1876.  A lecture on a similar subject was given to the boys of Christ’s Hospital on April 15th).  This lecture, called “The Iris of the Earth,” stood first in Part III. of “Deucalion”:  and the work went on, in studies of the forms of silica, on the lines marked out ten years before in the papers on Banded and Brecciated Concretions; now carried forward with much kind help from the Rev. J. Clifton Ward, of the Geological Survey, and Mr. Henry Willett, F.G.S., of Brighton.

On the way home over the Simplon in May and June, 1877, travelling first with Signor Alessandri, and then with Mr. G. Allen, Professor Ruskin continued his studies of Alpine flowers for “Proserpina.”  In the autumn he gave a lecture at Kendal (Oct. 1st, repeated at Eton College Dec. 8th) on “Yewdale and its Streamlets.”

“Yewdale”—­reprinted as Part V. of “Deucalion”—­took an unusual importance in his own mind, not only because it was a great success as a lecture—­though some Kendalians complained that there was not enough “information” in it:—­but because it was the first given since that Christmas at Venice, when a new insight had been granted him, as he felt, into spiritual things, and a new burden laid on him, to withstand the rash conclusions of “science falsely so called,” and to preach in their place the presence of God in nature and in man.

Writing to Miss Beever about his Oxford course of that autumn, “Readings in Modern Painters,” [38] he said, on the 2nd December: 

[Footnote 38:  Nov. 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22, 24, 27, 29 and Dec. 1, 1877.  These lectures were never prepared for publication as a course; the last lecture was printed in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1878.]

“I gave yesterday the twelfth and last of my course of lectures this term, to a room crowded by six hundred people, two-thirds members of the University, and with its door wedged open by those who could not get in; this interest of theirs being granted to me, I doubt not, because for the first time in Oxford I have been able to speak to them boldly of immortal life.  I intended when I began the course only to have read ‘Modern Painters’ to them; but when I began, some of your favourite bits[39] interested the men so much, and brought so much larger a proportion of undergraduates than usual, that I took pains to re-inforce and press them home; and people say I have never given so useful a course yet.  But it has taken all my time and strength.”

[Footnote 39:  Miss Beever had published early in 1875 the extracts from “Modern Painters,” so widely known as “Frondes Agrestes.”]

He wrote again, on Dec. 16th, from Herne Hill: