Johnstone returned to England at the end of August, 1888, in wonderful spirits and in better health than he had ever before enjoyed, bursting with ideas and enthusiasm for everything German. It was Gulliver's homecoming after the voyage to the Houyhnhnms, and his friends had to listen to criticism of a similar kind. There is no doubt that this year brought real maturity to Johnstone. He gained a confidence in himself and a grip on life, which even when the prospect seemed most hopeless prevented him from ever again falling into his old moods of despondency. In October he returned to Oxford. Some years back he had taken his name off the books of Keble and migrated to New Inn Hall. The Hall had lately been absorbed by Balliol, and so in the end Johnstone became a member of the College which should have sheltered him from the beginning. In Balliol he was tolerably well at home, though now senior to the men around him. He forgathered with Farmer, who had just left Harrow for Balliol and with the Master's support arranged a concert in the Hall every Sunday evening. Once he gave a conjuring show, by Farmer's request. Jowett shrilled in cherubic mirth, sent for Johnstone, listened to his conversation, which flowed more easily than that of most of Jowett's undergraduate visitors and was of another stamp; and continued to treat him with politeness. Johnstone, whose classics had somewhat rusted during his stay in Germany, read with Mr. St. George Stock, the philosophical writer, then and since a well-known private teacher in Oxford. In December he passed the necessary schools and took his degree; his last experience of the old, disquieting city was pleasant, if brief--a period of _recueillement_ before embarking upon the new career which he had chosen. In the March following, 1889, he received an offer to go as tutor to the young son of Prince Abamélek in Podolia, a province of Southern Russia. The following account of his journey is interesting:-- "I left Berlin on Thursday morning at 8.30; the stage through Galicia, Oswiecim, Cracow, Lemberg, Podwoloczyska was a bad twenty-four hours. Just at the frontier the snow was immensely deep, standing in a wall on each side of the train. It was like being let into Russia through the works of a great snow fortification. The worst mistake I made was in bringing no victuals with me. I noticed at the frontier examination that my portmanteau was the only one not half full of food. The restaurants at the large junctions are excellent, being all under the management of Tartars, a race possessing the genius of cookery, but if you have to wait as I did, more than twenty-four hours at an out-of-the-way country station, you may find nothing obtainable but tea. Travelling in Russia is in any case tiring; the distances are interminable, and every journey has to be regarded as a sort of pilgrimage. On coming from Osipoffka here, we had to leave about ten in the evening to meet the desired train.