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HORTUS INCLUSUS 
 
 ALSO 
 
 IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS— COELl ENARRANT 
 NOTES ON VARIOUS PICTURES 
 
 “PR^TERITA” 
 
 OUTLINES OF SCENES AND THOUGHTS, PERHAPS WORTHY OF 
 MEMORY, IN MY PAST LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF “the SEVEN LAMTS OF ARCHITECTURE,” “ THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE,” 
 “sesame and LILIES,” ETC. 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ALDINE BOOK PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 

CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hortus Inclusus. Messages from the Wood to the Gar- 
 den, SENT IN Happy Days to the Sister Ladies of the 
 Thwaite, Coniston, 5 
 
 In Montibus Sanctis. Studies of Mountain Form and of 
 
 vns Visible Causes, 107 
 
 C(ELi Enarrant. Studies of Cloud Form and of its Visi- 
 ble Causes, 149 
 
 Notes on Some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited in 
 
 the Dooms of the Royal Academy, 1875, 1«9 
 
 Notes by Mr. Ruskin on Samuel Prout and William 
 
 Hunt, 211 
 
 Catalogue of the Drawings and Sketches of J. M. W. 
 
 Turner, R.A., 295 
 
 Guide to the Principal Pictures in the Academy of Fine 
 
 Arts at Venice, 341 
 

 
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HORTUS IlSrOLUSUS. 
 
 MESSAGES FROM THE WOOD TO THE GARDEH, 
 
 SENT IN HAPPY DAYS TO THE 
 SISTER LADIES OP THE THWAITE, CONISTON, 
 
 BY THEIR THANKFUL FRIEND 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D. 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 The ladies to whom these letters were written have been, 
 throughout their brightly tranquil lives, at once sources and 
 loadstones of all good to the village in which they had their 
 homes, and to all loving people who cared for the village and 
 its vale and secluded lake, and whatever remained in them or 
 around of the former peace, beauty, and pride of English 
 Shepherd Land. 
 
 Sources they have been of good, like one of its mountain 
 springs, ever to be found at need. They did not travel ; they 
 did not go up to London in its season ; they did not receive idle 
 visitors to jar or waste their leisure in the waning year. The 
 poor and the sick could find them always ; or rather, they 
 watched for and prevented all poverty and pain that care or 
 tenderness could relieve or heal. Loadstones they were, as 
 steadil}^ bringing the light of gentle and wise souls about 
 them as the crest of their guardian mountain gives pause 
 to the morning clouds ; in themselves they were types of 
 perfect womanhood in its constant happiness, queens alike of 
 their own hearts and of a Paradise in which they knew the 
 names and sympathized with the spirits of every living 
 creature that God had made to play therein, or to blossom in 
 its sunshine or shade. 
 
 They had lost their dearly-loved j^ounger sister, Margaret, 
 before I knew them. Mary and Susie, alike in benevolence, 
 serenity, and practical judgment, were yet v^idely different, 
 nay, almost contrary, in tone and impulse of intellect. Both 
 t)f them capable of understanding whatever women should 
 know, the elder was yet chiefly interested in the course of 
 
10 
 
 r RE FACE. 
 
 immediate English business, policy, and progressive science, 
 while Susie lived an aerial and enchanted life, possessing all 
 the highest joys of imagination, while she yielded to none of 
 its deceits, sicknesses, or errors. She saw and felt, and believed 
 all good, as it had ever been, and was to be, in the reality 
 and eternity of its goodness, with the acceptance and the hope 
 of a child ; the least things were treasures to her, and her 
 moments fuller of joy than some people’s days. 
 
 What she has been to me, in the days and years when other 
 friendship has been failing, and others ’ “ loving, mere folly,” 
 the reader will enough see from these letters, wu'itten certainly 
 for her only, but from which she has permitted my Master of 
 the Rural Industries at Loughrigg, Albert Fleming, to choose 
 what he thinks, among the tendrils of clinging thought, and 
 mossy cups for dew in the Garden of Herbs where Love is, 
 may be trusted to the memorial sympathy of the readers of 
 “ Frondes Agrestes.” 
 
 Brantwood, June^ 1887. 
 
 J. R. 
 
IFTEODUCTIOISr. 
 
 Often during those visits to the Thwaite which have grown 
 to be the best-spent hours of my later years, I have urged my 
 dear friend, Miss Beever, to open to the larger world the pleas- 
 ant paths of this her Garden Enclosed. The inner circle of her 
 friends knew that she had a goodly store of Mr. Buskin’s let- 
 ters, extending over many years. She for her part had long 
 desired to share with others the j)leasure these letters had 
 given her, but she shrank from the fatigue of selecting and 
 arranging them. It was, therefore, with no small feeling of 
 satisfaction that I drove home from the Thwaite one day in 
 February last with a parcel containing nearly two thousand 
 of these treasured letters. I was gladdened also by generous 
 permission, both from Brantw’ood and the Thwaite, to choose 
 what I liked best for publication. The letters themselves are 
 the fruit of the most beautiful friendship I have ever been 
 Ijermitted to witness, a friendship so unique in some aspects 
 of it, so sacred in all, that I may only give it the praise of si- 
 lence. I count myself happy to have been allowed to throw 
 open to all wise and quiet souls the portals of this Ar- 
 mida’s Garden, where there are no spells save those woven by 
 love, and no magic save that of grace and kindliness. Here 
 my pleasant share in this little book would have ended, but 
 Mr. Buskin has desired me to add a few words, giving my 
 ow’ii description of Susie, and speaking of my relationship to 
 them both. To him I owe the guidance of my life — all its 
 best impulses, all its worthiest efforts ; to her some of its 
 happiest hours, and the blessings alike of incentive and 
 reproof. In reading over Mr. Buskin’s Preface, I note that, 
 
12 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 either by grace of purpose or happy chance, he has left me 
 one point untouched in our dear friend’s character. Her 
 letters inserted here give some evidence of it, but I should like 
 to place on record how her intense delight in sweet and 
 simple things has blossomed into a kind of mental frolic and 
 dainty wit, so that even now, in the calm autumn of her days, 
 her friends are not only lessoned by her ripened wisdom, but 
 cheered and recreated by her quaint and sprightly humor. 
 
