CHAPTER II

To which they removed in October, 1842.

At Paris, on the way heme in 1844, he had spent some days in studying Titian and Bellini and Perugino. They were not new to him; but now that he was an art-critic, it behoved him to improve his acquaintance with the old masters. "To admire the works of Pietro Perugino" was one thing; but to understand them was another, a thing which was hardly attempted by "the Landscape Artists of England" to whom the author of "Modern Painters" had so far dedicated his services. He had been extolling modernism, and depreciating "the Ancients" because they could not draw rocks and clouds and trees; and he was fresh from his scientific sketching in the happy hunting-ground of the modern world. A few days in the Louvre made him the devotee of ancient art, and taught him to lay aside his geology for history.

In one way the development was easy. The patient attempt to copy mountain-form had made him sensitive to harmony of line; and in the great composers of Florence and Venice he found a quality of abstract design which tallied with his experience of what was beautiful in Nature. Aiguilles and glaciers, drawn as he drew them, and the figure-subjects of severe Italian draughtsmen, are beautiful by the same laws of composition, however different the associations they suggest.

Buthehad been learning these laws of beauty from Turner and from the Alps; how did the ancients come by them? This could be found only in a thorough study of their lives and times, to begin with, to which he devoted his winter, with Rio and Lord Lindsay and Mrs. Jameson for his authorities. He found that his foes, Caspar Poussin and Canaletto, and the Dutch landscapists, were not the real oldmasters; that there had been a great age of art before the era of Vandyck and Rubens—even before Michelangelo and Raphael; and that, towards setting up as a critic of the present, he must understand the past out of which it had grown. So he determined to go to Florence and Venice, and to study the religious painters at first hand.

Mountain-study and Turner were not to be dropped. For example, to explain the obvious and notorious licences which Turner took with topography, it was necessary to see in what these licences consisted. Of the later Swiss drawings, one of the wildest and most impressive was the "St. Gothard"; Ruskin wanted to find Turner's point of view, and to see what alterations he had made. He told Turner so, and the artist, who knew that his picture had been realized from a very slight sketch, was naturally rather opposed to this test, as being, from his point of view, merely a waste of time and trouble. He tried to persuade the Ruskins that the Swiss Sonderbund war, then going on, made travelling unsafe, and so forth. But in vain. Mr. John was allowed to go, for the first time alone, without his parents, taking only a servant, and meeting the trustworthy Coutet at Geneva.

With seven months at his own disposal, he did a vast amount of work, especially in drawing. The studies of mountain-form and Italian design, in the year before, had given him a greater interest in the "Liber Studiorum," Turner's early book of Essays in Composition. He found there that use of the pure line, about which he has since said so much, together with a thoughtfully devised scheme of light-and-shade in mezzotint, devoted to the treatment of landscape in the same spirit as that in which the Italian masters treated figure-subjects in their pen-and-bistre studies. And just as he had imitated the Rogers vignettes in his boyhood, now in his youth he tried to emulate the fine abstract flow and searching expressiveness of the etched line, and the studied breadth of shade, by usingthe quill-pen with washes. At first he kept pretty closely to monochrome. His object was form, and his special talent was for draughtsmanship rather than for colour. But it was this winter's study of the "Liber Studiorum" that started him on his own characteristic course; and while we have no pen-and-wash work of his before 1845 (except a few experiments after Prout), we find him now using the pen continually during the "Modern Painters" period.

On reaching the Lake of Geneva he wrote, or sketched, one of his best-known pieces of verse, "Mont Blanc Revisited," and a few other poems followed, the last of the long series which had once been his chief interest and aim in life. With this lonely journey there came new and deeper feelings; with his increased literary power, fresh resources of diction; and he was never so near being a poet as when he gave up writing verse. Too condensed to be easily understood, too solemn in their movement to be trippingly read, the lines on "The Arve at Cluse," on "Mont Blanc," and "The Glacier," should not be passed over as merely rhetorical. And the reflections on the loungers at Conflans ("Why Stand ye here all the Day Idle?") are full of the spirit in which he was gradually approaching the great problems of his life, to pass through art into the earnest study of human conduct and its final cause.

He was still deeply religious—more deeply so than before, and found the echo of his own thoughts in George Herbert, with whom he "communed in spirit" while he travelled through the Alps. But the forms of outward religion were losing their hold over him in proportion as his inward religion became more real and intense. It was only a few days after writing these lines that he "broke the Sabbath" for the first time in his life, by climbing a hill after church. That was the first shot fired in a war, in one of the strangest and saddest wars between conscience and reason that biography records; strange because the opposing forces were so nearly matched, and sad because thestruggle lasted until their field of battle was desolated before either won a victory.

Later on we have to tell how he dwelt in Doubting Castle, and how he escaped. But the pilgrim had not yet met Giant Despair; and his progress was very pleasant in that spring of 1845, the year of fine weather, as he drove round the Riviera, and the cities of Tuscany opened out their treasures to him. There was Lucca, with San Frediano and the glories of Romanesque architecture; Fra Bartolommeo's picture of the Madonna with the Magdalen and St. Catherine of Siena, his initiation into the significance of early religious painting: and, taking hold of his imagination, in her marble sleep, more powerfully than any flesh and blood, the dead lady of St. Martin's Church, Ilaria di Caretto. There was Pisa, with the Campo Santo and the jewel shrine of Sta. Maria della Spina, then undestroyed; the excitement of street sketching among a sympathetic crowd of fraternizing Italians; the Abbé Rosini, Professor of Fine Arts, whom he made friends with, endured as lecturer, and persuaded into scaffold-building in the Campo Santo for study of the frescoes. And there was Florence, with Giotto's campanile and Santa Maria Novella, where the young Protestant frequented monasteries, made hay with monks, sketched with his new-found friends Rudolf Durheim of Berne and Dieudonné the French purist; and spent long days copying Angelico and annotating Ghirlandajo, fevered with the sun of Italy at its strongest, and with the rapture of discovery, "which turns the unaccustomed head like Chianti wine."

