His friends, among them Holman Hunt, were collecting money to buy from the widow his picture of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, to present it to the National Gallery as a memorial of him; and at a meeting for the purpose, Ruskin spoke warmly of his labours in the cause of the working classes.
In the summer of 1857 the Art Treasures Exhibition was held at Manchester, and Ruskin was invited to lecture.

The theme he chose was "The Political Economy of Art." He had been studying political economy for some time back, but, as we saw from his letter to Carlyle, he had found no answer in the ordinary text-books for the questions he tried to put.

He wanted to know what Bentham and Ricardo and Mill, the great authorities, would advise him as to the best way of employing artists, of educating workmen, of elevating public taste, of regulating patronage; but these subjects were not in their programme.

And so he put together his own thoughts into two lectures upon Art considered as Wealth: first, how to get it; next, how to use it.[7] [Footnote 7: July 10 and 13, 1857.

He went to Manchester from Oxford, where he had been staying with the Liddells, writing enthusiastically of the beauty of their children and the charm of their domestic life.] There were very few points in these lectures that were not vigorously contested at the moment, and conceded in the sequel--in some form or other.