 In the Royal Order of Gardens, as Bacon puts it, there was 
 always a quiet resting-place called the Pleasaunce ; there the 
 daisies grew unchecked, and the grass was ever the greenest. 
 Such a Pleasaunce do these Letters seem to me. Here and 
 there, indeed, there are shadows on the grass, but no shadow 
 ever falls between the two dear friends who walk together 
 hand in hand along its pleasant paths. So may they walk in 
 peace till they stand at the gate of another Garden, where 
 
 “ Co’ fiori eterni, eterno il friitto dura.’* 
 
 Neaum Crag, 
 
 Loughrigg, 
 
 Ambleside. 
 
 A. F. 
 
HORTUS INOLUSUS. 
 
 THE sacristan’s CELL. 
 
 Assisi, lUli April, 1874. 
 
 * I got to-day your lovely letter of the 6th, but I never knew 
 my Susie could be such a naughty little girl before ; to burn 
 her pretty story ^ instead of sending it to me. It would have 
 come to me so exactly in the right place here, whei-e St. 
 Francis made the grasshopper (cicada, at least) sing to him 
 upon his hand, ^nd preached to the birds, and made the wolf 
 go its rounds every day as regularly as any Franciscan friar, 
 to ask for a little contribution to its modest dinner. The Bee 
 and Narcissus would have delighted to talk in this enchanted 
 air. 
 
 Yes, that is really very pretty of Dr. John to inscribe yonr 
 books so, and it’s so like him. How these kind people under- 
 stand things ! And that bit of his about the child is wholly 
 lovely ; I am so glad you copied it. 
 
 I often think of you, and of Coniston and Brant wood. 
 You wdll see, in the May Fors, reflections upon the tempta- 
 tions to the life of a Franciscan. 
 
 There are two monks here, one the sacristan who has 
 charge of the entire church, and is responsible for its treas- 
 ures ; the other exercising what authority is left to the con- 
 vent among the people of the town. They are both so good 
 and innocent and sweet, one can’t pity them enough. For 
 this time in Italy is just like the Beformation in Scotland, with 
 
 * The Bee and Narcissus. 
 
14 
 
 HORTTIS INCLUSUS. 
 
 only the difference that the Keform movement is carried on 
 here simply for the sake of what money can be got by Church 
 confiscation. And these two brothers are living by indul- 
 gence, as the Abbot in the Monastery of St. Mary’s in the 
 Kegent Moray’s time. 
 
 The people of the village, however, are all true to their 
 faith ; it is only the governing body which is modern-infidel 
 and radical. The population is quite charming — a word of 
 kindness makes them as bright as if you brought them news 
 of a friend. All the same, it does not do to offend them ; 
 Monsieur Cavalcasella, who is expecting the Government 
 order to take the Tabernacle from the Sanctuary of St. 
 Francis, cannot, it is said, go out at night with safety. Ho 
 decamped the day before I came, having some notion, I fancy, 
 that I would make his life a burden to him, if he didn’t, by 
 day, as much as it was in peril by night. I promise myself a 
 month of very happy time here (happy for me, I mean) when 
 I return in Ma}'’. 
 
 The sacristan gives me my coffee for lunch,* in his own little 
 cell, looking out on the olive woods ; then he tells me stories 
 of conversions and miracles, and then perhaps we go into the 
 sacristy and have a reverent little poke out of relics. Fancy 
 a great carved cupboard in a vaulted chamber full of most 
 precious things (the box which the Holy Virgin’s veil used to 
 be kept in, to begin with), and leave to rummage in it at will ! 
 Things that are only shown twice in the year or so, with 
 fumigation ! all the congregation on their knees ; and the 
 sacristan and I having a great heap of them on the table at 
 once, like a dinner service ! I really looked with great respect 
 at St. Francis’s old camel-hair dress. 
 
 I am obliged to go to Eome to-morrow, however, and to 
 Naples on Saturday, My witch of Sicily * expects me this 
 day week, and she’s going to take me such lovely drives, and 
 talks of “ excursions ” which I see by the map are thirty miles 
 away. I wonder if she thinks me so horribly old that it’s 
 quite proper. It will be very nice if she does, but not flatter- 
 
 * Miss Amy Yule. See “ Prseterita/’ Vol. III., Chap. vii. 
 
IIORTUS INCLUSUS. 
 
 15 
 
 ing. 1 know her mother can’t go with her, I suppose lier 
 maid will. If she wants any other chaperone I won’t go. 
 
 She’s really very beautiful, I believe, to some people’s 
 tastes (I shall be horribly disappointed if she isn’t, in her own 
 dark style), and she writes, next to Susie, the loveliest letters 
 I ever get. 
 
 Now, Susie, mind, you’re to be a very good child wdiile I’m 
 away, and never to burn any more stories ; and above all, 
 you’re to write me just what comes into your head, and ever 
 to believe me your loving J. R. 
 
 Naples, 2d Matjy 1874. 
 
 I heard of your great sorrow * from Joan f six days ago, and 
 have not been able to write since. Nothing silences me so 
 much as sorrow, and for this of yours I have no com- 
 fort. I write only that you may know that I am think- 
 ing of you, and would help you if I could. And I write to- 
 day because your lovely letters and your lovely old age have 
 been forced into my thoughts often by dreadful contrast dur- 
 ing these days in Italy. You who are so purely and brightly 
 happy in all natural and simple things, seem now to belong 
 to another and a younger world. And your letters have been 
 to me like the pure air of Yewdale Crags breathed among the 
 Pontine Marshes ; but you must not think I am ungrateful 
 for them when I can’t answer. You can have no idea how 
 impossible it is for me to do all the work necessary even for 
 memory of the things I came here to see ; how much escai^es 
 me, how much is done in a broken and weary way. I am the 
 only author on art who does the work of illustration with his 
 own hand ; the only one therefore — and I am not insolent in 
 saying this — who has learned his business thoroughly ; but 
 after a day’s drawing I assure you one cannot sit down to 
 write unless it be the merest nonsense to please Joanie. 
 Believe it or not, there is no one of ray friends whom I write 
 so scrupulously to as to you. You may be vexed at this, 
 
 * The death of Miss Margaret Beever. 
 
 f Mrs. Arthur Severn. 
 
