iscriminating, applause.) To many of
his prejudices, Mr. Ruskin said, in the last few years the axe had
been laid. He had positively found an American, a young lady, whose
life and drawing were in every way admirable. (Again great and
generous applause on the part of the undergraduates, stimulated, no
doubt, by the knowledge that there were then in the room two fair
Americans, who have lately graced Oxford by their presence.) At the
end of his lecture Mr. Ruskin committed himself to a somewhat
perilous statement. He had found two young Italian artists in whom
the true spirit of old Italian art had yet lived. No hand like
theirs had been put to paper since Lippi and Leonardo."

[Footnote 48: Referring to Misses Alexander and Greenaway, and Messrs.
Boni and Alessandri.]

Three more lectures of the course were given in May, and each repeated
to a second audience. Coming to London, he gave a private lecture on
June 5th to some two hundred hearers at the house of Mrs. W.H. Bishop,
in Kensington, on Miss Kate Greenaway and Miss Alexander. The
_Spectator_ shared his enthusiasm for the pen and ink drawings of Miss
Alexander's "Roadside Songs of Tuscany," and concluded a glowing account
of the lecture by saying: "All Professor Ruskin's friends must be glad
to see how well his Oxford work has agreed with him. He has gifts of
insight and power of reaching the best feelings and highest hopes of our
too indifferent generation which are very rare."

With much encouragement in his work, he returned to Brantwood for the
summer, and resolved upon another visit to Savoy for more geology, and
another breath of health-giving Alpine air. But he found time only for a
short tour in Scotland before returning to Oxford to complete the series
of lectures on recent English Art. During this term he was prevailed
upon to allow himself to be nominated as a candidate for the Rectorship
of the University of Glasgow. He had been asked to stand in the
Conservative interest in 1880, and he had been worried into a rather
rough reply to the Liberal party, when after some correspondence they
asked him whether he sympathised with Lord Beaconsfield or Mr.
Gladstone. "What, in the devil's name," he exclaimed, "have _you_ to do
with either Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are students at the
University, and have no more business with politics than you have with
rat-catching. Had you ever read ten words of m