he pasturages of the home of
art(!); the loveliest and holiest of lovely and holy cities, where
the very stones cry out, eloquent in the elegancies of
iambics" (!!)--and so forth.

However, it deceived the newspapers, and there was a fine storm, which
Mr. Ruskin rather enjoyed. For though the forgery was clumsy enough, it
embodied some apt plagiarism from a letter to the Mansfield Art School
on a similar occasion.

Not long before, a forgery of a more serious kind had been committed by
one of the people connected with St. George's Guild, who had put Mr.
Ruskin's name to cheques. The bank authorities were long in tracing the
crime. They even sent a detective to Brantwood to watch one of the
assistants, who never knew--nor will ever know--that he was honoured
with such attentions; and none of his friends for a moment believed him
guilty. He had sometimes imitated Mr. Ruskin's hand; a dangerous jest.
The real culprit was discovered at last, and Mr. Ruskin had to go to
London as a witness for the prosecution. "Being in very weak health,"
the _Times_ report said (April 1st, 1879), "he was allowed to give
evidence from the bench." He had told the Sheffield communists that "he
thought so strongly on the subject of the repression of crime that he
dare not give expression to his ideas for fear of being charged with
cruelty"; but no sooner was the prisoner released than he gave the help
needed to start him again in a better career.

Though he did not feel able to lecture to strangers at Chesterfield, he
visited old friends at Eton, on November 6th, 1880, to give an address
on Amiens. For once he forgot his MS., but the lecture was no less
brilliant and interesting. It was practically the first chapter of his
new work, the "Bible of Amiens,"--itself intended as the first volume of
"Our Fathers have Told us: Sketches of the History of Christendom, for
Boys and Girls who have been held at its Fonts." The distinctly
religious tone of the work was noticed as marking, if not a change, a
strong development of a tendency which had been strengthening for some
time past.

Early in 1879 the Rev. F.A. Malleson, vicar of Broughton, near Coniston,
had asked him to write, for the Furness Clerical Society's Meetings, a
series of letters on the Lord's Prayer. In them he dwelt upon the need
of living faith in the Fatherhood of God, and childlike obedience to the
commands of old-fashioned religion and morality. He criticised the