in college.  There is simply no time in his scheme for going to a drawing school.  If it were recognised as part of the curriculum, if it counted in any way along with other studies, or contributed to a “school” akin to that of music, practical art might become teachable at Oxford; and Professor Ruskin’s gifts and endowments—­to say nothing of his hopes and plans—­would not be wholly in vain.

As he could not make the undergraduates draw, he made them dig.  He had noticed a very bad bit of road on the Hinksey side, and heard that it was nobody’s business to mend it:  meanwhile the farmers’ carts and casual pedestrians were bemired.  He sent for his gardener Downes, who had been foreman of the street-sweepers; laid in a stock of picks and shovels; took lessons in stone-breaking himself, and called on his friends to spend their recreation times in doing something useful.

Many of the disciples met at the weekly open breakfasts at the Professor’s rooms in Corpus; and he was glad of a talk to them on other things beside drawing and digging.  Some were attracted chiefly by the celebrity of the man, or by the curiosity of his humorous discourse; but there were a few who partly grasped one side or other of his mission and character.  The most brilliant undergraduate of the time, seen at this breakfast table, but not one of the diggers, was W.H.  Mallock, afterwards widely known as the author of “Is Life Worth Living?” He was the only man.  Professor Ruskin said, who really understood him—­referring to “The New Republic.”  But while Mallock saw the reactionary and pessimistic side of his Oxford teacher, there was a progressist and optimistic side which does not appear in his “Mr. Herbert.”  That was discovered by another man whose career, short as it was, proved even more influential.  Arnold Toynbee was one of the Professor’s warmest admirers and ablest pupils:  and in his philanthropic work the teaching of “Unto this Last” and “Fors” was illustrated—­not exclusively—­but truly.  “No true disciple of mine will ever be a Ruskinian” (to quote “St. Mark’s Rest"); “he will follow, not me, but the instincts of his own soul, and the guidance of its Creator.”

Like all energetic men, Ruskin was fond of setting other people to work.  One of his plans was to form a little library of standard books ("Bibliotheca Pastorum”) suitable for the kind of people who, he hoped, would join or work under his St. George’s Company.  The first book he chose was the “Economist” of Xenophon, which he asked two of his young friends to translate.  To them and their work he would give his afternoons in the rooms at Corpus, with curious patience in the midst of pre-occupying labour and severest trial; for just then he was lecturing at the London Institution on the Alps[34]—­reading a paper to the Metaphysical Society[35]—­writing the Academy Notes of 1875, and “Proserpina,” etc.—­as well as his regular work at “Fors,” and the St. George’s Company was then taking definite form;—­and all the while the lady of his love was dying under the most tragic circumstances, and he forbidden to approach her.