16 
 
 HOBTUS INCLU8U8. 
 
 but indeed I can’t but try to write carefully in answer to all 
 your kind words, and so sometimes I can’t at all. 1 must tell 
 you, however, to-day, what I saw in the Pompeian frescoes — 
 the great characteristic of falling Piome, in her furious desire 
 of pleasure, and brutal incapability of it. The walls of 
 Pompeii are covered with paintings meant only to give pleas- 
 ure, but nothing they represent is beautiful or delightful, and 
 yesterday, among other calumniated and caricatured birds, I 
 saw one of my Susie’s pets, a peacock ; and he had only eleven 
 eyes in his tail. Fancy the feverish wretchedness of the 
 humanity which, in mere pursuit of pleasure or power, had 
 reduced itself to see no more than eleven eyes in a peacock’s 
 tail ! What were the Cyclops to this ? 
 
 I hope to get to Eome this evening, and to be there 
 settled for some time, and to have quieter hours for my 
 letters. 
 
 Rome, 23fZ May^ 1874. 
 
 A number of business letters and the increasing instinct 
 for work here as time shortens, have kept me too long from 
 even writing a mere mamma-note to you ; though not without 
 thought of you daily. 
 
 I have your last most lovelj^ line about your sister — and giv- 
 ing me that most touching fact about poor Dr. John Brown, 
 which I am grieved and yet thankful to know, that I may 
 better still reverence his unfailing kindness and quick sym- 
 pathy. I have a quite wonderful letter from him about you ; 
 but I will not tell you what he sa^^s, only it is so very, verj' 
 true, and so very, very pretty, you can’t think. 
 
 I have written to my bookseller to find for you, and send, a 
 complete edition of “Modern Painters,” if findable. If not, I 
 will make my assistant send you down my own fourth and fifth 
 volumes, which you can keep till I come for them in the autumn. 
 
 There is nothing now in the year but autumn and winter. 
 I really begin to think there is some terrible change of climate 
 coming upon the world for its sin, like another deluge. It 
 will have its rainbow, I suppose, after its manner — promising 
 not to darken the world again, and then not to drown. 
 
lIOPiTUS INGLUSU8. 
 
 17 
 
 Rome, 24dli May^ 1874 ( Whit- Sunday). 
 
 I have to-day, to make the day whiter for me, your love- 
 ly letter of the 14th, telling me your age. I am so glad it 
 is no more ; you are only thirteen years older than I, and 
 much more able to be my sister than mamma, and I hope you 
 will have many years of youth yet. I think I must tell you 
 in return for this letter what Dr. John Brown said, or part of 
 it at least. He said you had the playfulness of a lamb with- 
 out its selfishness. I think that perfect as far as it goes. 
 Of course my Susie’s wise and grave gifts must be told of 
 afterward. There is no one I know, or have known, so well 
 able as you are to be in a degree what my mother was to me. 
 In this chief way (as well as many other ways) (the puzzle- 
 ment I liave had to force that sentence into grammar!), that 
 I have had the same certainty of giving you pleasure by a 
 few words and by any little account of what I am doing. 
 But then you know I have just got out of the way of doing 
 as I am bid, and unless you can scold me back into that, you 
 can’t give me the sense of support. 
 
 Tell me more about yourself first, and how those years 
 came to be “ lost.” I am not sure that they were ; though I 
 am very far from holding the empty theory of compensation ; 
 but much of the slighter pleasure you lost then is evidently 
 still open to you, fresh all the more from having been for a 
 time withdrawn. 
 
 The Eoman peasants are very gay to-da^g with roses in their 
 hair ; legitimately and honorably decorated, and looking- 
 lovely. Oh me, if they had a few Susies to take human care 
 of them, what a glorious people they would be I 
 
 THE LOST CHURCH IN THE CAMPAGNA. 
 
 Rome, 2d June., 1874. 
 
 Ah, if you were but among the marbles here, though there 
 are none finer than that you so strangely discerned in my 
 study ; but they are as a white company innumerable, ghost 
 after ghost. And how you would rejoice in them and in a 
 2 
 
18 
 
 IIOUTUS IXCLUSUS. 
 
 thousand things besides, to which I am dead, from having 
 seen too much or worked too painfully — or, worst of all, lost 
 the hope which gives all life. 
 
 Last Sunday I was in a lost church found again — a church 
 of the second or third century, dug in a green hill of the 
 Campagna, built underground ; — its secret entrance like a 
 sand-martin’s nest. Such the temple of the Lord, as the 
 King Solomon of that time had to build it ;* not “ the moun- 
 tains of the Lord’s house shall be established above the hills,” 
 but the cave of the Lord’s house as the fox’s hole, beneath 
 them. 
 
 And here, now lighted by the sun for the first time (for they 
 are still digging the earth from the steps), are the marbles of 
 those early Christian days ; the first efforts of their new hope 
 to show itself in enduring record, the new hope of a Good 
 Shepherd ; — there they carved Him, with a spring flowing at 
 His feet, and round Him the cattle of the Campagna in which 
 they had dug their church, the very self-same goats which 
 this morning have been trotting past my window through the 
 most populous streets of Rome, innocently following their 
 shepherd, tinkling their bells, and shaking their long spiral 
 horns and white beards ; the very same dew-lapped cattle 
 which were that Sundaj^ morning feeding on the hillside above, 
 carved on the tomb-marbles sixteen hundred years ago. 
 
 How you would have liked to see it, Susie ! 
 
 And now to-day I am going to work in an eleventh century 
 church of quite proud and victorious Christianity, with its 
 grand bishops and saints lording it over Italy. The bishop’s 
 throne all marble and mosaic of precious colors and of gold, 
 high under the vaulted roof at the end behind the altar ; and 
 line upon line of pillars of massive porphyry and marble, 
 gathered out of the ruins of the temples of the great race who 
 had persecuted them, till they had said to the hills. Cover us, 
 like the wicked. And then their proud time came, and their 
 enthronement on the seven hills ; and now, what is to be their 
 fate once more ? — of pope and cardinal and dome, Peter’s or 
 Paul’s by name only, — “My house, no more a house of 
 prayer, but a den of thieves.” 
 
H0RTU8 INGLU8U8. 
 
 19 
 
 I can’t write any more this morning. Oh me, if one could 
 only write and draw all one wanted, and have our Susies and 
 be young again, oneself and they ! (As if there were two 
 Susies, or co^.dd be ! 
 
 Ever my one Susie’s very loving, J. Euskin. 
 
 I have sent word to my father’s old head-clerk, now a great 
 merchant himself, to send you a little case of that champagne. 
 Please like it. 
 
 KEGRETS. 
 
 Assisi, June Wi. 
 
