wards the close of the meal. "Oh!" said he,
"it's 'the coz' you call Mr. Ruskin. I thought you were saying' the
cuss!'"

There are generally two or three young people staying in the house,
salaried assistants[43] or amateur, occasional helpers; but though there
is a succession of visitors from a distance, there is not very frequent
entertainment of neighbours.

[Footnote 43: The face most familiar at Brantwood in those times was
"Laurie's." A strange, bright, gifted boy--admirable draughtsman,
ingenious mechanician, marvellous actor; the imaginer of the quaintest
and drollest humours that ever entered the head of man; devoted to boats
and boating, but unselfishly ready to share all labours and contribute
to all diversions; painstaking and perfect in his work, and brilliant in
his wit,--Laurence Hilliard was dearly loved by his friends, and is
still loved by them dearly. He was Ruskin's chief secretary at Brantwood
from Jan., 1876 to 1882, when the death of his father, and ill-health,
led him to resign the post, which was then filled by Miss Sara D.
Anderson. Hilliard continued to live at Coniston, and was just beginning
to succeed as a painter of still life and landscape when he died of
pleurisy on board a friend's yacht in the Aegean, April 11th, 1887, aged
thirty-two.]

A Brantwood dinner is always ample; there is no asceticism about the
place; nor is there any affectation of "intensity" or of conversational
cleverness. The neat things you meant to say are forgotten--you must be
hardened indeed to say them to Mr. Ruskin's face; but if you were shy,
you soon feel that there was no need for shyness; you have fallen among
friends; and before dessert comes in, with fine old sherry--the pride of
your host, as he explains--you feel that nobody understands you so well,
and that all his books are nothing to himself.

They don't sit over their wine, and smoking is not allowed. Ruskin goes
off to his study after dinner--it is believed for a nap, for he was at
work early and has been out all the afternoon. In the drawing-room you
see pictures--water-colours by Turner and Hunt, drawings by Prout and
Ruskin, an early Burne-Jones, a sketch in oil by Gainsborough. The
furniture is the old mahogany of Mr. Ruskin's childhood, with rare
things interspersed--like the cloisonne vases on the mantelpiece.

Soon after nine Ruskin comes in with an armful of things that are going
to the Sheffield museum, and while his cousin makes his te