[Illustration: THE SCENE OF THE DIGGING OPERATIONS.]
This experiment was undertaken by Ruskin as a practical piece of
serviceable manual labour, for Ruskin taught in his lectures that the
Fine Arts required, as a necessary condition of their perfection, a
happy country life with manual labour as an equally necessary part of a
completely healthy and rounded human existence, and in this experiment
he practised what he preached. The experiment caused no little stir in
Oxford, and even the London newspapers had their gibe at the "Amateur
Navvies of Oxford"; to walk over to Hinksey and laugh at the diggers was
a fashionable afternoon amusement.
The "Hinksey diggings," as they were humorously called, were taken up
with an enthusiasm which burned so fiercely that it soon expended
itself, and its last flickering embers were soon extinguished by the
ironic chaff and banter to which these gilded youths were subjected.
The owner of the estate sent his surveyor to report the condition of the
road as they had left it, and it is said that in his report he wrote:
"The young men have done no mischief to speak of."
The River Thames, over which we now crossed, is known in Oxford as the
"Isis," the name of an Egyptian goddess--though in reality only an
abbreviated form of the Latin name Tamesis.
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