 Yes, I am a little oppressed just now with overwork, nor is 
 this avoidable. I am obliged to leave all my drawings un- 
 linished as the last days come, and the point possible of ap- 
 proximate completion fatally contracts, every hour, to a more 
 ludicrous and warped mockery of the hope in which one be- 
 gan. It is impossible not to w'ork against time, and that is 
 killing. It is not labor itself, but competitive, anxious, dis- 
 appointed labor that dries one’s soul out. 
 
 But don’t be frightened about me, you sweet Susie. I 
 know wdien I must stop ; forgive and pity me only, because 
 sometimes, nay often my letter (or Avord) to Susie must be 
 sacrificed to the last effort on one’s drawing. 
 
 The letter to one’s Susie should be a rest, do you think ? 
 It is always more or less comforting, but not rest ; it means 
 farther employment of the already extremely strained sensa- 
 tional power. What one really wants ! I believe the only 
 true restorative is the natural one, the actual presence of one’s 
 
 helpmeet.” The far worse than absence of mine reverses rest, 
 and what is more, destroys one’s power of receiving from 
 others or giving. 
 
 How much love of mine have others lost, because that poor 
 sick child would not have the part of love that belonged to her ! 
 
 I am ver}’’ anxious about your eyes too. For any favor 
 don’t write more extracts just now. The books are yours 
 forever and a day — no loan ; enjoy any bits that you find 
 enjoyable, but don’t copy just now. 
 
20 
 
 nOBTUS INOLUSUS. 
 
 I left Eome yesterda}% and am on my way home ; but, 
 alas ! might as well be on my way home from Cochin China, 
 for any chance I have of speedily arriving. Meantime your 
 letters will reach me here with speed, and will be a great 
 comfort to me, if they don’t fatigue you. 
 
 “feondes agkestes.” 
 
 Perugia, 12;!^ June. 
 
 I am more and more pleased at the thought of this gathering 
 of yours, and soon expect to tell you what the bookseller says. 
 
 Meantime I want you to think of the form the collection 
 should take with reference to my proposed re-publication. I 
 mean to take the botany, the geology, the Turner defence, and 
 the general art criticism of “ Modern Painters,” as four separate 
 books, cutting out nearly all the preaching, and a good deal 
 of the sentiment. Now what you find pleasant and helpful to 
 3"Ou of general maxim or reflection, mast be of some value ; 
 and I think therefore that your selection will just do for me 
 what no other reader could have done, least of all I myself ; 
 keep together, that is to say, Avhat may be right and true of 
 those youthful thoughts. I should like you to add anything 
 that specially pleases 3^ou, of whatever kind ; but to keep the 
 notion of your book being the didactic one as opposed to the 
 other picturesque and scientific volumes, will I think help you 
 in choosing between passages when one or other is to be 
 rejected. 
 
 HOW I FELL A^IONG THIEVES. 
 
 Assist, VUh June. 
 
 I have been having a bad time lately, and have no heart to 
 write to you. Very difficult and melancholy 'work, decipheiing 
 what remains of a great painter among stains of ruin and 
 blotches of repair, of five hundred years’ gathering. It makes 
 me sadder than idleness, which is saying much. 
 
 I was greatly flattered and petted by a saying in one of 
 your last letters, about the difficulty I had in unpacking my 
 
II0BTU8 INGLUSU8. 
 
 21 
 
 mind. That is true ; one of my chief troubles at present is 
 with the quantity of things I want to say at once. But you 
 don’t know how I find things I laid by carefully in it, all 
 inonldy and moth-eaten when I take them out ; and what .a 
 lot of mending and airing they need, and what a wearisome 
 and bothering business it is compared to the early packing, — • 
 one used to be so proud to get things into the corners neatly ! 
 
 I have been failing in my drawings, too, and I’m in a 
 horrible inn kept by a Garibaldian bandit ; and the various 
 sorts of disgusting dishes sent up to look like a dinner, and 
 to bo charged for, are a daily increasing horror and amaze- 
 ment to me. They succeed in getting everything bad ; no 
 exertion, no invention, could produce such badness, I believe, 
 anywhere else. The hills are covered for leagues with olive- 
 trees, an;l the oil’s bad ; there are no such lovely cattle elsc- 
 Avliere in the world, and the butter’s bad ; half the country 
 j^eoplo are shepherds, but there’s no mutton ; half the old 
 women walk about with a pig tied to their waists, but there’s 
 no pork ; the vino grows wild anywhere, and the 'wine would 
 make my teeth drop out of my head if I took a glass of it ; 
 there are no strawberries, no oranges, no melons, the cherries 
 are as hard as their stones, the beans only good for horses, 
 or Jack and the beanstalk, and this is the size of the biggest 
 asparagus — 
 
 I live here in a narrow street ten feet wide only, winding 
 up a hill, and it was full this morning of sheep as close as 
 they could pack, at least a thousand, as far as the eye could 
 reach, — tinkle tinkle, bleat bleat, for a quarter of an hour. 
 
 IN TAKADISE. 
 
 Assisi, Sacristan's Cell, 
 
 25^/i June. 
 
 This letter is all upside down, and this first page written 
 last ; for I didn’t like something I had written about myself 
 last night when I was tired, and have torn it off. 
 
22 
 
 H0RTU8 INGLU8U8. 
 
 That star you saw beat like a heart must have been a dog 
 star. A planet would not have twinkled. Far mightier, he, 
 than any planet ; burning with his own planetary host doubt- 
 less round him ; and, on some speckiest of the sj)ecks of 
 them, evangelical persons thinking our sun was made for 
 them. 
 
 Ah, Susie, I do not pass, unthought of, the many sorrows 
 of which you kindly tell me, to show me— for that is in your 
 heart — how others have suffered also. 
 
 But, Susie, you expect to see your Margaret again, and 
 you will be happy with her in heaven. I wanted my Kosie 
 here. In heaven I mean to go and talk to Pythagoras and 
 Socrates and Valerius Publicola. I shan’t care a bit for Rosie 
 there, she needn’t think it. What will grey eyes and red 
 cheeks be good for there ? 
 
 These pious sentiments are all written in my sacristan’s cell. 
 
 Now, Susie, mind, though you’re only eight years old, you 
 must try to fancy you’re ten or eleven, and attend to what I 
 say. 
 
