onable and unendurable to me! All which they might very
easily have found out from my books--any other sort of sect
would!--before bothering me to write it to them.

"Ever, nevertheless, and in all this saying, your faithful servant,

"JOHN RUSKIN."

The recipient of the letter promptly sold it. Only three days later,
Ruskin was writing one of the most striking passages in "Praeterita"
(vol. ii., chap. 5)--indeed, one of the daintiest landscape pieces in
all his works, describing the blue Rhone as it flows under the bridges
of Geneva.

This energetic letter-writing made people stare; but a more serious
result of these periods between strength and helplessness was the
tendency to misunderstanding with old friends. Ruskin had spoiled many
of them, if I may say so, by too uniform forbearance and unselfishness:
and now that he was not always strong enough to be patient, difficulties
ensued which they had not always the tact to avert. "The moment I have
to scold people they say I'm crazy," he said, piteously, one day. And
so, one hardly knows how, he found himself at strife on all sides.
Before he was fully recovered from the attack of 1886 there were
troubles about the Oxford drawing school; and he withdrew most of the
pictures he had there on loan. How little animosity he really felt
against Oxford is shown from the fact that early in the next year
(February, 1887) he was planning with his cousin, Wm. Richardson, to
give L5,000 to the drawing school, as a joint gift in memory of their
two mothers. Mr. Richardson's death, and Ruskin's want of means--for he
had already spent all his capital--put an end to the scheme. But the
remaining loans, including important and valuable drawings by himself,
he did not withdraw, and it is to be hoped they may stay there to show
not only the artist's hand but the friendly heart of the founder and
benefactor.

In April, 1887, came the news of Laurence Hilliard's death in the
Aegean, with a shock that intensified the tendency to another recurrence
of illness. For months the situation caused great anxiety. In August he
posted with Mrs. A. Severn towards the south, and took up his quarters
at Folkestone, moving soon after to Sandgate, where he remained, with
short visits to town, until the following summer--better, or worse, from
week to week--sometimes writing a little for "Praeterita," or preparing
material for the continuation of unfinished books; but bringing on his
malady with each