him, as of other eminent men, it was rumoured that he was inclined to Roman Catholicism. He enjoyed lunching, it was true, with 'my darling cardinal' (Manning), hut he found the 'puff pastry like papal pretensions—you had but to breathe on it and it was nowhere.' The death of 'Rosie' was the greatest grief of Ruskin's life. He suffered much from sleeplessness and had unnaturally vivid dreams. He came in contact with spiritualism, and mediums showed him the spirit of his dead lady. Her memory mingled in his mind with the vividly realised presence of St. Ursula, whose picture by Carpaccio was the subject of many references in his later lectures. In 1878 he had arranged an exhibition of his Turners at the Fine Art Society, and had nearly finished a catalogue for it, when he was seized with a dangerous attack of brain fever. In a few weeks he recovered, and was able to add some further notes to the catalogue. A body of subscribers presented him at this time with Turner's drawing of 'Splügen.' Ruskin's favourite Turners hung in his small and simple bedroom at Brantwood. (A picture by Mr. Arthur Severn of this room in which he died was exhibited in 1900.) In the same year (1878) the Grosvenor Gallery was opened, and Ruskin took occasion in 'Fors' to write an enthusiastic account of Sir Edward Burne-Jones [q. v. Suppl.], whose genius Ruskin had been among the first to recognise, and to whom in earlier years he had given commissions in Italy. Ruskin at the same time made a contemptuous reference to one of Mr. Whistler's 'Nocturnes.' Mr. Whistler brought an action for libel, which was tried before Baron Huddleston on 25 and 26 Nov. The jury awarded the plaintiff one farthing damages. Ruskin's costs were paid by a public subscription. Mr. Whistler took his revenge in a characteristic pamphlet (republished in 'The Gentle Art of making Enemies'). In 1879 Ruskin resigned his professorship, but was able to do occasional work on his many unfinished books. In 1880 and 1881 his illness recurred. An interval of restored health followed, and in 1883 he felt well enough to accept a second call to the Oxford professorship. His first series of lectures on 'The Art of England' (the leading schools and artists of the day) showed no failure of power; there were in them a greater geniality of criticism and a more hopeful outlook which seemed to augur well for the future. But the promise was delusive. The excitement of his public lectures, attended by ever-increasing and enthusiastic audiences, was too much for him. The nervous strain was more than he could withstand. A second series of lectures, on 'The Pleasures of England,' never very coherent, was broken off on the advice of Acland, Jowett, and others of his friends. He had been much vexed by the refusal of the university, on the ground of lack of funds, to give him the means for extending the Ruskin drawing school. This was followed by a vote for a new laboratory in which vivisection was to be permitted. In December 1884 Ruskin resigned his professorship. He had previously revoked a bequest of his remaining Turners and other treasures to the university.
Ruskin now retired into seclusion at Brantwood. His cousin, Mrs. Severn, with her husband and family, lived with him. To her he was deeply attached; she tended him in his illness and saved him from all preventable irritations. His brain attacks were intermittent, and at intervals during the next five years he did a good deal of miscellaneous literary work. He introduced to the public the sketches of Tuscan life in pen and pencil by his American friend, Miss Francesca Alexander. He wrote occasional articles in the magazines; prefaced various books by his friends; wrote a life of Sir Herbert Edwardes ('A Knight's Faith'); and continued his letters on questions of the day to the 'Pall Mall Gazette' and other papers. He also interested himself in educational experiments in the Coniston school. But the most important work of his last period was the fragment of autobiography, undertaken at the suggestion of his friend, Prof. C. E. Norton, and published at intervals during 1885–9 under the title of 'Præterita: outlines of Scenes and Thoughts perhaps worthy of Memory in my past Life.' This book contains occasional passages of description as fine as anything in 'Modern Painters,' and is marked throughout by limpid ease in the narrative, by the keenness of its recollections, and by brilliant character-sketches of friends and acquaintances.
'Præterita ' was, however, not completed. Ruskin had planned out its conclusion, and chosen titles—in which respect he always showed a curious felicity—for the remaining chapters, as also for many chapters in a supplementary book of illustrative letters, &c., called 'Dilecta.' But the excitement of writing was too much for him. 'It is all nonsense,' he wrote to one of his friends, 'what you hear of overwork as the cause of my illness. These two times of delirium were both periods of extreme mental energy in perilous directions.' On one occasion he was talking with intense eagerness to Car-