Coutet got him away, at last, to the Alps; worn out and in despondent reaction after all this excitement. He spent a month at Macugnaga, reading Shakespeare and trying to draw boulders; drifting gradually back into strength enough to attack the next piece of work, the study of Turner sites on the St. Gothard, where he made the drawings afterwards engraved in "Modern Painters." In August, J.D. Harding was going to Venice, and arranged for ameeting at Baveno, on the Lago Maggiore. Gossip had credited him with a share in "Modern Painters"; now the tables were turned, and Griffith, the picture-dealer, wanted to know if it was true that John Ruskin had helped Harding with his new book, just out. They sketched together, Ruskin perhaps emulating his friend's slap-dash style in the "Sunset" reproduced in his "Poems," and illustrating his own in the "Water-mill." And so they drove together to Verona and thence to Venice.

At Venice they stayed in Danieli's Hotel, on the Riva dei Schiavoni, and began by studying picturesque canal-life. Mr. Boxall, R.A., and Mrs. Jameson, the historian of Sacred and Legendary Art, were their companions. Another old friend, Joseph Severn, had in 1843 gained one of the prizes at the Westminster Hall Cartoons Competition; and a letter from Ruskin, referring to the work there, shows how he still pondered on the subject that had been haunting him in the Alps:

"With your hopes for the elevation of English art by means of fresco I cannot sympathize.... It is not the material nor the space that can give us thoughts, passions, or power. I see on our Academy walls nothing but what is ignoble in small pictures, and would be disgusting in large ones.... It is not the love of fresco that we want; it is the love of God and His creatures; it is humility, and charity, and self-denial, and fasting, and prayer; it is a total change of character. We want more faith and less reasoning, less strength and more trust. You want neither walls, nor plaster, nor colours—ça ne fait rien à l'affaire; it is Giotto, and Ghirlandajo, and Angelico that you want, and that you will and must want until this disgusting nineteenth century has—I can't say breathed, but steamed its last."

So early he had taken up and wrapped round him the mantle of Cassandra.

But he was suddenly to find the sincerity of Ghirlandajo and the religious significance of Angelico united with the matured power of art. Without knowing what they were to meet, Harding and hefound themselves one day in the Scuola di S. Rocco, and face to face with Tintoret.

It was the fashion earlier, and it has been the fashion since, to undervalue Tintoret. He is not pious enough for the purists, nor decorative enough for the Pre-Raphaelites. The ruin or the restoration of almost all his pictures makes it impossible for the ordinary amateur to judge them; they need reconstruction in the mind's eye, and that is a dangerous process. Ruskin himself, as he grew older, found more interest in the playful industry of Carpaccio than in the laborious games, the stupendous Titan feats of Tintoret. But at this moment, solemnized before the problems of life, he found these problems hinted in the mystic symbolism of the School of S. Rocco; with eyes now opened to pre-Reformation Christianity, he found its completed outcome in Tintoret's interpretation of the life of Christ and the types of the Old Testament; fresh from the stormy grandeur of the St. Gothard, he found the lurid skies and looming giants of the Visitation, or the Baptism, or the Crucifixion, re-echoing the subjects of Turner as "deep answering to deep"; and, with Harding of the Broad Brush, he recognised the mastery of landscape execution in the Flight into Egypt, and the St. Mary in the Desert.

He devoted the rest of his time chiefly to cataloguing and copying Tintoret. The catalogue appeared in "Stones of Venice," which was suggested by this visit, and begun by some sketches of architectural detail, and the acquisition of daguerreotypes—a new invention which delighted him immensely, as it had delighted Turner, with trustworthy records of detail which sometimes eluded even his industry and accuracy.

At last his friends were gone; and, left alone, he overworked himself, as usual, before leaving Venice with crammed portfolios and closely-written notebooks. At Padua he was stopped by a fever; all through France he was pursued by what, from his account, appears to have been some form of diphtheria,averted only, as he believed, in direct answer to earnest prayer. At last his eventful pilgrimage was ended, and he was restored to his home and his parents. It was not long before he was at work again in his new study, looking out upon the quiet meadow and grazing cows of Denmark Hill, and rapidly throwing into form the fresh impressions of the summer. He was strongly influenced by the sermons of Canon Melvill—the same preacher whom Browning in his youth admired—a good orator and sound analytic expositor, though not a great or independent thinker. Osborne Gordon had recommended him to read Hooker, and he caught the tone and style of the "Ecclesiastical Polity" only too readily, so that much of his work of that winter, the more philosophical part of vol. ii., was damaged by inversions, and Elizabethan quaintness as of ruff and train, long epexegetical sentences, and far-sought pomposity of diction. It was only when he had waded through the chaos which he set himself to survey, that he could lay aside his borrowed stilts, and stand on his own feet in the Tintoret descriptions—rather stiff, yet, from foregone efforts.

This volume, like the first, was completed in the winter, in one long spell of hard work, broken only by a visit to Oxford in January as the guest of Dr. Greswell, Head of Worcester, at a conference for the promotion of art. Smith and Elder accepted the book on Mr. J.J. Ruskin's terms (so his wife wrote), for they had already reported it as called for by the public. The first volume was going into a third edition.

