ences in 1857–8–9, were brought together under the title 'The Two Paths' (1859). The title indicates a common thread of doctrine running through discourses on many different subjects—namely, the responsibility of the student for choice between art which is conventional in design, and pursued for the sake of display, and art which is devoted to the record of natural fact. At Christmas 1863 Ruskin returned from his mountain solitudes. On 3 March 1864 his father died. Miss Joanna Ruskin Agnew, his second cousin once removed, then came to live with his mother, but Ruskin for some time did not leave her side. In 1866, 1868, and 1869 he made tours with various friends on the continent. In the former year he sided with Carlyle on the Jamaica question, and made a speech at a meeting of the Eyre defence committee. Of the lectures of this period, the most important were those on the pleasures of reading and the sphere of women, collected under the title 'Sesame and Lilies' (1865), and on the duty of work and its reward, collected as 'The Crown of Wild Olive' (1866). To the same period belongs 'The Ethics of the Dust' (1866), a series of conversational lessons, delivered at a girls' school (Winnington Hall, Cheshire), in which, taking crystals as his text, Ruskin drew from them such lessons as their various characteristics suggested. 'A most shining performance,' wrote Carlyle, when the lectures were published; 'not for a long while have I read anything a tenth part so radiant with talent, ingenuity, lambent fire.' Ruskin's next work of importance was suggested by the reform agitation. In a series of 'Letters to a Working Man at Sunderland,' first published in newspapers at Manchester and Leeds (March to May 1867), and afterwards collected into 'Time and Tide' (1867), Ruskin embodied his thoughts on the question of the day. The letters are discursive and fanciful, but their main drift was to show that true 'reform' must be individual rather than by class, and moral rather than political. In this same year (1867) the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon Ruskin at Cambridge, and he delivered the Rede lecture (not yet published). His subject was 'The Relation of National Ethics to National Art.' In 1879 the university of Oxford proposed to confer the honorary degree of D.C.L., but the proposal was postponed owing to his illness. The degree was conferred in his absence in 1893. In 1871 he had been elected lord rector of St. Andrews University, but, as a professor in an English university, he was found to be ineligible.
In connection with Ruskin's role as a preacher, some facts may be stated about his practice. Of the riches described by him in those books, 'The Treasures of true Kings,' he was himself a persistent accumulator and distributor. During his father's lifetime the son was allowed to act as his almoner—in generous and judicious help to artists, and in all sorts of gentle and secret charity. On his father's death Ruskin inherited a fortune of 157,000l., in addition to a considerable property in houses and land. The whole of this was dispersed during his lifetime, and he lived during his last years on the proceeds of his books. In 1885, by deed of gift, he made over his house and its contents to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn, to whom also by will he left the residue of his property, 'praying them never to sell the estate of Brantwood, nor to let any portion of it upon building lease, and to accord during thirty consecutive days in each year such permission to strangers to see the house and pictures as I have done in my lifetime.' (As literary executors Ruskin appointed Mr. C. E. Norton and Mr. A. Wedderburn, Q.C.) Details of much of Ruskin's expenditure are to be found in curious pieces of self-revelation embodied in the appendices to 'Fors Clavigera.' His pensioners were numbered by hundreds; his charities, if sometimes indiscriminate, were as delicate as they were generous. He educated promising artists, and gave commissions for semi-public enterprises. He presented valuable collections of Turners to Oxford and Cambridge. To the Natural History Museum he presented several mineralogical specimens, including the large 'Colenso diamond' ('in honour of his friend the loyal and patiently adamantine first bishop of Natal') and the 'Edwardes Ruby' ('in honour of the invincible soldiership and loving equity of Sir Herbert Edwardes's rule by the shores of Indus'). To many schools and colleges he presented cabinets of minerals or drawings. In some forms of philanthropy he was a pioneer. He established a model tea shop. He organised, for the relief of the unemployed, gangs of street cleaners. He was the first to give Miss Octavia Hill the means of managing house property on the principle of helping the tenants to help themselves. He shared as well as gave. He thought no trouble too great to encourage a pupil or befriend the fallen.
With the last decade of Ruskin's active life (1870–80) his career entered on a new phase. The writer on economics now essayed to become practical reformer. In part
