nd address them upon topics in
which he and they were interested. These appearances on the lecture
platform were now numerous, since many throughout the kingdom were eager
to see and know the man whose art criticisms, principles that govern the
beautiful, and stimulating thought on all subjects, had made so deep an
impression on the reflecting minds of the age. His earliest appearance
on the rostrum was at Edinburgh, where he delivered four lectures
before the Philosophical Institution, chiefly on landscape-painters and
on Christian art, with a plea for the use of Gothic in domestic
architecture. Subsequent appearances were at Manchester, where he spoke
on the Political Economy of Art and the relation of art to manufactures;
at the South Kensington Museum, London, which had just been opened; and
later at Oxford, where further on in his career he became Slade
Professor of Art in his own University. From the accounts of these
public lectures we get opinions as to the personal appearance of Ruskin
at the period which add to our knowledge of him from paintings,
drawings, and photographs, though not a few of these accounts vary from
those given us in books, chiefly sketched by his lady friends and
correspondents. The more trusty of the contemporary pictures speak of
him as having "light, sand-colored hair; his face more red than pale;
the mouth well cut, with a good deal of decision in its curve, though
somewhat wanting in sustained dignity and strength; an aquiline nose;
his forehead by no means broad or massive, but the brows full and well
bound together; the eye [says the observer from whom we are quoting] we
could not see, in consequence of the shadows that fell upon his
[Ruskin's] countenance from the lights overhead, but we are sure that
the poetry and passion we looked for almost in vain in other features
must be concentrated here." Miss Mitford speaks of him at this time as
"eloquent and distinguished-looking, fair and slender, with a gentle
playfulness, and a sort of pretty waywardness that was quite charming."
Another, a visitor at his London home, characterizes him as "emotional
and nervous, with a soft, genial eye, a mouth thin and severe, and a
voice that, though rich and sweet, yet had a tendency to sink into a
plaintive and hopeless tone." Later on in years we have this verbal
portrait from a disciple of the great art-teacher, occurring in an
inaugural address delivered before the Ruskin Society of Glasgow: "Tha