I got a piece of advice from Hunt,--never to commission a picture.

He could not have done my pigeon so well had he felt he was doing it for anybody." The pigeon was a drawing he had just bought; in later years at Brantwood.
In February 1852 a dinner-party was given to celebrate in his absence John Ruskin's thirty-third birthday.
"On Monday, 9th, we had Oldfield (Newton was in Wales), Harrison, George Richmond, Tom, Dr.Grant, and Samuel Prout.

The latter I never saw in such spirits, and he went away much satisfied.
Yesterday at church we were told that he came home very happy, ascended to his painting-room, and in a quarter of an hour from his leaving our cheerful house was a corpse, from apoplexy.

He never spoke after the fit came on.

He had always wished for a sudden death." Next year, in November, 1853, he tells of a visit paid, by John's request, to W.H.Deverell, the young Pre-Raphaelite, whom he found "in squalor and sickness--with his Bible open--and not long to live--while Howard abuses his picture at Liverpool." Early in 1852 Charles Newton was going to Greece on a voyage of discovery, and wanted John Ruskin to go with him.