For example, the strength of the Greek, Florentine and Venetian art arose out of the search for truth, not, as it is often supposed, out of striving after an ideal of beauty; and as soon as nature was superseded by recipe, the greatest schools hastened to their fall.

From which he concluded that modern design should always be founded on natural form, rather than upon the traditional patterns of the east or of the mediaevals.
On February 16th he spoke on "The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art and Policy," at Tunbridge Wells; a subject similar to that of his address to the St.Martin's School of the year before, but amplified into a plea for the use of wrought-iron ornament, as in the new Oxford Museum, then building, and on April 25th he again addressed St.Martin's School.
The Oxford Museum was an experiment in the true Gothic revival.

The architects, Sir Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward, had allowed their workmen to design parts of the detail, such as capitals and spandrils, quite in the spirit of Ruskin's teaching, and the work was accordingly of deep interest to him.

So far back as April, 1856, he had given an address to the men employed at the Museum, whom he met, on Dr.Acland's invitation, at the Workmen's Reading Rooms.

He said that his object was not to give some labouring men the chance of becoming masters of other labouring men, and to help the few at the expense of the many, but to lead them to those sources of pleasure, and power over their own minds and hands, that more educated people possess.