heartily-admired friend,[4] to join them at Glenfinlas.  Ruskin devoted himself first to foreground studies, and made careful drawings of rock-detail; and then, being asked to give a course of lectures before the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, he was soon busy writing once more, and preparing the cartoon-sketches, “diagrams” as he called them, to illustrate his subjects.  Dr. Acland had joined the party; and he asked Millais to sketch their host as he stood contemplatively on the rocks with the torrent thundering beside him.  The picture with additional work in the following winter, became the well-known portrait in the possession of Sir Henry Acland, much the best likeness of this early period.

[Footnote 4:  “What a beauty of a man he is!” wrote old Mr. Ruskin, “and high in intellect....  Millais’ sketches are ‘prodigious’!  Millais is the painter of the age.”  “Capable, it seems to me, of almost everything, if his life and strength be spared,” said the younger Ruskin to Miss Mitford.]

Another portrait was painted—­in words—­by one of his audience at Edinburgh on November 1, when he gave the opening lecture of his course, his first appearance on the platform.  The account is extracted from the Edinburgh Guardian of November 19, 1853: 

“Before you can see the lecturer, however, you must get into the hall, and that is not an easy matter, for, long before the doors are opened, the fortunate holders of season tickets begin to assemble, so that the crowd not only fills the passage, but occupies the pavement in front of the entrance and overflows into the road.  At length the doors open, and you are carried through the passage into the hall, where you take up, of course, the best available position for seeing and hearing....  After waiting a weary time ... the door by the side of the platform opens, and a thin gentleman with light hair, a stiff white cravat, dark overcoat with velvet collar, walking, too with a slight stoop, goes up to the desk, and looking round with a self-possessed and somewhat formal air, proceeds to take off his great-coat, revealing thereby, in addition to the orthodox white cravat, the most orthodox of white waistcoats....  ’Dark hair, pale face, and massive marble brow—­that is my ideal of Mr. Ruskin,’ said a young lady near us.  This proved to be quite a fancy portrait, as unlike the reality as could well be imagined, Mr. Ruskin has light sand-coloured hair; his face is more red than pale; the mouth well-cut, with a good deal of decision in its curve, though somewhat wanting in sustained dignity and strength; an aquiline nose; his forehead by no means broad or massive, but the brows full and well bound together; the eye we could not see, in consequence of the shadows that fell upon his countenance from the lights overhead, but we are sure it must be soft and luminous, and that the poetry and passion we looked for almost in vain in other features must be concentrated there.[5] After sitting for a moment