 This extract book of yours will be most precious in its 
 help to me, provided it is kept within somewhat narrow limits. 
 As soon as it is done I mean to have it published in a strong 
 and pretty but cheap form, and it must not be too bulk}’. 
 Consider, therefore, not only what you like, but how far and 
 with whom each bit is likely to find consent and service. 
 You will have to choose perhaps, after a little while, among 
 what you have already chosen. I mean to leave it luholly in 
 your hands ; it is to be Susie’s choice of my writings. 
 
 Don’t get into a flurry of responsibility, but don’t at once 
 write down all you have a mind to ; I know you’ll find a good 
 deal ! for you are exactly in sympathy with me in all things. 
 
 Assisi, 9ih July, 1874. 
 
 Your lovely letters are always a comfort to me ; and not 
 least when you tell me you are sad. You would be far less in 
 
 * Frondes Agrestea 
 
HORTUS INCLUSUS. 
 
 23 
 
 sympathy with me if you were not, and in the “ everything 
 right ” humor of some, even of some really good and kind 
 persons, whose own matters are to their mind, and who un- 
 derstand by ‘‘Providence” the powder which particularly takes 
 care of them. This favoritism which goes so sweetly and 
 jdeasantly down with so many pious peojole is the chief of all 
 stumbling-blocks to me, I must pray for everybody or no- 
 body, and can’t get into any conceptions of relation between 
 Heaven and me, if not also between Heaven and earth (and 
 why Heaven should allow hairs in pens I can’t think). 
 
 I take great care of myself, be quite sure of that, Susie ; 
 the worst of it is, here in Assisi everybody else wants me to 
 take care of them. 
 
 Catharine brought me up as a great treat }^esterday, at 
 dinner, ham dressed with as much garlic as could be stewed 
 into it, and a plate of raw ligs, telling me I was to eat them 
 together ! 
 
 The sun is changing the entire mountains of Assisi into a 
 hot bottle with no flannel round it ; but I can’t get a ripe 
 phiin, peach, or cherry. All the milk turns sour, and one 
 has to eat one’s meat as its toughest or the thunder gets into 
 it next day. 
 
 FOAM OF TIBER. 
 
 Perugia, 17^7< My. 
 
 I am made anxious by your sweet letter of the 6th saying 
 you have been ill and are “ not much better.” 
 
 The letter is all like yours, but I suppose however ill you 
 were you would always write prettily, so that’s little comfort. 
 
 About the Narcissus, please. I want them for my fishpond 
 stream rather than for the bee-house one. The fishpond stream 
 is very doleful, and wants to dance with daffodils if they 
 would come and teach it. How happy we are in our native 
 streams ! A thunder-storm swelled the Tiber yesterday, and 
 it rolled over its mill weirs in heaps, literally, of tossed water, 
 the size of haycocks, but black-brown like coffee with the 
 grounds in it, mixed with a very little yellow milk. In some 
 
24 
 
 H0RTU8 INCLU8US. 
 
 lights the foam flew like cast handfuls of heavy gravel. The 
 chief flowers here are only broom and bindweed, and I begin 
 to weary for my heather and for my Susie ; but, oh dear, the 
 ways are long and the days few. 
 
 'Lvcca., July. 
 
 I’m not going to be devoured when I come, by anybody, 
 unless you like to. I shall come to your window with the 
 birds, to be fed myself. 
 
 And please at present always complain to me whenever you 
 like. It is the over-boisterous cheerfulness of common peo- 
 ple that hurts me ; your sadness is a help to me. 
 
 You shall have whatever name you like for 3'our book, pro- 
 vided you continue to like it after thinking over it long 
 enough. You will not like “ Gleanings,” because you know 
 that one only gleans refuse — dropped ears — that other peo- 
 ple don’t care for. You go into the garden and gather 
 with choice the flowers }^ou like best. That is not gleaning ! 
 
 nuccA, lOiZi August. 
 
 I have been grieved not to write to you ; but the number of 
 things that vex me are so great just now, that unless b}' false 
 effort I could write you nothing nice. It is very dreadful to 
 live in Ital^g and more dreadful to see one’s England and 
 one’s English friends, all but a field or two, and a stream or 
 two, and a one Susie and one Er. Brown, fast becoming like 
 Italy and the Italians. 
 
 I have too much sympathy with your sorrow to write to you 
 of it. What I have not sympathy with, is your hope ; and 
 how cruel it is to say this ! But I am driven more and more 
 to think there is to be no more good for a time, but a reign 
 of terror of men and the elements alike ; and yet it is so like 
 what is foretold before the coming of the Son of man, that per- 
 haps in the extremest evil of it I may some day read the sign 
 that our redemption draws nigh. 
 
 Now, Susie, invent a nice cluster of titles for the book and 
 
IIORTUS INCLUSUS. 
 
 25 
 
 send them to me to choose from, to Hotel de TArno, Flor- 
 ence. I must get that out before the day of judgment, if I 
 can. I’m so glad of your sweet flatteries in this note received 
 to-day. 
 
 Florence, "iWt A injifsf. 
 
 I liave not been able to write to you, or anyone lately, wliom 
 I don’t want to tease, except Dr. Drown, whom I write to for 
 counsel. My time is passed in a fierce steady straggle to save 
 all I can every da}', as a fireman from a smouldering ruin, of 
 history or aspect. To-day, for instance, I’ve been just in time 
 to ascertain tlie form of the cross of the Emperor, represent- 
 ing the power of the State in the greatest political fresco of 
 old times— fourteenth century. Dy next year, it may be next 
 month, it will have dropped from the wall with the vibration 
 of the railway outside, and be toudied up with new gilding 
 for the mob. 
 
 I am keeping well, but am in a terrible spell (literally^ 
 “spell,” eiKihanted maze, that I can’t get out of) of work. 
 
 I loas a little scandalized at the idea of your calling the 
 book “ word painting.” My dearest Susie, it is tlie chief 
 provocation of my life to be called a “word p.ainter” instead 
 of a thinker. I hope you haven’t filled your book with de- 
 scriptions. I thought it w'as the thoughts you were looking 
 for ? 
 
 “ Posie ” would be pretty. If you ask Joanie she will tell 
 you perhaps too pretty for me, and I can’t think a bitto-nigbt, 
 for instead of robins singing I hear only blaspheming game- 
 sters on the other side of the narrow street. 
 
 Florence, 1st Sex>temher. 
 
 Don’t be in despair about your book. I am sure it will be 
 lovely. I’ll see to it the moment I get home, but I’ve got 
 into an entirely unexpected piece of business here, the inter- 
 pretation of a large chapel full of misunderstood, or not at all 
 understood, frescoes ; and I’m terribly afraid of breaking 
 
26 
 
 nORTUS INGLUSUS. 
 
 down, so much drawing has to be done at the same time. It 
 has stranded botany and everything. 
 
