“And just after breakfast I got a telegram from my cousin George
     announcing that I am Professor of Art—­the first—­at the University
     of Oxford.

“Which will give me as much power as I can well use—­and would have given pleasure to my poor father—­and therefore to me—­once....  It will make no difference in my general plans, about travel, etc.  I shall think quietly of it as I drive up towards St. Gothard to-day.

     “Ever, my dearest mother, ever your loving son,

     “J.  Ruskin.”

Six years earlier, while being examined before the Royal Academy commission, he had been asked:  “Has it ever struck you that it would be advantageous to art if there were at the universities professors of art who might give lectures and give instruction to young men who might desire to avail themselves of it, as you have lectures on geology and botany?” To which he had replied:  “Yes, assuredly.  The want of interest on the part of the upper classes in art has been very much at the bottom of the abuses which have crept into all systems of education connected with it.  If the upper classes could only be interested in it by being led into it when young, a great improvement might be looked for, therefore I feel the expediency of such an addition to the education of our universities.”  His interest in the first phase of University Extension, and his gifts of Turners to Oxford and Cambridge, had shown that he was ready to go out of his way to help in the cause he had promoted.  His former works on art, and reputation as a critic, pointed to him as the best qualified man in the country for such a post.  He had been asked by his Oxford friends, who were many and influential, to stand for the Professorship of Poetry, three years earlier.  There was no doubt that the election would be a popular one, and creditable to the University.  On the other hand, Ruskin as Professor would have a certain sanction for his teaching, he believed; the title and the salary of L358 a year were hardly an object to him; but the position, as accredited lecturer and authorised instructor of youth, opened up new vistas of usefulness, new worlds of work to conquer; and he accepted the invitation.  On August 10th he was elected Slade Professor.

He returned home by the end of August to prepare himself for his new duties.  During the last period he had been giving, on an average, half a dozen lectures a year, which amply filled his annual volume.  Twelve lectures were required of the professor.  Many another man would have read his twelve lectures and gone his way; but he was not going to work in that perfunctory manner.  He undertook to revise his whole teaching; to write for his hearers a completely new series of treatises on art, beginning with first principles and broad generalisations, and proceeding to the different departments of sculpture, engraving, landscape-painting and so on; then taking up the history of art:—­an encyclopaedic scheme.  He took this Oxford work not as a substitute for other occupation, exonerating him from further claims upon his energy and time; nor as a bye-play that could be slurred.  He tried to do it thoroughly, and to do it in addition to the various work already in hand, under which, as it was, he used to break down, yearly, after each climax of effort.