Ruskin kept the Lent term of 1874 at Oxford, and it was then that he opened negotiations, as already related, for his road-digging experiment at Hincksey. He had announced himself to give “Three Lectures on the Relations of Outline between Rock and Perpetual Snow in the Alps.” But as the appointed day drew near, his distress of spirit was so great that he felt himself unable to face the ordeal. “The giving up lectures,” he wrote to Mrs. Severn, “does not mean any giving in, but that I have no heart or strength forspeaking, and could not have looked people in the face. The sorrow so sucks the life out of me; but it increases the thoughtful power, and I'm doing really more than if I were at Oxford. But the Prince will be vexed; he really wanted to hear me lecture again.” The geological lectures were accordingly postponed till the October term, and Ruskin went abroad for seven months.

The foreign tour of 1874 affected vitally Ruskin's views upon Italian art, and it provided most of the material which is worked up in the lectures onThe Æsthetic and Mathematic Schools and inMornings in Florence, On this occasion lie took no friends with him; though he was attended by his servant Crawley, a courier (Klein), and (for a short time) Mr. Allen. He started in great depression, and at Paris he found it necessary to seek medical advice.