 I was kept awake half of last night by drunken blackguards 
 howling on the bridge of the Holy Trinity in the pure half- 
 moonlight. This is the kind of discord I have to bear, cor- 
 responding to your uncongenial company. But, alas ! Susie, 
 you ought at ten years old to have more firmness, and to resolve 
 that you won’t be bored. I think I shall try to enforce it on 
 you as a very solemn duty not to lie to people as the vulgar 
 public do. If they bore you, say so, and they’ll go away. 
 That is the right state of things. 
 
 How am I to know that I don’t bore you, when / come, 
 when you’re so civil to people you hate ? 
 
 Pass of Bocchetta, Ut October. 
 
 All that is lovely and wonderful in the Alps may be seen 
 without the slightest danger, in general, and it is especially 
 good for little girls of eleven, who can’t climb, to know this — • 
 all the best views of hills are at the bottom of them. I know 
 one or two places indeed where there is a grand peeping over 
 precipices, one or two where the mountain seclusion and 
 strength are worth climbing to see. But all the entirely beau- 
 tiful things I could show you, Susie ; only for the very highest 
 sublime of them sometimes asking you to endure half an hour 
 of chaise d porteur, but mostly from a post-chaise or smooth- 
 est of turnpike roads. 
 
 But, Susie, do you know, I’m greatly horrified at the pen- 
 wipers of peacock’s feathers ! / always use my left-hand coat- 
 
 tail, indeed, and if only I were a peacock and a pet of yours, 
 how you’d scold me ! 
 
 Sun just coming out over sea (at Sestri), which is sighing 
 in toward the window, within your drive, round before the 
 door’s breadth of it,* seen between two masses of acacia 
 copse and two orange-trees at the side of the inn courtyard. 
 
 * That is, within that distance of the window. 
 
HORTUS INCLUSUS. 
 
 27 
 
 Geneva, Wth October. 
 
 How I have been neglecting you ! Perhaps Joanie may 
 have told you that just at my last gasp of hand-work, I had 
 to write quite an unexpected number of letters. But poor 
 Joanie will think herself neglected now, for I have been 
 stopped among the Alps by a state of their glaciers entirely 
 unexampled, and shall be a week after my “latest possible” 
 day, in getting home. It is eleven years since I was here, 
 and very sad to me to return, yet delightful with a moon- 
 light paleness of the past, precious of its kind. 
 
 I shall be at home with Joan in ten days now, God willing. 
 I have much to tell you, which will give you pleasure and 
 pain ; but I don’t know how much it will be — to tell you — 
 for a little while yet, so I don’t begin. 
 
 Oxford, 2Qth October. 
 
 Home at last with your lovely, most lovely, letter in my 
 breast pocket, from Joan’s all the way here. 
 
 I am so very grateful to you for not writing on black 
 paper. 
 
 Oh, dear Susie, why should we ever wear black for the 
 guests of God? 
 
 WHARFE IN FLOOD. 
 
 Bolton Abbey, 2Uh January, 1875. 
 
 The black rain, much as I growled at it, has let me see 
 Wharfe in flood ; and I would have borne many days in 
 prison to see that. 
 
 No one need go to the Alps to see wild water. Seldom, 
 unless in the Khine or Rhone themselves at their rapids, have 
 I seen anything much grander. An Alpine stream, besides, 
 nearly always has its bed full of loose stones, and becomes 
 a series of humps and dumps of water wherever it is shallow ; 
 w'hile the Wharfe swept round its curves of shore like a black 
 Damascus sabre, coiled into eddies of steel. At the Strid, it 
 had risen eight feet vertical since yesterday, sheeting the flat 
 rocks with foam from side to side, while the treacherous mid- 
 
28 
 
 HORTUS INGLUSU8, 
 
 chamiel was filled with a succession of boiling domes of 
 water, charged through and through with churning white, 
 and rolling out into the broader stream, each like a vast sea- 
 wave bursting on a beach. 
 
 There is something in the soft and comparatively unbroken 
 slopes of these Yorkshire shales which must give the water a 
 peculiar sweeping power, for I have seen Tay and Tummel and 
 Ness, and many a big stream besides, savage enough, but I 
 don’t remember anything so grim as this. 
 
 I came home to quiet tea and a black kitten called Sweep, 
 who lapped half my cream jugful (and yet I had plenty) 
 sitting on my shoulder — and Life of Sir Walter Scott. I was 
 reading his great Scottish history tour, when he was twenty- 
 three, and got his materials for everything nearly, but es- 
 pecially for Waveiiej’’, though not used till long afterward. 
 
 Do you recollect Gibbie Gellatly ? I was thinking over that 
 question of }'Ours, “What did I think?” ^ But, my dear 
 Susie, you might as well ask Gibbie Gellatly what he thought. 
 What does it matter what any of us think ? We are but 
 simpletons, the best of us, and I am a very inconsistent and 
 wayward simpleton. I know how to roast eggs, in the ashes, 
 perhaps — but for the next world ? Why don’t you ask your 
 squirrel what he thinks too ? The great point — the one for 
 all of us — is, not to take false words in our mouths, and to 
 crack our nuts innocently through winter and rough weather. 
 
 I shall post this to-morrow as I pass through Skipton or 
 any post-worthy place on my way to Wakefield. Write to 
 Warwick. Oh, me, what places England had, when she was 
 herself ! Now, rail stations mostly. But I never can make 
 out how Warwick Castle got built by that dull bit of river. 
 
 ‘‘ FRONDES.” 
 
 Wakefield, 25?!^ January, 1875. 
 
 Here’s our book in form at last, and it seems to me just a 
 nice size, and on the whole very taking. I’ve put a touch or 
 
 * Of the things that sliall be, hereafter. 
 
HORTUS INGLU8U8, 
 
 29 
 
 two more to the preface, and I’m sadly afraid there’s a 
 naughty note somewhere. I hope you won’t find it, and that 
 you will like the order the things are put in. 
 
 Such ill roads as we came over to-day, I never thought to 
 see in England. 
 
 Castleton, January^ 1875. 
 
