“ I want ever so many things now from my rooms,” Ruskin wrote, on recovery, to a friend at Oxford (May 14, 1878); “I'm getting well into my plant-work again, and missals. I'm not overworking, and never will any more, but the doctors are all quite unable to make me out. My work is to me Air and Water, and they might just as well tell a sick fish to lie on its back, or a sick swallow to catch no flies, as me not to catch what's in the air of passing fancy.”

His flower-fancies pleased without exciting him. To his friend, F. S. Ellis, the bookseller, he wrote that the spring flowers were to be his models of behaviour—“they grow— and do—as they like exactly; which I perceive to be the intention of Providence that they—and I—should, and propose to follow their good example as I best can.” He was engaged in devising a new botanical nomenclature, and sought advice on some points of Greek word-formation:—

(To Dean Liddell.) “Nov., 1878.—I am very thoroughly grateful for your kindness in looking over these proofs; and more than happy in your indulgence to them.