When his book came out he was away again in Italy, trying to show his father all that he had seen in the Campo Santo and Giotto's Tower, and to explain "why it more than startled him." The good man hardly felt the force of it all at once. And there were little passages of arms and some heart-quaking and head-shaking, until Mr. Dale, the old schoolmaster, wrote that he had heard no less a man than Sydney Smith mention the new book in public, in the presenceof "distinguished literary characters," as a work of "transcendent talent, presenting the most original views, in the most elegant and powerful language, which would work a complete revolution in the world of taste." When he returned home it was to find a respectful welcome. His word on matters of Art was now really worth something, and before long it was called for. The National Gallery was comparatively in its infancy. It had been established less than twenty-five years, and its manager, Mr. Eastlake (afterwards Sir Charles), had his hands full, what with rascally dealers in forged old masters, and incompetent picture-cleaners; and an economical Government, and a public that neither knew its own mind nor trusted his judgment. A great outcry was set up against him for buying bad works, and spoiling the best by restoration. Ruskin wrote very temperately toThe Times, pointing out that the damage had been slight compared with what was being done everywhere else, and suggesting that, prevention being better than cure, the pictures should be put under glass, for then they would not need the recurring attentions of the restorer. But he blamed the management for spending large sums on added examples of Guido and Rubens, while they had no Angelico, no Ghirlandajo, no good Perugino, only one Bellini, and, in a word, left his new friends, the early Christian artists, unrepresented. He suggested that pictures might be picked up for next to nothing in Italy; and he begged that the collection might be made historical and educational by being fully representative, and chronologically arranged.

"Have you read an Oxford Graduate's letters on art?" wrote Miss Mitford, of "Our Village," on January 27, 1847. "The author, Mr. Ruskin, was here last week, and is certainly the most charming person that I have ever known." The friendship thus begun lasted until her death. She encouraged him in his work; she delighted in his success; and, in the grave reverses which were to befall him, he found her his most faithful supporter and most sympathetic consoler. In return, "his kindness cheered her closing days; he sent her every book that would interest and every delicacy that would strengthen her, attentions which will not surprise those who have heard of his large and thoughtful generosity."2

It was natural that a rising man, so closely connected with Scotland, should be welcomed by the leaders of the Scottish school of literature. Sydney Smith, a former Edinburgh professor, had praised the new volume. John Murray, as it seems from letters of the period, made overtures to secure the author as a contributor to his Italian guide-books. Lockhart employed him to write for theQuarterly Review.

Lockhart was a person of great interest for young Ruskin, who worshipped Scott; and Lockhart's daughter, even without her personal charm, would have attracted him as the actual grandchild of the great Sir Walter. It was for her sake, he says, rather than for the honour of writing in the famousQuarterly, that he undertook to review Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art."

He was known to be a suitor for Miss Lockhart's hand. His father, in view of the success he desired, had been in February looking out for a house in the Lake District; hoping, no doubt, to see him settledthere as a sort of successor to Wordsworth and Christopher North. In March, John Ruskin betook himself to the Salutation at Ambleside, with his constant attendant and amanuensis George, for quiet after a tiring winter in London society, and for his new labour of reviewing. But he did not find himself so fond of the Lakes as of old. He wrote to his mother (Sunday, March 28, 1847):

"I finished—and sealed up—and addressed—my last bit of work, last night by ten o'clock—ready to send by to-day's post—so that my father should receive it with this. I could not at all have done it had I stayed at home: for even with all the quiet here, I have had no more time than was necessary. For exercise, I find the rowing very useful, though it makes me melancholy with thinking of 1838,—and the lake, when it is quite calm, is wonderfully sad and quiet:—no bright colours—no snowy peaks. Black water—as still as death;—lonely, rocky islets—leafless woods,—or worse than leafless—the brown oak foliage hanging dead upon them; gray sky;—far-off, wild, dark, dismal moorlands; no sound except the rustling of the boat among the reeds."One o'clock.—I have your kind note and my father's, and am very thankful that you like what I have written, for I did not at all know myself whether it were good or bad."

"One o'clock.—I have your kind note and my father's, and am very thankful that you like what I have written, for I did not at all know myself whether it were good or bad."

In the early summer he went to Oxford, for a meeting of the British Association. He said (June 27, 1847):

"I am not able to write a full account of all I see, to amuse you, for I find it necessary to keep as quiet as I can, and I fear it would only annoy you to be told of all the invitations I refuse, and all the interesting matters in which I take no part. There is nothing for it but throwing one's self into the stream, and going down with one's arms under water, ready to be carried anywhere, or do anything. My friends are all busy, and tired to death. All the members of my section, but especially (Edward) Forbes, Sedgwick, Murchison, and Lord Northampton—and of course Buckland, are as kind to me as men can be; but I am tormented by the perpetual sense of my unmitigated ignorance, for I know no more now than I did when a boy, and I have only one perpetualfeeling of being in everybody's way. The recollections of the place, too, and the being in my old rooms, make me very miserable. I have not one moment of profitably spent time to look back to while I was here, and much useless labour and disappointed hope; and I can neither bear the excitement of being in the society where the play of mind is constant, and rollsoverme like heavy wheels, nor the pain of being alone. I get away in the evenings into the hayfields about Cumnor, and rest; but then my failing sight plagues me. I cannot look at anything as I used to do, and the evening sky is covered with swimming strings and eels. My best time is while I am in the Section room, for though it is hot, and sometimes wearisome, yet I have nothing tosay,—little to do,—nothing to look at, and as much as I like to hear."

He had to undergo a second disappointment in love; his health broke down again, and he was sent to Leamington to his former doctor, Jephson, once more a "consumptive" patient. Dieted into health, he went to Scotland with a new-found friend, William Macdonald Macdonald of Crossmount. But he had no taste for sport, and could make little use of his opportunities for distraction and relaxation. One battue was enough for him, and the rest of the visit was spent in morbid despondency, digging thistles, and brooding over the significance of the curse of Eden, so strangely now interwoven with his own life—"Thorns a also and Thistles."