 Here I have your long, dear letter. I am very thankful 1 
 can be so much to you. Of all the people I have yet known, 
 you are the only one I can find complete sympathy in ; you 
 are so nice and young, without the hardness of youth, and 
 may be the best of sisters to me. I am not so sure about 
 letting you be an elder one ; I am not going to be lectured 
 when I’m naughty. 
 
 I’ve been so busy at ivasps all day coming along, having 
 got a nice book about them. It tells me, too, of a delightful 
 German doctor who kept tame hornets — a whole nest in his 
 study ! They knew him perfectly, and would let him do 
 anything with them, even pull bits off their nest to look in 
 at it. 
 
 Wasps, too, my author says, are really much more amiable 
 than bees, and never get angry without cause. All the same, 
 they have a tiresome way of inspecting one, too closely, some- 
 times, I think. 
 
 I’m immensely struck with the Peak Cavern, but it was in 
 twilight. 
 
 I’m going to stay here all to-morrow, the place is so en- 
 tirely unspoiled. I’ve not seen such a primitive village, rock, 
 or stream, this twenty years ; Langdale is as sophisticated as 
 Pall Mall in comparison. 
 
 Alas, I’ve other letters to write ! 
 
 WASP STINGS. 
 
 Bolton Beidge, Saturday. 
 
 I never was more thankful than for your sweet note, being 
 stopped here by bad weather again ; the worst of posting is 
 
30 
 
 HORTUS INGLU8TJS, 
 
 that one has to think of one’s servant outside, and so lose a 
 day. 
 
 It was bitter wind and snow this morning, too bad to send 
 any human creature to sit idle in. Black enough still, and I, 
 more than usual, because it is just that point of distinction 
 from brutes which I truly say is our only one,* of which I 
 have now so little hold. 
 
 The bee Fors f will be got quickly into proof, but I must 
 add a good deal to it. I can’t get into good humor for natu- 
 ral history in this weather. 
 
 I’ve got a good book on wasps which says they are our 
 chief protectors against flies. In Cumberland the wet, cold 
 spring is so bad for the wasps that I partly think this may be 
 so, and the terrible plague of flies in August might perhaps 
 be checked by our teaching our little Agneses to keep wasps’ 
 nests instead of bees. 
 
 Yes, that is a pretty bit of mine about Hamlet, and I think 
 I must surely be a little pathetic sometimes, in a doggish 
 way. 
 
 “You’re so dreadfully faithful! ” said Arthur Severn to me, 
 fretting over the way I was being ill-treated the other day 
 by R. 
 
 Oh, dear, I wish I were at Brantwood again, now, and 
 could send you my wasp book ! It is pathetic, and yet so 
 dreadful — the wasp bringing in the caterpillar for its young 
 wasp, stinging each enough to paralyze, but not to kill, and 
 so laying them up in the cupboard. 
 
 I wonder how the clergymen’s wives will feel after the next 
 Fors or two ! I’ve done a bit to-day which I think will go in 
 with a shiver. Bo you recollect the curious thrill there is — 
 the cold tingle of the pang of a nice deep wasp sting ? 
 
 Well, I’m not in a fit temper to write to Susie to-day, 
 clearly. 
 
 I’ve forgotten what it was, and don’t feel now as if I had ‘ got hold 
 of any one. 
 
 f See Fors Clavigera, Letter LI. 
 
HORTUS INCLUSU8. 
 
 31 
 
 BOLTON STKID. 
 
 I stopped here to see the Strid again — not seen these many 
 years. It is curious that life is embittered to me, now, by its 
 former pleasantness ; while you have of these same places 
 painful recollections, but you could enjoy them now with 
 3’our whole heart. 
 
 Instead of the drive with the poor over-labored one horse 
 through the long wet day, here, when I was a youth, my father 
 and mother brought me, and let me sketch in the Abbey and 
 ramble in the w'oods as I chose, only demanding promise that 
 I should not go near the Strid. Pleasant drives, with, on the 
 whole, w’’ell paid and pleased drivers, never with over-burdened 
 cattle ; cheerful dinner or tea waiting for me always, on my 
 return from solitary rambles. Everything right and good for 
 rue, except only that they never put me through any trials to 
 harden me, or give me decision of character, or make me feel 
 how much they did for me. 
 
 But that error was a fearful one, and cost them and me, 
 Heaven only knows how much. And now, I walk to Strid, 
 and Abbey, and everywhere, with the ghosts of the past days 
 haunting me, and other darker spirits of sorrow and remorse 
 and wonder. Black spirits among the gray, all like a mist 
 between me and the green woods. And I feel like a cater- 
 i:>illar — stung enough. Foul weather and mist enough, 
 of quite a real kind besides. An hour’s sunshine to-day, 
 broken up speedily, and now veiled utterl3\ 
 
 Herne Hill, London, 
 IWi February., 1875. 
 
 I have your sweet letter with news of Dr. John and his 
 brother. I have been working on the book to-day very hard, 
 after much interruption ; it is two-thirds done now. So glad 
 people are on tiptoe. 
 
 Paddocks are frogs, not toads in that grace.* And why 
 
 * Herrick’s. See Fors Clavigera, Letter XLIIL 
 
32 
 
 HOIITUS INCLU8U8. 
 
 should not people smile ? Do you think that God does not 
 like smiling’ graces? He only dislikes frowns. But you 
 know when once habitual, the child would be told on a cold 
 day to say “ Cold as paddocks,” and everybody would know 
 wliat was coming. Finally the deep under-meaning, that as 
 the cold hand is lifted, so also the cold heart, and yet accepted, 
 makes it one of the prettiest little hymns I know. 
 
 I cannot tell you how very apposite to my work these two 
 feathers are. I am just going to dwell on the exquisite result 
 of the division into successive leaves, by which nature obtains 
 the glittering look to set off her color ; and you just send me 
 two feathers which have it more in perfection than any I 
 ever saw, and I think are more vivid in color. 
 
 How these boys must tease you ! but you will be rewarded 
 in the world that good Susies go to. 
 
 You must show me the drawing of the grebe. The moss 
 is getting on. 
 
 Venice, \Wi 8eptemher^ 1876. 
 
 I must just say how thankful it makes me to hear of this 
 true gentleness of English gentlewomen in the midst of the 
 vice and cruelty in which I am forced to live here, where op- 
 pression on one side and license on the other rage as two war- 
 wolves in continual havoc. 
 
 It is very characteristic of fallen Venice, as of modern Europe, 
 that here in the principal rooms of one of the chief palaces, 
 in the very headmost sweep of the Grand Canal, there is not 
 a room for a servant fit to keep a cat or a dog in (as Susie 
 would keep cat or dog, at least). 
 
