involving the notion of doll-play;--man as a child,
re-creating himself, in a double sense; imitating the creation of the
world and really creating a sort of secondary life in his art, to play
with, or to worship. In the last lecture of the series (published
separately) the Professor compared--as the outcome of classic art in
Renaissance times--Michelangelo and Tintoret, greatly to the
disadvantage of Michelangelo. This heresy against a popular creed served
as text for some severe criticism; but as he said in a prefatory note to
the pamphlet, readers "must observe that its business is only to point
out what is to be blamed in Michael Angelo, and that it assumes the fact
of his power to be generally known," and he referred to Mr. Tyrwhitt's
"Lectures on Christian Art"