At Bower's Well, Perth, where his grandparents had spent their later years, and where his parents had been married, lived Mr. George Gray, a lawyer, and an old acquaintance of the Ruskin family. His daughter Euphemia used to visit at Denmark Hill. It was for her that, some years earlier, "The King of the Golden River" had been written. She had grown up into a perfect Scotch beauty, with every gift of health and spirits which would compensate—the old folk thought—for his retiring and morbid nature. They were anxious, now more than ever, to see him settled. They pressed him, in letters still extant, to propose. We have seen how he was situated, andcan understand how he persuaded himself that fortune, after all, was about to smile upon him. Her family had their own reasons for promoting the match, and all united in hastening on the event.

In the Notes to Exhibitions added to a new edition of "Modern Painters," then in the Press, the author mentions a "hurried visit to Scotland in the spring" of 1848. This was the occasion of his marriage at Perth, on April 10. The young couple spent rather more than a fortnight on the way South, among Scotch and English lakes, intending to make a more extended tour in the summer to the cathedrals and abbeys.

The pilgrimage began with Salisbury, where a few days' sketching in the damp and draughts of the cathedral laid the bridegroom low, and brought the tour to an untimely end. In August, the young people were seen safely off to Normandy, where they went by easy stages from town to town, studying the remains of Gothic building. In October they returned and settled in a house of their own, at 31, Park Street, where during the winter he wrote "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," and, as a bit of by-work, a notice of Samuel Prout for theArt Journal.

This was Ruskin's first illustrated volume. The plates were engraved by himself in soft-ground etching, such as Prout had used, from drawings he had made in 1846 and 1848. Some are scrappy combinations of various detail, but others, such as the Byzantine capital, the window in Giotto's Campanile, the arches from St. Lo in Normandy, from St. Michele at Lucca, and from the Ca' Foscari at Venice, are effective studies of the actual look of old buildings, seen as they are shown us in Nature, with her light and the shade added to all the facts of form, and her own last touches in the way of weather-softening, and settling-faults, and tufted, nestling plants.

Revisiting the Hôtel de la Cloche at Dijon in later years, Ruskin showed me the room where he had "bitten" the last plate in his wash-hand basin, as a careless makeshift for the regular etcher's bath. Hewas not dissatisfied with his work himself; the public of the day wanted something more finished. So the second edition appeared with the subjects elaborately popularized in fashionable engraving. More recently they have undergone reduction for a cheap issue. But any book lover knows the value of the original "Seven Lamps" with its San Miniato cover and autograph plates.

As to its reception, or at least the anticipation of it. Charlotte Bronte bears witness in a letter to the publishers.

"I congratulate you on the approaching publication of Mr. Ruskin's new work. If 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture' resemble their predecessor, 'Modern Painters,' they will be no lamps at all, but a new constellation,—seven bright stars, for whose rising the reading world ought to be anxiously agape."

The book was announced for his father's birthday, May 10, 1849, and it appeared while they were among the Alps. The earlier part of this tour is pretty fully described in "Præterita," II. xi., and "Fors," letter xc., and so the visit of Richard Fall, the meeting with Sibylla Dowie, and the death of cousin Mary need not be dwelt on here. From the letters that passed between father and son we find that Mr. John had been given a month's leave from July 26 to explore the Higher Alps, with Coutet his guide and George his valet. The old people stayed at the Hôtel des Bergues, and thought of little else but their son and his affairs, looking eagerly from day to day for the last news, both of him and of his book.

Mr. Ruskin, senior, writes from Geneva on July 29:

"Miss Tweddale says your bookhas made a great sensation." On August 4: "TheSpectator, which Smith sets great value on, has an elaborate favourable notice on 'Seven Lamps,' only ascribing aninfirmityof temper, quoting railroad passage in proof. Anne was told by American family servant that you were in American Paper, and got it for us, theNew York Tribuneof July 13; first article is your book. They say they are willing to be learners from, rather than critics of, such a book, etc.TheDaily News(some of thePunchpeople's paper) has a capital notice. It begins: 'This is a masked battery of seven pieces, which blaze away to the total extinction of the small architectural lights we may boast of, etc., etc.'" On August 5: "I have, at a shameful charge of ten francs, got August magazine and Dickens, quite a prohibition for parcels from England. InBritish Quarterly, under æsthetics of Gothic architecture they take four works, you first.... As a critic they almost rank you with Goethe and Coleridge, and in style with Jeremy Taylor."

The qualified encouragement of these remarks was further qualified with detailed advice about health; and warnings against the perils of the way, to which Mr. John used to answer on this wise:

"CORMAYEUR,Sunday afternoon (July29, 1849)."MY DEAREST FATHER,"(Put the three sheets in order first, 1, 2, 3, then read this, front andback, and then 2, and then 3, front and back.) You and my mother were doubtless very happy when you saw the day clear up as you left St. Martin's. Truly it was impossible that any day could be more perfect towards its close. We reached Nant Bourant at twelve o'clock, or a little before, and Coutet having given his sanction to my wish to get on, we started again soon after one—and reached the top of the Col de Bonhomme about five. You would have been delighted with that view—it is one upon those lovely seas of blue mountain, one behind the other, of which one never tires—this, fortunately, westward—so that all the blue ridges and ranges above Conflans and Beaufort were dark against the afternoon sky, though misty with its light; while eastward a range of snowy crests, of which the most important was the Mont Iseran, caught the sunlight full upon them. The sun was as warm, and the air as mild, on the place where the English travellers sank and perished, as in our garden at Denmark Hill on the summer evenings. There is, however, no small excuse for a man's losing courage on that pass, if the weather were foul. I never saw one so literally pathless—so void of all guide and help from the lie of the ground—so embarrassing from the distance which one has to wind round mere brows of craggy precipice without knowing the direction in which one is moving, while the path is perpetually lost in heapsof shale or among clusters of crags, even when it is free of snow. All, however, when I passed was serene, and even beautiful—owing to the glow which the red rocks had in the sun. We got down to Chapiu about seven—itself one of the most desolately-placed villages I ever saw in the Alps. Scotland is in no place that I have seen, so barren or so lonely. Ever since I passed Shapfells, when a child, I have had an excessive love for this kind of desolation, and I enjoyed my little square chalet window and my chalet supper exceedingly (mutton with garlic)."

