ult that they
have remained unfulfilled; nor do I retract one word of hope for the
success of other masters, nor a single promise made to the sincerity of
the student's labor, on the lines here indicated. It would have been
necessary to my success, that I should have accepted permanent residence
in Oxford, and scattered none of my energy in other tasks. But I chose
to spend half my time at Coniston Waterhead; and to use half my force in
attempts to form a new social organization,--the St. George's
Guild,--which made all my Oxford colleagues distrustful of me, and many
of my Oxford hearers contemptuous. My mother's death in 1871, and that
of a dear friend in 1875, took away the personal joy I had in anything I
wrote or designed: and in 1876, feeling unable for Oxford duty, I
obtained a year's leave of rest, and, by the kind and wise counsel of
Prince Leopold, went to Venice, to reconsider the form into which I had
cast her history in the abstract of it given in the "Stones of Venice."

The more true and close view of that history, begun in "St. Mark's
Rest," and the fresh architectural drawings made under the stimulus of
it, led me forward into new fields of thought, inconsistent with the
daily attendance needed by my Oxford classes; and in my discontent with
the state I saw them in, and my inability to return to their guidance
without abandonment of all my designs of Venetian and Italian history,
began the series of vexations which ended in the very nearly mortal
illness of 1878.

Since, therefore, the period of my effective action in Oxford was only
from 1870 to 1875, it can scarcely be matter of surprise or reproof that
I could not in that time obtain general trust in a system of teaching
which, though founded on that of Da Vinci and Reynolds, was at variance
with the practice of all recent European academy schools; nor
establish--on the unassisted resources of the Slade Professorship--the
schools of Sculpture, Architecture, Metal-work, and manuscript
Illumination, of which the design is confidently traced in the four
inaugural lectures.

In revising the book, I have indicated as in the last edition of the
"Seven Lamps," passages which the student will find generally
applicable, and in all their bearings useful, as distinguished from
those regarding only their immediate subject. The relative importance of
these broader statements, I again indicate by the use of capitals or
italics; and if the reader will index the