Like all energetic men, Ruskin was fond of setting other people to work. One of his plans was to form a little library of standard books ("Bibliotheca Pastorum") suitable for the kind of people who, he hoped, would join or work under his St. George's Company. The first book he chose was the "Economist" of Xenophon, which he asked two of his young friends to translate. To them and their work he would give his afternoons in the rooms at Corpus, with curious patience in the midst of pre-occupying labour and severest trial; for just then he was lecturing at the London Institution on the Alps[34]--reading a paper to the Metaphysical Society[35]--writing the Academy Notes of 1875, and "Proserpina," etc.--as well as his regular work at "Fors," and the St. George's Company was then taking definite form;--and all the while the lady of his love was dying under the most tragic circumstances, and he forbidden to approach her. [Footnote 34: "The Simple Dynamic Conditions of Glacial Action among the Alps," March 11, 1875.] [Footnote 35: "Social Policy based on Natural Selection," May 11.] At the end of May she died. On the 1st of June the Royal party honoured the Slade Professor with their visit--little knowing how valueless to him such honours had become. He went north[36] and met his translators at Brantwood to finish the Xenophon,--and to help dig his harbour and cut coppice in his wood. He prepared a preface; but the next term was one of greater pressure, with the twelve lectures on Sir Joshua Reynolds to deliver. He wrote, after Christmas: [Footnote 36: "On a posting tour through Yorkshire". He made three such tours in 1875--southward in January, northward in June and July, and southward in September: and another northward in April and May, 1876.] "Now that I have got my head fairly into this Xenophon business, it has expanded into a new light altogether; and I think it would be absurd in me to slur over the life in one paragraph. A hundred things have come into my head as I arrange the dates, and I think I can make a much better thing of it--with a couple of days' work. My head would not work in town--merely turned from side to side--never nodded (except sleepily). I send you the proofs just to show you I'm at work. I'm going to translate all the story of Delphic answer before Anabasis: and his speech after the sleepless night."