It was in the middle of June 1861 that Ruskin started for his long period of self-ordained exile. Before leaving home he performed an act of self-denial which signified the consecration of his energies to other than artistic pursuits. He stripped himself of many of his treasured drawings by Turner, and presented them to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The collection of Turners which his father had amassed for him at Denmark Hill was by this time, as Ruskin had said to Lord Palmerston, one of the richest in the country. The prices paid for them, though they often shocked the old Scottish merchant, will seem almost incredibly small to collectors of the present day. The drawing of “Winchelsea,” given to Ruskin on his twenty-first birthday, had cost forty guineas.