d "Fors" had been
pioneering.

"I'm not gone to Venice yet," wrote Ruskin to Miss Beever, "but thinking
of it hourly. I'm very nearly done with toasting my bishop; he just
wants another turn or two, and then a little butter." The toasting and
the buttering appeared in the _Contemporary Review_ for February 1880;
and this incident led him to feel that the mission of "Fors" was not
finished. If bishops were still unenlightened, there was yet work to do.
He gave up Venice, and resumed his crusade.

Brantwood life was occasionally interrupted by short excursions to
London or elsewhere. In the autumn he had heard Professor Huxley on the
evolution of reptiles; and this suggested another treatment of the
subject, from his own artistic and ethical point of view, in a lecture
oddly called "A Caution to Snakes," given at the London Institution,
March 17th, 1880 (repeated March 23rd, and printed in "Deucalion"). He
was not merely an amateur zoologist and F.Z.S., but a devoted lover and
keen observer of animals. It would take long to tell the story of all
his dogs, from the spaniel Dash, commemorated in his earliest poems, and
Wisie, whose sagacity is related in "Praeterita," down through the long
line of bulldogs, St. Bernards, and collies, to Bramble, the reigning
favourite; and all the cats who made his study their home, or were
flirted with abroad. To Miss Beever, from Bolton Abbey (January 24th,
1875) he describes the Wharfe in flood, and then continues: "I came home
(to the hotel) to quiet tea, and a black kitten called Sweep, who lapped
half my cream-jugful (and yet I had plenty), sitting on my shoulder."
Grip, the pet rook at Denmark Hill, is mentioned in "My First Editor,"
as celebrated in verse by Mr. W.H. Harrison.

Ruskin had not Thoreau's intimate acquaintance with the details of wild
life, but his attitude towards animals and plants was the same; hating
the science that murders to dissect; resigning his Professorship at
Oxford, finally, because vivisection was introduced into the University;
and supporting the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals with
all his heart. But, as he said at the Annual Meeting in 1877, he
objected to the sentimental fiction and exaggerated statements which
some of its members circulated. "They had endeavoured to prevent cruelty
to animals," he said, "but they had not enough endeavoured to promote
affection for animals. He trusted to the pets of children for their
education, ju