"CORMAYEUR,Sunday afternoon (July29, 1849).

"MY DEAREST FATHER,

"(Put the three sheets in order first, 1, 2, 3, then read this, front andback, and then 2, and then 3, front and back.) You and my mother were doubtless very happy when you saw the day clear up as you left St. Martin's. Truly it was impossible that any day could be more perfect towards its close. We reached Nant Bourant at twelve o'clock, or a little before, and Coutet having given his sanction to my wish to get on, we started again soon after one—and reached the top of the Col de Bonhomme about five. You would have been delighted with that view—it is one upon those lovely seas of blue mountain, one behind the other, of which one never tires—this, fortunately, westward—so that all the blue ridges and ranges above Conflans and Beaufort were dark against the afternoon sky, though misty with its light; while eastward a range of snowy crests, of which the most important was the Mont Iseran, caught the sunlight full upon them. The sun was as warm, and the air as mild, on the place where the English travellers sank and perished, as in our garden at Denmark Hill on the summer evenings. There is, however, no small excuse for a man's losing courage on that pass, if the weather were foul. I never saw one so literally pathless—so void of all guide and help from the lie of the ground—so embarrassing from the distance which one has to wind round mere brows of craggy precipice without knowing the direction in which one is moving, while the path is perpetually lost in heapsof shale or among clusters of crags, even when it is free of snow. All, however, when I passed was serene, and even beautiful—owing to the glow which the red rocks had in the sun. We got down to Chapiu about seven—itself one of the most desolately-placed villages I ever saw in the Alps. Scotland is in no place that I have seen, so barren or so lonely. Ever since I passed Shapfells, when a child, I have had an excessive love for this kind of desolation, and I enjoyed my little square chalet window and my chalet supper exceedingly (mutton with garlic)."

He then confesses that he woke in the night with a sore throat, but struggled on next day down the Allée Blanche to Cormayeur.

"I never saw such a mighty heap of stones and dust. The glacier itself is quite invisible from the road (and I had no mind for extra work or scrambling), except just at the bottom, where the ice appears in one or two places, being exactly of the colour of the heaps of waste coal at the Newcastle pits, and admirably adapted therefore to realize one's brightest anticipations of the character and style of the AlléeBlanche."The heap of its moraine conceals, for the two miles of its extent, the entire range of Mont Blanc from the eye. At last you weather the mighty promontory, cross the torrent which issues from its base, and find yourself suddenly at the very foot of the vast slope of torn granite, which from a point not 200 feet lower than the summit of Mont Blanc, sweeps down into the valley of Cormayeur."I am quite unable to speak with justice—or think with clearness—of this marvellous view. One is so unused to see a mass like that of Mont Blanc without any snow that all my ideas and modes of estimating size were at fault. I only felt overpowered by it, and that—as with the porch of Rouen Cathedral—look as I would, I could notseeit. I had not mind enough to grasp it or meet it. I tried in vain to fix some of its main features on my memory; then set the mules to graze again, and took my sketch-book, and marked the outlines—but where is the use of marking contours of a mass of endless—countless—fantastic rock—12,000 feet sheer above the valley? Besides, one cannot have sharp sore-throat for twelve hours without its bringing on some slight feverishness; and the scorching Alpine sun to which we had beenexposed without an instant's cessation from the height of the col till now—i.e., from half-past ten to three—had not mended the matter; my pulse was now beginning slightly to quicken and my head slightly to ache—and my impression of the scene is feverish and somewhat painful; I should think like yours of the valley of Sixt."

"The heap of its moraine conceals, for the two miles of its extent, the entire range of Mont Blanc from the eye. At last you weather the mighty promontory, cross the torrent which issues from its base, and find yourself suddenly at the very foot of the vast slope of torn granite, which from a point not 200 feet lower than the summit of Mont Blanc, sweeps down into the valley of Cormayeur.

"I am quite unable to speak with justice—or think with clearness—of this marvellous view. One is so unused to see a mass like that of Mont Blanc without any snow that all my ideas and modes of estimating size were at fault. I only felt overpowered by it, and that—as with the porch of Rouen Cathedral—look as I would, I could notseeit. I had not mind enough to grasp it or meet it. I tried in vain to fix some of its main features on my memory; then set the mules to graze again, and took my sketch-book, and marked the outlines—but where is the use of marking contours of a mass of endless—countless—fantastic rock—12,000 feet sheer above the valley? Besides, one cannot have sharp sore-throat for twelve hours without its bringing on some slight feverishness; and the scorching Alpine sun to which we had beenexposed without an instant's cessation from the height of the col till now—i.e., from half-past ten to three—had not mended the matter; my pulse was now beginning slightly to quicken and my head slightly to ache—and my impression of the scene is feverish and somewhat painful; I should think like yours of the valley of Sixt."

So he finished his drawing, tramped down the valley after his mule, in dutiful fear of increasing his cold, and found Cormayeur crowded, only an atticau quatrièmeto be had. After trying to doctor himself with gray pill, kali, and senna, Coutet cured his throat with an alum gargle, and they went over the Col Ferret.

