great light in his own day, and still conspicuous in the constellation of Scotch metaphysicians.

Their son, John James Ruskin (born May 10, 1785), was sent to the famous High School of Edinburgh, under Dr. Adam, the most renowned of Scottish head-masters, and there he received the sound old-fashioned classical education. Before he was sixteen, his sister Jessie was already married at Perth to Peter Richardson, a tanner living at Bridge End, by the Tay; and so his cousin, Margaret Cox, was sent for to fill the vacant place.

She was a daughter of old Mr. Ruskin's sister, who had married a Captain Cox, sailing from Yarmouth for the herring fishery. He had died in 1789, or thereabouts, from the results of an accident while riding homewards to his family after one of his voyages, and his widow maintained herself in comfort by keeping the old King's Head Inn at Croydon Market-place. Of her two daughters the younger married another Mr. Richardson, a baker at Croydon, so that, by an odd coincidence, there were two families of Richardsons, unconnected with one another except through their relationship to the Ruskins.

Margaret, the elder daughter, who came to keep house for her uncle in Edinburgh, was then nearly twenty years of age. She had been the model pupil at her Croydon day-school; tall and handsome, pious and practical, she was just the girl to become the confidante and adviser of her dark-eyed, active, and romantic young cousin.

Some time before the beginning of 1807, John James, having finished his education at the High School, went to London, where a place had been found for him by his uncle's brother-in-law, Mr. MacTaggart. He was followed by a kind letter from Dr. Thomas Brown, who advised him to keep up his Latin, and to study political economy, for the Professor looked upon him as a young man of unusual promise and power. During some two years, he worked as a clerk in the house of Sir William Gordon, Murphy and Co., where he made friends, and laid the foundation of his prosperity; for along with him at the office there was a Mr. Peter Domecq, owner of the Spanish vineyards of Macharnudo, learning the commercial part of his business in London, the headquarters of the sherry trade. He admired his fellow-clerk's capacity so much as to offer him the London agency of his family business. Mr. MacTaggart found the capital in consideration of their taking his relative, Mr. Telford, into the concern. And so they entered into partnership, about 1809, as Ruskin, Telford and Domecq: Domecq contributing the sherry, Mr. Henry Telford the capital, and Ruskin the brains.

How he came by his business capacity may be understood—and in some measure, perhaps, how his son came by his flexible and forcible style—from a letter of Mrs. Catherine Ruskin, written about this time; in which, moreover, there are a few details of family circumstances and character, not without interest. John James Ruskin had been protesting that he was never going to marry, but meant to devote himself to his mother; she replied:

He returned home to Edinburgh on a visit and arranged a marriage with his cousin Margaret, if she would wait for him until he was safely established; and then he set to work at the responsibilities of creating a new business. It was a severer task than he had anticipated, for his father's brain and business, as the above letter hints, had both gone wrong; he left Edinburgh and settled at Bower's Well, Perth, ended tragically, and left a load of debt behind him, which the son, sensitive to the family honour, undertook to pay before laying by a penny for himself. It took nine years of assiduous labour and economy. He worked the business entirely by himself. The various departments that most men entrust to others he filled in person. He managed the correspondence, he travelled for orders, he arranged the importation, he directed the growers out in Spain, and gradually built up a great business, paid off his father's creditors, and secured his own competence.

This was not done without sacrifice of health, which he never recovered, nor without forming habits of over-anxiety and toilsome minuteness which lasted his life long. But his business cares were relieved by cultured tastes. He loved art, painted in water-colours in the old style, and knew a good picture when he saw it. He loved literature, and read aloud finely all the old standard authors, though he was not too old-fashioned to admire "Pickwick" and the "Noctes Ambrosianæ" when they appeared. He loved the scenery and architecture among which he had travelled in Scotland and Spain; but he could find interest in almost any place and any subject; an alert man, in whom practical judgment was joined to a romantic temperament, strong feelings and opinions to extended sympathies. His letters, of which there are many preserved, bear witness to his character, taste, and