CHAPTER X.
"MODERN PAINTERS" CONCLUDED (1838-1860) Oxford and old friends did not monopolise Ruskin's attention: he was soon seen at Cambridge--on the same platform with Richard Redgrave, R.A., the representative of Academicism and officialism--at the opening of the School of Art for workmen on October 29th, 1858.

His Inaugural Address struck a deeper note, a wider chord, than previous essays; it was the forecast of the last volume of "Modern Painters," and it sketched the train of thought into which he had been led during his tour abroad, that summer.
The battles between faith and criticism, between the historical and the scientific attitudes, which had been going on in his mind, were taking a new form.

At the outset, we saw, naturalism overpowered respect for tradition--in the first volume of "Modern Painters;" then the historical tendency won the day, in the second volume.

Since that time, the critical side had been gathering strength, by his alliance with liberal movements and by his gradual detachment from associations that held him to the older order of thought.

As in his lonely journey of 1845 he first took independent ground upon questions of religion and social life, so in 1858, once more travelling alone, he was led by his meditations,--freed from the restraining presence of his parents--to conclusions which he had been all these years evading, yet finding at last inevitable.
He went abroad for a third attempt to write and illustrate his History of Swiss Towns.