[Footnote 15:  August and November, 1867, January, April and May, 1868, December, 1869, and January, 1870, illustrated with very fine mezzotint plates and woodcuts.]

A characteristic anecdote of this period is preserved in “Arrows of the Chace.”

“The Daily Telegraph of January 21st, 1868, contained a leading article upon the following facts.  It appeared that a girl, named Matilda Griggs, had been nearly murdered by her seducer, who, after stabbing her in no less than thirteen places, had then left her for dead.  She had, however, still strength enough to crawl into a field close by, and there swooned.  The assistance she met with in this plight was of a rare kind.  Two calves came up to her, and disposing themselves on either side of her bleeding body, thus kept her warm and partly sheltered from cold and rain.  Temporarily preserved, the girl eventually recovered, and entered into recognizances, under a sum of forty pounds, to prosecute her murderous lover.  But ‘she loved much,’ and failing to prosecute, forfeited her recognizances, and was imprisoned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for her debt.  ‘Pity the poor debtor,’ wrote the Daily Telegraph, and in the next day’s issue appeared the following letter, probably not intended for the publication accorded to it.  ’Sir,—­Except in ‘Gil Blas,’ I never read of anything Astraean on the earth so perfect as the story in your fourth article to-day.  I send you a cheque for the Chancellor.  If forty, in legal terms, means four hundred, you must explain the farther requirements to your impulsive public.

“’I am, Sir, your faithful servant, ‘J.  RUSKIN.’”

The writer of letters like this naturally had a large correspondence, beside that which a circle of private friends and numberless admirers and readers elicited.  About this time it grew to such a pitch that he was obliged to print a form excusing him from letter-writing on the ground of stress of work.  And indeed, this year, though he did not publish his annual volume, as usual, he was fully occupied with frequent letters to newspapers, several lectures and addresses, a preface to the reprint of his old friend Cruikshank’s “Grimm,” and the beginning of a new botanical work, “Proserpina,” in addition to the mineralogy, and a renewed interest in classical studies.  Of the public addresses the most important was that on “The Mystery of Life and its Arts,” delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Science, Dublin (May 13th), and printed in “Sesame and Lilies.”

After this visit to Ireland he spent a few days at Winnington; and late in August crossed the Channel, for rest and change at Abbeville.  For the past five years he had found too little time for drawing; it was twenty years since his last sketching of French Gothic, except for a study (now at Oxford), of the porch at Amiens, in 1856.  He took up the old work where he had left it, after writing the “Seven Lamps,” with fresh interest and more advanced powers of draughtsmanship as shown in the pencil study of the Place Amiral Courbet, now in the drawing school at Oxford.