“If I have a definite point to reach, and common work to do at it—­I take people—­anybody—­with me; but all my best mental work is necessarily done alone; whenever I wanted to think, in Savoy, I used to leave Coutet at home.  Constantly I have been alone on the Glacier des Bois—­and far among the loneliest aiguille recesses.  I found the path up the Brezon above Bonneville in a lonely walk one Sunday; I saw the grandest view of the Alps of Savoy I ever gained, on the 2nd of January, 1862, alone among the snow wreaths on the summit of the Saleve.  You need not fear for me on ’Langdale Pikes’ after that.”

In September the second article appeared in Fraser. “Only a genius like Mr. Ruskin could have produced such hopeless rubbish,” says a newspaper of the period.  Far worse than any newspaper criticism was the condemnation of Denmark Hill.  His father, whose eyes had glistened over early poems and prose eloquence, strongly disapproved of this heretical economy.  It was a bitter thing that his son should become prodigal of a hardly earned reputation, and be pointed at for a fool.  And it was intensely painful for a son “who had never given his father a pang that could be avoided,” as old Mr. Ruskin had once written, to find his father, with one foot in the grave, turning against him.  In December the third paper appeared.  History repeated itself, and with the fourth paper the heretic was gagged.  A year after, his father died; and these Fraser articles were laid aside until the end of 1871, when they were taken up again, and published on New Year’s Day 1872, as “Munera Pulveris.”

From the outset, however, he was not without supporters.  Carlyle wrote on June 30, 1862: 

“I have read, a month ago, your First in Fraser, and ever since have had a wish to say to it and you, Euge macte nova virtute. I approved in every particular; calm, definite, clear; rising into the sphere of Plato (our almost best), wh’h in exchange for the sphere of Macculloch, Mill and Co. is a mighty improvement!  Since that, I have seen the little green book, too; reprint of your Cornhill operations,—­about 2/3 of wh’h was read to me (known only from what the contradict’n of sinners had told me of it);—­in every part of wh’h I find a high and noble sort of truth, not one doctrine that I can intrinsically dissent from, or count other than salutary in the extreme, and pressingly needed in Engl’d above all.”

Erskine of Linlathen wrote to Carlyle, August 7th, 1862: 

“I am thankful for any unveiling of the so-called science of political economy, according to which, avowed selfishness is the Rule of the World.  It is indeed most important preaching—­to preach that there is not one God for religion and another God for human fellowship—­and another God for buying and selling—­that pestilent polytheism has been largely and confidently preached in our time, and blessed are those who can detect its mendacities, and help to disenchant the brethren of their power....”

J.A.  Froude, then editor of Fraser, and to his dying day Mr. Ruskin’s intimate and affectionate friend, wrote to him on October 24 (1862?):