The courier Pfister had been sent to meet him at Martigny, and bring latest news and personal report, on the strength of which several days passed without letters, but not without a remonstrance from headquarters. On August 8 he writes from Zermatt:

"I have your three letters, with pleasant accounts of critiques, etc., and painful accounts of your anxieties. I certainly never thought of putting in a letter at Sion, as I arrived there about three hours after Fister left me, it being only two stages from Martigny; and besides, I had enough to do that morning in thinking what I should want at Zermatt, and was engaged at Sion, while we changed horses, in buying wax candles and rice. It was unlucky that I lost post at Visp," etc.

A few days later he says:

"On Friday I had such a day as I have only once or twice had the like of among the Alps. I got up to a promontory projecting from the foot of the Matterhorn, and lay on the rocks and drew it at my ease. I was about three hours at work as quietly as if in my study at Denmark Hill, though on a peak of barren crag above a glacier, and at least 9,000 feet above sea. But the Matterhorn, after all, is not so fine a thing as the aiguille Dru, nor as any one of the aiguilles of Chamouni: for one thing, it is all of secondary rock in horizontal beds, quite rotten and shaly; but there are other causes of difference in impressiveness which I am endeavouring to analyze, but find considerable embarrassment in doing so. There seems no sufficient reason why an isolated obelisk, one-fourth higher than any of them, should not be atleast as sublime as they in their dependent grouping; but it assuredly is not. For this reason, as well as because I have not found here the near studies of primitive rock I expected,—for to my great surprise, I find the whole group of mountains, mighty as they are, except the inaccessible Monte Rosa, of secondary limestones or slates,—I should like, if it were possible, to spend a couple of days more on the Montanvert, and at the bases of the Chamouni aiguilles, sleeping at the Montanvert."

And so on, apologetically begging (as other sons beg money) fortime, to gather the material of "Modern Painters," volume iv.

"I hope you will think whether the objects you are after are worth risks of sore throats or lungs," replied his father, for he had "personified a perpetual influenza" until they got him to Switzerland, and they were very anxious; indeed, Pfister's news from Martigny had scared his mother—not very well herself—into wild plans for recapturing him. However, Osborne Gordon was going to Chamouni with Mr. Pritchard, and so they gave him a little longer; and he made the best use of his time:

"Monday evening (August20, 1849)."MY DEAREST FATHER,"I have to-night a packet of back letters from Viège ... but I have really hardly time to read them to-night, I had so many notes to secure when I came from the hills. I walk up every day to the base of the aiguilles without the slightest sense of fatigue; work there all day hammering and sketching; and down in the evening. As far as days by myself can be happy they are so, for I love the place with all my heart. I have no over-fatigue or labour, and plenty of time. By-the-by, though in most respects they are incapable of improvement, I recollect that I thought to-day, as I was breaking last night's ice away from the rocks of which I wanted a specimen, with a sharpish wind and small pepper and salt-like sleet beating in my face, that a hot chop and a glass of sherry, if they were to be had round the corner, would make the thing more perfect. There was however nothing to be had round the corner but some Iceland moss, which belonged to the chamois, and an extra allowance of north wind."

"Monday evening (August20, 1849).

"MY DEAREST FATHER,

"I have to-night a packet of back letters from Viège ... but I have really hardly time to read them to-night, I had so many notes to secure when I came from the hills. I walk up every day to the base of the aiguilles without the slightest sense of fatigue; work there all day hammering and sketching; and down in the evening. As far as days by myself can be happy they are so, for I love the place with all my heart. I have no over-fatigue or labour, and plenty of time. By-the-by, though in most respects they are incapable of improvement, I recollect that I thought to-day, as I was breaking last night's ice away from the rocks of which I wanted a specimen, with a sharpish wind and small pepper and salt-like sleet beating in my face, that a hot chop and a glass of sherry, if they were to be had round the corner, would make the thing more perfect. There was however nothing to be had round the corner but some Iceland moss, which belonged to the chamois, and an extra allowance of north wind."

This next is scribbled on a tiny scrap of paper:

"GLACIER or GREPPOND,August21."MY DEAREST FATHER,"I am sitting on a gray stone in the middle of the glacier, waiting till the fog goes away. I believe Imaywait. I write this line in my pocket-book to thank my mother for hers which I did not acknowledge last night. I am glad and sorry that she depends so much on my letters for her comfort. I am sending them now every day by the people who go down, for the diligence is stopped. You may run the chance of missing one or two therefore. I am quite well, and very comfortable—sitting on Joseph's knapsack laid on the stone. The fog is about as thick as that of London in November,—only white; and I see nothing near me but fields of dampish snow with black stones in it."

"GLACIER or GREPPOND,August21.

"MY DEAREST FATHER,

"I am sitting on a gray stone in the middle of the glacier, waiting till the fog goes away. I believe Imaywait. I write this line in my pocket-book to thank my mother for hers which I did not acknowledge last night. I am glad and sorry that she depends so much on my letters for her comfort. I am sending them now every day by the people who go down, for the diligence is stopped. You may run the chance of missing one or two therefore. I am quite well, and very comfortable—sitting on Joseph's knapsack laid on the stone. The fog is about as thick as that of London in November,—only white; and I see nothing near me but fields of dampish snow with black stones in it."

And then:

"MONTANVERT,August22."I cannot say that on the whole the aiguilles have treated me well. I went up Saturday, Monday and Tuesday to their feet, and never obtained audience until to-day, and then they retired at twelve o'clock; but I have got a most valuable memorandum."

"MONTANVERT,August22.

"I cannot say that on the whole the aiguilles have treated me well. I went up Saturday, Monday and Tuesday to their feet, and never obtained audience until to-day, and then they retired at twelve o'clock; but I have got a most valuable memorandum."

