Painful as these intellectual breakdowns are, they are not half so painful as when we see in our friends what is at first called mere wrongheadedness, but is apt to lead to a complete deterioration of moral fibre, and in the end to an apparent inability to distinguish between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood. In the former case we know that a slight lesion in one of the ganglion cells or nerve-fibres of the brain is sufficient to account for any disturbance in the intellectual clock-work. The man himself remains the same, though at times hidden from us, as it were, by a veil, and we feel towards him the same sorrowful sympathy which we feel towards a man who has lost the use of his eyes or his legs, who cannot see or cannot walk. We know that the instruments are at fault, not the operator. But it is very difficult to make the same allowance in cases of moral deterioration. Here instruments and operator seem to be the same, though, for all we know, here too the brain may be more at fault than the heart. A well-known oculist maintained that the peculiarities, or what he called the distortions, in Turner’s latest pictures were due to a malformation in the muscles of his eyes. He actually invented some spectacles by which everything that seemed ill-proportioned in Turner’s latest productions came right if looked at through these corrective lenses. May not what we call shortsightedness, conceit, vanity, envy, hatred and malice—all, as it seems, without rhyme or reason—be due in the beginning to some weakness or dimness of sight that might have been corrected, if treated in time, by those who are nearest and dearest to the sufferer? This may seem a dangerous view of moral responsibility; but, if so, it can be dangerous to the sufferer only, not to those who ought to sympathise, _i.e._ to feel and suffer, with him. To me it has proved a solution of many difficulties during a long and varied intercourse with men and women; the only difficulty is how to make these invalids harmless to themselves. Ruskin’s influence among the undergraduates at Oxford was most extraordinary. He could persuade the young Christ Church men to take spade and wheelbarrow and help him to make a road which he thought would prove useful to a village near Oxford. No other professor could have achieved that. The road was made, but was also soon washed away, and, of course, Ruskin was laughed at, though the labour undergone by his pupils did them no doubt a great deal of good, even though it did not benefit the inhabitants of the village for any length of time. It was sad to see Ruskin leave Oxford estranged from many of his friends, dissatisfied with his work, which nevertheless was most valuable and highly appreciated by young and old, perhaps by the young even more than by the old. His spirit still dwells in the body, and if any one may look back with pride and satisfaction upon the work which he has achieved it is surely Ruskin.