Mr. John James Ruskin, like many other of our successful merchants, had been an open-handed patron of art, and a cheerful giver, not only to needy friends and relatives, but also to various charities.  For example, as a kind of personal tribute to Osborne Gordon, his son’s tutor, he gave L5,000 toward the augmentation of poor Christ-Church livings.  His son’s open-handed way with dependants and servants was learned from the old merchant, who, unlike many hard-working money-makers, was always ready to give, though he could not bear to lose.  In spite of which he left a considerable fortune behind him,—­considerable when it is understood to be the earnings of his single-handed industry and steady sagacity in legitimate business, without indulgence in speculation.  He left L120,000 with various other property, to his son.  To his wife he left his house and L37,000, and a void which it seemed at first nothing could fill.  For of late years the son had drifted out of their horizon, with ideas on religion and the ordering of life so very different from theirs; and had been much away from home—­he sometimes said, selfishly, but not without the greatest of all excuses, necessity.  And so the two old people had been brought closer than ever together; and she had lived entirely for her husband.  But, as Browning said,—­“Put a stick in anywhere, and she will run up it”—­so the brave old lady did not faint under the blow, and fade away, but transferred her affections and interests to her son.  Before his father’s death the difference of feeling between them, arising out of the heretical economy, had been healed.  Old Mr. Ruskin’s will treated his son with all confidence in spite of his unorthodox views and unbusiness-like ways.  And for nearly eight years longer his mother lived on, to see him pass through his probation-period into such recognition as an Oxford Professorship implied, and to find in her last years his later books “becoming more and more what they always ought to have been” to her.

At the same time, her failing sight and strength needed a constant household companion.  Her son, though he did not leave home yet awhile for any long journeys, could not be always with her.  Only six weeks after the funeral he was called away for a time to fulfil a lecture-engagement at Bradford.  Before going he brought his pretty young Scotch cousin.  Miss Joanna Ruskin Agnew, to Denmark Hill for a week’s visit.  She recommended herself at once to the old lady, and to Carlyle, who happened to call, by her frank good-nature and unquenchable spirits; and her visit lasted seven years, until she was married to Arthur Severn, son of the Ruskins’ old friend, Joseph Severn, British Consul at Rome.  Even then she was not allowed far out of their sight, but settled in the old house at Herne Hill:  “nor virtually,” said Ruskin in the last chapter of “Praeterita,” “have she and I ever parted since.”