The parental view was put thus:

GENEVA,Monday, August20, 1849."MY DEAREST JOHN,"I do not know if you have got all my letters, fully explaining to you in what way the want of asingleletter, on two occasions, didsomuch mischief—made such havoc in our peace. I think my last Thursday's letter entered on it. We are grateful for many letters—that have come. It was merely the accident of the moment when first by illness and then by precipices we were most anxious—being exactly the moment the letters took it into their heads to be not forthcoming. Not writing so often would only keep us more in the dark, with little less anxiety. Please say if you get a letter every day...."

GENEVA,Monday, August20, 1849.

"MY DEAREST JOHN,

"I do not know if you have got all my letters, fully explaining to you in what way the want of asingleletter, on two occasions, didsomuch mischief—made such havoc in our peace. I think my last Thursday's letter entered on it. We are grateful for many letters—that have come. It was merely the accident of the moment when first by illness and then by precipices we were most anxious—being exactly the moment the letters took it into their heads to be not forthcoming. Not writing so often would only keep us more in the dark, with little less anxiety. Please say if you get a letter every day...."

Space can hardly be afforded for more than samples of this voluminous correspondence, or interesting quotations might be given about the "ghost-huntyesterday and a crystal-hunt to-day," and life at the Montanvert, until at last (August 28):

"I have taken my place in diligence for Thursday, and hope to be with you in good time. But I quite feel as if I were leaving home to go on a journey. I shall not be melancholy, however, for I have really had a good spell of it.... Dearest love to my mother. I don't intend to write again."Ever, my dearest father,"Your most affectionate son,"J. RUSKIN."

"Ever, my dearest father,

"Your most affectionate son,

"J. RUSKIN."

NOTE:

"The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford," edited by the Rev. A.G. L'Estrange.

A book about Venice had been planned in 1845, during Ruskin's first long working visit. He had made so many notes and sketches both of architecture and painting that the material seemed ready to hand; another visit would fill up the gaps in his information; and two or three months' hard writing would work the subject off, and set him free to continue "Modern Painters." So before leaving home in 1849, he had made up his mind that the next work would be "The Stones of Venice," which, on the appearance of "The Seven Lamps," was announced by the publishers as in preparation.

He left home again early in October; by the end of November he was settled with his wife at Hôtel Danieli, Venice, for the winter. He expected to find without much trouble all the information he wanted as to the dates, styles and history of Venetian buildings; but after consulting and comparing all the native writers, it appeared that the questions he asked of them were just the questions they were unpreparedto answer, and that he must go into the whole matter afresh. So he laid himself out that winter for a thorough examination of St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace and the other remains—drawing, and measuring, and comparing their details.

His father had gone back to England in September out of health, and the letters from home did not report improvement. His mother, too, was beginning to fear the loss of her sight; and he could not stay away from them any longer. In February, 1850, he broke off his work in the middle of it, and returned to London. The rest of the year he spent in writing the first volume of "Stones of Venice," and in preparing the illustrations, together with "Examples of the Architecture of Venice," a portfolio of large lithographs and engravings in mezzotint and line, to accompany the work. It was most fortunate for Ruskin that his drawings could be interpreted by such men as Armytage and Cousen, Cuff and Le Keux, Boys and Lupton, and not without advantage to them that their masterpieces should be preserved in his works, and praised as they deserved in his prefaces. But these plates for "Stones of Venice" were in advance of the times. The publisher thought them "caviare to the general," so Mr. J.J. Ruskin told his son; but gave it as his own belief that "some dealers in Ruskins and Turners in 1890 will get great prices for what at present will not sell."

Early in 1850, his father, at his mother's desire, and with the help of W.H. Harrison, collected and printed his poems, with a number of pieces that still remained in MS., the author taking no part in this revival of bygones, which, for the sake of their associations, he was not anxious to recall—though his father still believed that hemighthave been a poet, andoughtto have been one. This is the volume of "Poems J.R., 1850," so highly valued by collectors.

Another resurrection was "The King of the Golden River," which had lain hidden for the nine years of the Ars Poetica. He allowed it to be published, withwoodcuts by the famous "Dicky" Doyle. The little book ran through three editions that year. The first issue must have been torn to rags in the nurseries of the last generation, since copies are so rare as to have brought ten guineas apiece instead of the six shillings at which they were advertised in 1850.

A couple of extracts from letters of 1850 will give some idea of Ruskin's impressions of London society and the Drawing Room:

"MY DEAREST MOTHER,"Horrible party last night—stiff—large—dull—fidgety—strange,—run-against-everybody-know-nobody sort of party. Naval people. Young lady claims acquaintance with me—I know as much of her as of Queen Pomare—Talk: get away as soon as I can—ask who she is—Lady (——);—as wise as I was before. Introduced to a black man with chin in collar. Black man condescending—I abuse different things to black man: chiefly the House of Lords. Black man says he lives in it—asks where I live—don't want to tell him—obliged—go away and ask who he is—(——); as wise as I was before. Introduced to a young lady—young lady asks if I like drawing—so away and ask who she is—Lady(——). Keep away, with back to wall and look at watch. Get away at last. Very sulky this morning—hope my father better—dearest love to you both.""PARK STREET,4 o'clock, (May, 1850)."MY DEAREST FATHER,"We got through gloriously, though at one place there was the most awkward crush I ever saw in my life—the pit at the Surrey, which I never saw, may perhaps show the like—nothing else. The floor was covered with the ruins of ladies' dresses, torn lace and fallen flowers. But Effie was luckily out of it, and got through unscathed—and heard people saying 'What a beautiful dress!' just as she got up to the Queen. It was fatiguing enough but not soawkwardas I expected...."The Queen looked much younger and prettier than I expected—very like her pictures, even like those which are thought to flatter most—but I only saw the profile—I could not see the front face as I knelt to her, at least without an upturning of the eyes which I thought wouldbe unseemly—and there were but some two or three seconds allowed for the whole affair...."The Queen gave her hand very graciously: but looked bored; poor thing, well she might be, with about a quarter of a mile square of people to bow to."I met two people whom I have not seen for many a day, Kildare and Scott Murray—had a chat with the former and a word with Murray, but nothing of interest...."

