Among the lectures which as an undergraduate I heard Ruskin deliver at Oxford, one has more particularly stayed in my memory. I had gone to the lecture-room in good time, for otherwise there was no chance of getting a good place ; and some minutes before the appointed hour, the Professor's servant came in and deposited five large and sumptuously bound volumes upon the right hand of the table, the lettering on them carefully turned towards the wall. Presently Ruskin entered, to the usual accompaniment of applause, carrying a small volume in faded green cloth. He was an adept in the art of exciting curiosity; and after transferring the pile of the large volumes to the left-hand side of his desk, he laid down the little green book on his right hand—looking up at the audience thereafter, with a genial smile, as much as to say, “Now, don't you wonder what the books are and what I am going to tell you about them?” He did not keep us long in doubt. The subject of the course to which the lecture belonged had been first announced as “Landscape Painting”; but it never much mattered what Ruskin's lectures were called, and the course was in fact an informal commentary at large upon his books and teaching.