journey home, and
gave as a lecture on "Cistercian Architecture" (London Institution,
December 4th, 1882), in place of the previously advertised lecture on
crystallography.

He seemed now to have quite recovered his health, and to be ready for
re-entry into public life. What was more, he had many new things to say.
The attacks of brain fever had passed over him like passing storms,
leaving a clear sky.

After his retirement from the Oxford Professorship, a subscription had
been opened for a bust by Sir Edgar Boehm, in memorial of a University
benefactor; and the model (now in the Sheffield Museum) was placed in
the Drawing School pending the collection of the necessary L220. _The
Oxford University Herald_, in its article of June 5th, 1880, no doubt
expressed the general feeling in reciting his benefactions to the
University with becoming appreciation.

It was natural, therefore, that on recovering his health he should
resume his post. Professor (now Sir) W.B. Richmond, the son of his old
friend Mr. George Richmond, gracefully retired, and the _Oxford
University Gazette_ of January 16th, 1883, announced the re-election.
On March 2nd he wrote that he was "up the Old Man yesterday"; as much as
to say that he defied catechism, now, about his health; and a week later
he gave his first lecture. The _St. James's Budget_ of March 16th gave
an account of it in these terms:

"Mr. Ruskin's first lecture at Oxford attracted so large an
audience that, half-an-hour before the time fixed for its delivery,
a greater number of persons were collected about the doors than the
lecture-room could hold. Immediately after the doors were opened
the room was so densely packed that some undergraduates found it
convenient to climb into the windows and on to the cupboards. The
audience was composed almost equally of undergraduates and ladies;
with the exception of the vice-chancellor, heads of houses,
fellows, and tutors were chiefly conspicuous by their absence."

I omit an abstract of the lecture, which can be read in full in the "Art
of England." The reporter continued:

"He had made some discoveries: two lads and two lasses, who[48] ...
could draw in a way to please even him. He used to say that, except
in a pretty graceful way, no woman can draw; he had now almost come
to think that no one else can. (This statement the undergraduates
received with gallant, if und