The picture he chose was a Rembrandt.
Between this foreign tour and the next, his amusement was to draw these vignettes, and to write the poems suggested by the scenes he had visited.

He had outgrown the evening lessons with Dr.Andrews, and as he was fifteen, it was time to think more seriously of preparing him for Oxford, where his name was put down at Christ Church.

His father hoped he would go into the Church, and eventually turn out a combination of a Byron and a bishop--something like Dean Milman, only better.

For this, college was a necessary preliminary; for college, some little schooling.
So they picked the best day-school in the neighbourhood, that of the Rev.Thomas Dale (afterwards Dean of Rochester), in Grove Lane, Peckham.
John Ruskin worked there rather less than two years.

In 1835 he was taken from school in consequence of an attack of pleurisy, and lost the rest of that year from regular studies.
More interesting to him than school was the British Museum collection of minerals, where he worked occasionally with his Jamieson's Dictionary.
By this time he had a fair student's collection of his own, and he increased it by picking up specimens at Matlock, or Clifton, or in the Alps, wherever he went, for he was not short of pocket-money.