But Ruskin’s task,--however it might be pursued in forgetfulness of that unrememberable home,--was surely still the task (as Bacon called it) “to prepare and adorn the bride-chamber of the mind and the universe”; and that _melior natura_ which seemed to be Ruskin’s, as it was Bacon’s, divinity has never shone more radiantly upon the inward shrine of any lover of men. It was half in jest that I would complain to him that to Earth he gave up what was meant for Infinity, and bent a cosmic passion upon this round wet pebble of rock and sea. “Ah, my friend!” he answered once when I spoke of life to come, “if you could only give me fifty years longer of this life on earth, I would ask for nothing more!” And half that season was granted to him, and all in vain;--for what Tithonus may tread for ever unweary the “gleaming halls of Morn”? Then as that fervent life wore on, Ruskin turned more and more from the outward pageant to the human passion; from Alp and sunset to the sterner beauty of moral law. From the publication of _Unto This Last_, one may trace that slow-growing revolt against the Age which led him to preach in the end with such despairing emphasis the duty of protest, of renunciation, of sheer self-severance from most of the tendencies of modern life. The strength of this emotion in him was made, I remember, strangely plain on one occasion, when some of those who cared most for him had clubbed together, at Lord Mount-Temple’s suggestion, to surprise him, on his recovery from a serious illness, with the present of a picture of Turner’s, which he had once possessed and still dearly loved, but of which he had despoiled himself to meet some generous impulse. Never were givers more taken aback by the issue of their gift. For the sudden sight of the lovely landscape hung in his bedroom drew from him a letter of almost heart-broken pain,--at the thought that those whom he would so fain have helped,--who were thus willing to do this thing, or almost anything, to please him,--were yet not willing to do that other thing for their own souls’ sake;--to come out from the iniquity,--to shake off the baseness of the age,--to bind themselves in the St. George’s Guild with that small remnant who clung to things pure and true. Indeed, there was something naïve, something childlike, in his Brotherhoods, his Leagues, his solemn Covenants against the onflowing tide of things;--but a stern reality beneath all this became strongly present to us then;--a deep compassion for the lonely heart, which so much needed love, yet could scarcely accept a fellowship in love which was not also a fellowship in all that he held for virtue.