institutions in which he took an interest at one
time or other. But he had sufficient for his wants, and no need to fear
poverty in his old age.

In this quiet retreat at Brantwood the echoes of the outer world did
not sound very loudly. Ruskin had been too highly praised and too
roundly abused, during fifty years of public life, to care what magazine
critics and journalists said of him. Other men of his standing could
solace themselves, if it be solace, in the consciousness that a grateful
country has recognised their talents or their services. But civic and
academic honours were not likely to be showered on a man who had spent
his life in strenuous opposition to academicism in art and letters, and
in vigorous attacks upon both political parties, and upon the
established order of things.

And yet Oxford and Cambridge awarded him the highest honours in their
gift. In 1873 the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours voted him
honorary member, a recognition which gave him great pleasure at the time.
At different dates he was elected to various societies--Geological,
Zoological, Architectural, Horticultural, Historical, Anthropological,
Metaphysical; and to the Athenaeum and Alpine Clubs. He was elected Hon.
Member of the Academy of Florence in 1862, of the Academy of Venice,
1877, of the Royal Academies of Antwerp and Brussels in 1892; and was
also an Hon. Member of the American Academy. But he did not seek
distinctions, and he even declined them, as in the case of the medal of
the Royal Institute of British Architects.

A more striking form of distinction than such titles is the fact that he
was the first writer whose contemporaries, during his lifetime, formed
societies to study his work. The first Ruskin Society was founded in
1879 at Manchester, and was followed by the Societies of London, Glasgow
and Liverpool. In 1887 the Ruskin Reading Guild was formed in Scotland,
with many local branches in England and Ireland, and a journal,
subsequently re-named _Igdrasil_, to promote study of literary and
social subjects in Ruskin, and in writers like Carlyle and Tolstoi
taking a standpoint similar to his. In 1896, Ruskin Societies were
formed at Birmingham and in the Isle of Man. Many classes and clubs for
the study of Ruskin were also in operation throughout America during his
lifetime.

His eightieth birthday was the signal for an outburst of congratulations
almost greater than even admirers had expected. The post cam