When first Miss Beale went to Cheltenham she adopted a very simple mode of living, such as she thought would sufficiently meet her needs, and she never changed it. At the age of seventy she would even help to lay her own table for the frugal midday meal, if the general servant had been delayed by household work in the morning. She would walk to the station to save a cab fare, and invariably chose the simplest means of conveyance unless on a matter of urgency. It is true she became rather grander in dress as years went on. ‘What did I wear,’ she wrote to Miss Brown about 1876, after some function she had attended, ‘“velvet and ostrich feathers?” Well, what could I wear but my felt bonnet and old velvet cloak and old black serge? I looked quite smart enough.’ Kind friends there were who liked to see the Lady Principal beautifully dressed, and who were allowed in later life to guide her into velvet and ostrich feathers. She submitted for the sake of the College, for whose good she would cheerfully have worn either sackcloth or cloth of gold! For the sake of the College, still more for the sake of that work for women and the race which the College represented, Miss Beale gladly greeted honours. That they had anything to do with herself personally, she was not even aware. Her work did indeed receive recognition far and wide from those who prized education, and who regarded it from various points of view. Among the first to honour it with special notice and a substantial, even magnificent gift, was John Ruskin, when in 1885 he presented to the College two beautiful and valuable manuscripts—one, of the four Gospels, in Greek, written in the eleventh century; another (_Antiphonarium Romanum_) of the thirteenth century. He gave also a collection of printed books. These were the occasion of an interesting series of letters from Mr. Ruskin to Miss Beale. Some of them are printed here. ‘BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE, _February 10, 1882_. ‘DEAR MISS BEALE,—I have to ask your pardon for never having replied to your former letter; but it came when I was already over-wrought and threatened with illness, and it gave me more to think of than it was possible then to review. ‘I am now, however, most seriously bent on understanding the principles and knowing some of the results of modern girl education.... ‘A very few lines would enable me to become of some use to you—in my own fields of work—and without moving from my fields of rest. ‘I have the deepest respect for Mr. Shields’ work, nevertheless it is out of my _way_; and such drawing models as I may send you would be altogether different in feeling.