Ruskin spent the winter of 1867–68 quietly at home, and many friends came to see him at Denmark Hill; but this was not always unalloyed pleasure. “ Mama provoking in abuse of people, ” is a significant entry in the diary. His mother was affectionate, but also exacting and somewhat censorious; she was firmly persuaded that only the pernicious influence of ill-chosen friends had seduced her son from the evangelical principles which she had inculcated in his youth. She liked, too, to be mistress in her own house; and now that advancing years had confirmed her in habits of great regularity and precision, she did not always welcome the sight of new faces and unexpected guests. We have seen, in the recollections of a visitor at an earlier date, with what beautiful deference Ruskin treated his mother, and this was always his attitude, though sometimes he would venture indirectly to answer her reproaches.