xxxiv INTRODUCTION

each night, besides crowded passagefulls, just as if I were Mr. Melvill himself, there is nothing for it but doing as well as I possibly can; and, as I explained to you before, it has forced me to write you such miserable letters, wanting all the quiet time I ever get for retouching.”

Ruskin was suffering at the time from a slight affection of the throat, as well as from nervous headaches; and owing to his indisposition the two remaining lectures had to be postponed from the 8th and 11th of November to the 15th and 18th:-

“Wednesday morning, 16th November.- ... I think last night was the most successful of all the three lectures. ... I never coughed once during the lecture of an hour and twenty minutes, speaking louder and clearer, people said, than before my cold; an awful crowd in the room; doors open at half-past seven, and the place filled instantly; people waiting patiently their hour, and standing right out into the street. I had worked up my lecture a good deal since you saw it, and have reason to think everybody thought themselves very well rewarded for their trouble.”

“Thursday evening, 17th November.- ... I don’t think they are generally of opinion here that I am a gentle lecturer or a cloudy one. They think me rather violent and clear, more of the mountain stream than of the mist. Lady Trevelyan says everybody was alike delighted with the last, and that she heard a man whose time was very valuable, muttering, near here, at being obliged to wait for an hour in order to get a place, but saying afterwards that he would have waited two hours rather than have missed it. She and I got into some divinity discussions, until she got very angry, and declared that when she read me, and heard me, at a distance, she thought me so wise that anybody might make an idol of me, and worship me to any extent, but when she got to talk to me, I turned out only a rag doll after all.”

The last lecture, that on Pre-Raphaelitism, was delivered on Friday, November 18:-

“Saturday morning, 19th November.-... I got through excellently, though I was not altogether in such good trim as the evening before. ... I felt a little weak and nervous before the lecture, and not so much at my ease in it, but people say I spoke it very vigorously and was heard all over the house; and I am agreeably surprised at the lasting power of my voice, as I was not in the least fatigued.”

Even yet his parents were not satisfied. He had told them what he

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