By this time, of which we have been writing, Ruskin had reached the early meridian of his powers, and, as we have hinted, had wrested from the unwilling many a juster recognition of his amazing industry and genius.  To his fond and indulgent parents this was a great source of pride and satisfaction, and the practical evidence of it was the throng of visitors to the family seats of Herne Hill and Denmark Hill, in the then London suburbs, where Ruskin long had his home, and by the attentions and honor paid to their son by universities, academies, and public bodies, as well as by many eminent personages and the intellectual elite of the nation.  Among those with whom the young celebrity was then ultimate and reckoned among his admiring correspondents were, besides Turner (who died in 1851) and the chief artists of the time, the Carlyles and the Brownings, Mary Russell Mitford, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Charles Eliot Norton, Lady Trevelyan (Macaulay’s sister), Whewell, Maurice, Kingsley, Dr. John Brown (author of “Rab and his Friends"), Tennyson, and Dean Milman.  To these might be added many notable foreigners whom he either met with in his continental travels or who were attracted to him by a lively interest in his writings.  In his home, thanks to a wealthy and indulgent father, he was surrounded with every comfort, short of luxury, if we except under the latter the large sums expended on the purchase of “Turners” and many famous foreign pictures, and a vast and increasing collection of favorite books and other treasures and curios.

Of the author’s home-life we get many delightful reminiscences in “Praeterita,” with entertaining talks of his childhood days, his youthful companions, his toys and animate pets, his early playful adventures in authorship, and other garrulities with which, late in life when the work, as it remains, was incompletely put together, he beguiled the weariness and feebleness of old age.  But we are anticipating, for we are writing of Ruskin when his hand was yet on the plough, and the plough was still in the furrow, and half a long life’s arduous work was yet before him.  At this era, no brain could well have been more active or fuller of philanthropies than his, for we approach the second period of his life’s grand activities,—­the era of a new departure in the interests that occupied him and the herculean tasks he set himself to do.

Before recording some of the achievements of this time and glancing at the inciting causes of the transition which marks the era we have now reached, let us note the demands made upon Mr. Ruskin’s thought and labor by universities and public institutions, whose audiences desired to have him appear before them in person and 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