His economic crusade began in 1860; and on his spiritually desolated heart was piled the sorrow of the social system. Hermit and heretic he became, in religion and economics alike. Victorious in his championship of Turner and the Pre-raphaelites, whom single-handed he had placed on the pinnacle they have never lost, he had the literary and artistic world at his feet. This great position he cast aside to enter on a sterner battle. The recognized leader of taste, the arbiter of reputations, turned aside to abuse so good a man as John Stuart Mill, to say the most shocking things about the clergy and the clergy’s wives, to testify against rent and interest, to blaspheme that steam power by which England was conquering the world, and to utter strange hesitating sayings which showed that he was not sure of a life to come. Nor could he brave the storm with the self-confident dogmatism of youth. “I seldom now feel sure of anything,” he wrote in the first Christmas issue of _Fors_, “still seldomer, however, do I feel sure of the contrary of anything.”[13] When we add that this period was marked by the loss of his parents, who had been everything to him, and by a grievous disappointment in love--for the girl who loved him would not marry him because he was not orthodox, so far as reasons can ever be given for such decisions, but died of a decline instead--we shall see how heavy was the lonely task set before him to do. Nor had the veneration of disciples and the growing recognition of all good men come to him yet; it came afterwards, built the prophet’s shrine, in his lifetime certainly,[14] but only after the world’s neglect, and his failure even to carry his own friends with him, had helped to break the powers of his mind and set his brain reeling in recurring attacks of delirious inflammation. He was, in that madness, being offered upon the sacrifice and service of our faith. During this middle period of prime mental power, he wrote nineteen volumes, and numerous catalogues and pamphlets. They are, in order of time: _The Two Paths_, _Modern Painters_, vol. v., _Unto This Last_, _Munera Pulveris_, _Sesame and Lilies_, _The Ethics of the Dust_, _The Crown of Wild Olive_, _Time and Tide_, _The Queen of the Air_, _Lectures on Art at Oxford_, the first half of _Flors Clavigera_, _Aratra Pentelici_, _The Eagle’s Nest_, _Love’s Meinie_, _Ariadne Florentina_, _Val D’Arno_, and most of the papers reprinted in _On the Old Road_. As an author he was in his full strength.