I met him first in my own earliest home, beneath the spurs of Skiddaw,--its long slopes “bronzed with deepest radiance,” as the boy Wordsworth had seen them long since in even such an evening’s glow. Since early morning Ruskin had lain and wandered in the folds and hollows of the hill; and he came back grave as from a solemn service from day-long gazing on the heather and the blue. Later came many another scene;--pacings in the Old Court of Trinity with Edmund Gurney, who met those generous paradoxes with humorous play; graver hours at Oxford, in the sick-room of the Duke of Albany, who, coming back to earth-life from perilous illness, found nowhere a guidance fitter than Ruskin’s for eager and royal youth. But chiefliest I think of him in that home of high thoughts where his interest in our inquiry first upgrew. For the introduction to the new hope came to him, as to Edmund Gurney and to myself, through a lady whom each of us held in equal honour; and it was on the stately lawns of Broadlands, and in that air as of Sabbatical repose, that Ruskin enjoyed his one brief season,--since the failure of his youthful Christian confidence--of blissful trust in the Unseen. To one among that company a vision came, as of a longed-for meeting of souls beloved in heaven, a vision whose detail and symbolism carried conviction to Ruskin’s heart. While that conviction abode with him he was happy as a child; but presently he suffered what all are like to suffer who do not keep their minds close pressed to actual evidence by continuous study. That impress faded; and leaving the unseen world in its old sad uncertainty, he went back to the mission which was laid on him,--that mission of humanizing this earth, and being humanized thereby, which our race must needs accomplish, whatever be the last doom of man. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind; And even with something of a Mother’s mind And no unworthy aim, The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.