must be strong elements of good in the mind, however warped by other parts of the character.”  So emphatic a statement deserves more attention than it has received from readers and writers who assume to judge Ruskin’s views after a slight acquaintance with his earlier works.  He was well aware himself that his mind had been gradually enlarging, and his thoughts changing; and he soon saw as great a difference between himself at forty and at twenty-five, as he had formerly seen between the Boy poet and the Art critic.  He became as anxious to forget his earlier books, as he had been to forget his verse-writing; and when he came to collect his “Works,” these lectures, under the title of “The Two Paths,” were (with “The Political Economy of Art”) the earliest admitted into the library.

After this Manchester lecture he took a driving tour in Yorkshire—­posting in the old-fashioned way—­halting at Bradford for the lecture on “Modern Manufacture and Design” (March 1st), and ending with a visit to the school at Winnington, of which more in a later chapter.

In 1859 the last Academy Notes, for the time being, were published.  The Pre-Raphaelite cause had been fully successful, and the new school of naturalist landscape was rapidly asserting itself.  Old friends were failing, such as Stanfield, Lewis, and Roberts:  but new men were growing up, among whom Ruskin welcomed G.D.  Leslie, F. Goodall, J.C.  Hook,—­who had come out of his “Pre-Raphaelite measles” into the healthy naturalism of “Luff Boy!”—­Clarence Whaite, Henry Holiday, and John Brett, who showed the “Val d’Aosta.”  Millais’ “Vale of Rest” was the picture which attracted most notice:  something of the old rancour against the school was revived in the Morning Herald, which called his works “impertinences,” “contemptible,” “indelible disgrace,” and so on.  It was the beginning of a transition from the delicacy of the Pre-Raphaelite Millais to his later style; and as such the preacher of “All great art is delicate” could not entirely defend it.  But the serious strength of the imagination and the power of the execution he praised with unexpected warmth.

He then started on the last tour abroad with his parents.  He had been asked, rather pointedly, by the National Gallery Commission, whether he had seen the great German museums, and had been obliged to reply that he had not.  Perhaps it occurred to him or to his father that he ought to see the pictures at Berlin and Dresden and Munich, even though he heartily disliked the Germans with their art and their language and everything that belonged to them,—­except Holbein and Duerer.  By the end of July the travellers were in North Switzerland; and they spent September in Savoy, returning home by October 7th.

Old Mr. Ruskin was now in his seventy-fifth year and his desire was to see the great work finished before he died.  There had been some attempt to write this last volume of “Modern Painters” in the previous winter, but it had been put off until after the visit to Germany had completed a study of the great Venetian painters—­especially Titian and Veronese.  Now at last, in the autumn of 1859, he finally set to work on the writing.