st as much as to their tutors."

It was to carry out this idea (to anticipate a little) that he founded
the Society of Friends of Living Creatures, which he addressed, May
23rd, 1885, at the club, Bedford Park, in his capacity of--not
president--but "papa." The members, boys and girls from seven to
fifteen, promised not to kill nor hurt any animal for sport, nor tease
creatures; but to make friends of their pets and watch their habits, and
collect facts about natural history.

I remember, on one of the rambles at Coniston in the early days, how we
found a wounded buzzard--one of the few creatures of the eagle kind that
our English mountains still breed. The rest of us were not very ready to
go near the beak and talons of the fierce-looking, and, as we supposed,
desperate bird. Ruskin quietly took it up in his arms, felt it over to
find the hurt, and carried it, quite unresistingly, out of the way of
dogs and passers-by, to a place where it might die in solitude or
recover in safety. He often told his Oxford hearers that he would rather
they learned to love birds than to shoot them; and his wood and moor
were harbours of refuge for hunted game or "vermin;" and his windows the
rendezvous of the little birds.

He had not been abroad since the spring of 1877, and in August 1880 felt
able to travel again. He went for a tour among the northern French
cathedrals, staying at old haunts,--Abbeville, Amiens, Beauvais,
Chartres, Rouen,--and then returned with Mr. A. Severn and Mr. Brabazon
to Amiens, where he spent the greater part of October. He was writing a
new book--the "Bible of Amiens"--which was to be to the "Seven Lamps"
what "St. Mark's Rest" was to "Stones of Venice."

Before he returned, the secretary of the Chesterfield Art School had
written to ask him to address the students. Mr. Ruskin, travelling
without a secretary, and in the flush of new work and thronging ideas,
put the letter aside; he carried his letters about in bundles in his
portmanteau, as he said in his apology, "and looked at them as Ulysses
at the bags of Aeolus." Some wag had the impudence to forge a reply,
which was actually read at the meeting in spite of its obviously
fictitious style and statements:

"HARLESDEN(!), LONDON, _Friday_.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"Your letter reaches me here. Have just returned [commercial
English, not Ruskin] from Venice [where he had meant to go, but did
not go] where I have ruminated(!) in t