"MY DEAREST MOTHER,

"Horrible party last night—stiff—large—dull—fidgety—strange,—run-against-everybody-know-nobody sort of party. Naval people. Young lady claims acquaintance with me—I know as much of her as of Queen Pomare—Talk: get away as soon as I can—ask who she is—Lady (——);—as wise as I was before. Introduced to a black man with chin in collar. Black man condescending—I abuse different things to black man: chiefly the House of Lords. Black man says he lives in it—asks where I live—don't want to tell him—obliged—go away and ask who he is—(——); as wise as I was before. Introduced to a young lady—young lady asks if I like drawing—so away and ask who she is—Lady(——). Keep away, with back to wall and look at watch. Get away at last. Very sulky this morning—hope my father better—dearest love to you both."

"PARK STREET,4 o'clock, (May, 1850).

"MY DEAREST FATHER,

"We got through gloriously, though at one place there was the most awkward crush I ever saw in my life—the pit at the Surrey, which I never saw, may perhaps show the like—nothing else. The floor was covered with the ruins of ladies' dresses, torn lace and fallen flowers. But Effie was luckily out of it, and got through unscathed—and heard people saying 'What a beautiful dress!' just as she got up to the Queen. It was fatiguing enough but not soawkwardas I expected....

"The Queen looked much younger and prettier than I expected—very like her pictures, even like those which are thought to flatter most—but I only saw the profile—I could not see the front face as I knelt to her, at least without an upturning of the eyes which I thought wouldbe unseemly—and there were but some two or three seconds allowed for the whole affair....

"The Queen gave her hand very graciously: but looked bored; poor thing, well she might be, with about a quarter of a mile square of people to bow to.

"I met two people whom I have not seen for many a day, Kildare and Scott Murray—had a chat with the former and a word with Murray, but nothing of interest...."

As one of the chief literary figures of the day, Ruskin could not avoid society, and, as he tells in "Præterita," he was rewarded for the reluctant performance of his duties by meeting with several who became his lifelong friends. Chief among these he mentions Mr. and Mrs. Cowper-Temple, afterwards Lord and Lady Mount Temple. The acquaintance with Samuel Rogers, inauspiciously begun many years before, now ripened into something like friendship; Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) and other men of letters were met at Rogers' breakfasts. A little later a visit to the Master of Trinity, Whewell, at Cambridge, brought him into contact with Professer Willis, the authority on Gothic architecture, and other notabilities of the sister University. There also he met Mr. and Mrs. Marshall of Leeds (and Coniston); and he pursued his journey to Lincoln, with Mr. Simpson, whom he had met at Lady Davy's, and to Farnley for a visit to Mr. F.H. Fawkes, the owner of the celebrated collection of Turners (April, 1851).

In London he was acquainted with many of the leading artists and persons interested in art. Of the "teachers" of the day he was known to men so diverse as Carlyle—and Maurice, with whom he corresponded in 1815 about his "Notes on Sheepfolds"—and C.H. Spurgeon, to whom his mother was devoted. He was as yet neither a hermit, nor a heretic: but mixed freely with all sorts and conditions, with one exception, for Puseyites and Romanists were yet as heathen men and publicans to him;and he noted with interest, while writing his review of Venetian history, that the strength of Venice was distinctly Anti-Papal, and her virtues Christian but not Roman. Reflections on this subject were to have formed part of his great work, but the first volume was taken up with theà prioridevelopment of architectural forms; and the treatment in especial of Venetian matters had to be indefinitely postponed, until another visit had given him the opportunity of gathering his material.

Meanwhile, his wide sympathy had turned his mind toward a subject which then had received little attention, though since then loudly discussed—the reunion of (Protestant) Christians.

He put together his thoughts in a pamphlet on the text "There shall be one fold and one Shepherd," calling it, in allusion to his architectural studies, "Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds." He proposed a compromise, trying to prove that the pretensions to priesthood on the high Anglican side, and the objections to episcopacy on the Presbyterian, were alike untenable; and hoped that, when once these differences—such little things he thought them—were arranged, a united Church of England might become the nucleus of a world-wide federation of Protestants, acivitas Dei, a New Jerusalem.

There were many who agreed with his aspirations: he received shoals of letters from sympathizing readers, most of them praising his aims and criticising his means. Others objected rather to his manner than to his matter; the title savoured of levity, and an art-critic writing on theology was supposed to be wandering out of his province. Tradition says that the "Notes" were freely bought by Border farmers under a rather laughable mistake; but surely it was no new thing for a Scotch reader to find a religious tract under a catching title. There were a few replies; one by Mr. Dyce, who defended the Anglican view with mild persiflage and the usual commonplaces. And there the matter ended, for thepublic. For Ruskin, it was the beginning of a train of thought which led him far. He gradually learnt that his error was not in asking too much, but in asking too little. He wished for a union of Protestants, forgetting the sheep that are not ofthatfold, and little dreaming of the answer he got, after many days, in "Christ's Folk in the Apennine."

Meanwhile the first volume of "Stones of Venice" had appeared, March, 1851. Its reception was indirectly described in a pamphlet entitled "Something on Ruskinism, with a 'Vestibule' in Rhyme, by an Architect" complaining bitterly of the "ecstasies of rapture" into which the newspapers had been thrown by the new work:

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