ned from side to side--never
nodded (except sleepily). I send you the proofs just to show you
I'm at work. I'm going to translate all the story of Delphic answer
before Anabasis: and his speech after the sleepless night."

Delphic answers--for he was then again brought into contact with
"spiritualism"; and sleepless nights--for the excitement of overwork was
telling upon him--were becoming too frequent in his own experience; and
yet the lectures on Reynolds went off with success.[37] The magic of his
oratory transmuted the scribbled jottings of his MS. into a magnificent
flow of rolling paragraph and rounded argument that thrilled a captious
audience with unwonted emotion, and almost persuaded many a hearer to
accept the gospel of "the Ethereal Ruskin." In spite of a sense of
antagonism to his surroundings, he did useful work which none other
could do in the University. That this was acknowledged was proved by his
re-election, early in 1876: but his third term of three years was a time
of weakened health. Repeated absence from his post and inability to
fulfil his duties made it obviously his wisest course, at the end of
that term, to resign the Slade Professorship.

[Footnote 37: Nov. 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 25, and 27;
1875.]

CHAPTER IV

ST. GEORGE AND ST. MARK (1875-1877)

In the book his Bertha of Canterbury was reading at twilight on the Eve
of St. Mark, Keats might have been describing "Fors." Among its pages,
fascinating with their golden broideries of romance and wit, perplexing
with mystic vials of wrath as well as all the Seven Lamps and Shekinah
of old and new Covenants commingled, there was gradually unfolded the
plan of "St. George's Work."

The scheme was not easy to apprehend; it was essentially different from
anything then known, though superficially like several bankrupt Utopias.
Ruskin did not want to found a phalanstery, or to imitate Robert Owen
or the Shakers. That would have been practicable--and useless.

He wanted much more. He aimed at the gradual introduction of higher aims
into ordinary life: it giving true refinement to the lower classes, true
simplicity to the upper. He proposed that idle hands should reclaim
waste lands; that healthy work and country homes should be offered to
townsfolk who would "come out of the gutter." He asked land-owners and
employers to furnish opportunities for such reforms;--which would
involve no elaborate organization nor