 Venice, \%th 8eptemher. 
 
 I never knew such a fight as the good and wicked fairies 
 are having over my poor body and spirit just now. The good 
 fairies have got down the St. Ursula for me and given her to 
 me all to myself, and sent me fine weather and nice gondoliers, 
 and a good cook, and a pleasant waiter ; and the bad fairies 
 
nORTUS INCLUSUS. 
 
 33 
 
 keep putting everything upside down, and putting black in 
 ii\y box when I Avant white, and making me forget all I Avant, 
 and find all I don’t, and making the hinges come off my 
 boards, and the leaves out of my books, and driving me as 
 wild as wild can be ; but I’m getting something done in spite 
 of them, only I never can get my letters written. 
 
 Venice, September 2^tk. 
 
 I have Avoful letters telling me you also Avere woful in say- 
 ing good-by. My darling Susie, what is the use of your 
 being so good and dear if you can’t enjoy thinking of heaven, 
 and what ffne goings on we shall all have there ? 
 
 All the same, even Avhen I’m at m^’- veiy piousest, it puts 
 me out if my drawings go Avrong. I’m going to draw St. 
 Ursula’s blue slippers to-day, and if I can’t do them nicely 
 shall be in great despair. I’ve just found a little cunning 
 inscription on her bedpost, ‘ IN FANNTIA.’ The double N 
 puzzled me at first, but Carpaccio spells anyhoAV. My head 
 is not good enough for a bedpost. . . . Oh me, the SAveet 
 
 Grange ! — Thwaite, I mean (bedpost again) ; to think of it in 
 this mass of weeds and ruin ! 
 
 ST. UKSULA. 
 
 Venice, November. 
 
 I have to-day your dear little note, and have desired Joan 
 to send you one just Avritten to her, in Avhich I have given 
 some account of myself, that may partly interest, partly Avin 
 your pardon for apparent neglect. Coming here, after prac- 
 tically an interval of tAventy-four years— for I have not seri- 
 ously looked at anything during the Iavo hurried visits Avith 
 Joan — my old unfinished AA^ork, and the possibilities of its 
 better completion, rise grievously and beguilingly before me, 
 and I have been stretching my hands to the shadoAV of old 
 designs and striving to fulfil shortcomings, ahvays painful to 
 me, but now, for the moment, intolerable. 
 
34 
 
 H0BTU8 INCLUSUS. 
 
 I am also approaching the close of the sixth year of Fors, 
 and have plans for the Sabbatical year of it, which make my 
 thoughts active and troubled. I am drawing much, and have 
 got a study of St. Ursula which will give you pleasure ; but 
 the pain of being separate from my friends and of knowing 
 they miss me ! I wonder if you will think you are making 
 me too vain, Susie. Such vanity is a very painful one, for I 
 know that you look out of the window on Sundays now, wist- 
 fully, for Joan’s handkerchief. This pain seems always at my 
 heart, with the other which is its own. 
 
 I am thankful, always, you like St. Ursula. One quite fixed 
 plan for the last year of Fors, is that there shall be absolutel}'’ 
 no abuse or controversy in it, but things which will either 
 give pleasure or help ; and some clear statements of principle, 
 in language as temperate as hitherto violent ; to show, for one 
 thing, that the violence was not for want of self-command. 
 
 I’m going to have a good fling at the Bishops in next Fors 
 to finish with, and then for January ! — only I mustn’t be too 
 good, Susie, or something would happen to me. So I shall 
 say naughty things still, but in the mildest way. 
 
 I am very grateful to you for that comparison about my 
 mind being as crisp as a lettuce. I am so thankful you can 
 feel that still. I was beginning to doubt, myself. 
 
 ST. makk’s doves. 
 
 Venice, December. 
 
 I have been very dismal lately. I hope the next captain of 
 St. George’s Company will be a merrier one and happier, in 
 being of use. I am inherently selfish, and don’t enjoy being 
 of use. I enjoy painting and picking up stones and flirting 
 with Susies and Kathleens ; it’s very odd that I never much 
 care to flirt with any but little girls ! And here I’ve no 
 Susies nor Kathleens nor Biddies, and I’m only doing lots of 
 good, and I’m very miserable. I’ve been going late to bed 
 too. I picked myself up last night and went to bed at nine, 
 and feel cheerful enough to ask Susie how she does, and send 
 
HORTUS IKCLUSUS. 
 
 35 
 
 Iier love from St. Mark’s cloves. They’re really tiresome now, 
 among one’s feet in St. Mark’s Place, and I don’t know what 
 it will come to. In old times, when there were not so many 
 idlers about, the doves w'ere used to brisk walkers, and moved 
 aw'ay a foot or two in front of one ; but now everybody 
 lounges, or stands talking about the Government, and the 
 doves won’t stir till one just touches them ; and I who wnlk 
 fast am always expecting to tread on them, and it’s a nui- 
 sance. 
 
 If I only had time I would fain make friends wdth the sea- 
 gulls, who would be cjuite like angels if they would only stop 
 on one’s balcony. If there were the least bit of truth in Dar- 
 winism, Venice w'ould have had her own born seagulls by this 
 time building their nests at her thresholds. 
 
 Now I must get to work. Love to Mary and Miss Pigbye. 
 Now mind you give my message carefully, Susie, because 
 you’re a careless little thing. 
 
 Venice, Wtli Becemher. 
 
 My mouth’s watering so for that Thwaite currant jelly, you 
 can’t think. I haven’t had the least taste of anything of the 
 sort this three months. These wretches of Venetians live on 
 cigars and garlic, and have no taste in their mouths for any- 
 thing that God makes nice. 
 
 The little drawing (returned) is nice in color and feeling, 
 but, which surprises me, not at all intelligent in line. It is 
 not weakness of hand but fault of perspective instinct, which 
 spoils so many othervdse good botanical drawings. 
 
 Bright morning. Sickle moon just hiding in a reel cloud, 
 and the morning stars just vanished in light. But we’ve had 
 nearly three weeks of dark weather, so we mustn’t think it 
 poor Coniston’s fault — though Coniston haa faults. Poor lit- 
 tle Susie, it shan’t have any more nasty messages to carry. 
 
 * See Fors Clavigera, Letter LXXXII, 
 
3G 
 
 HORTUS INGLUSUS. 
 
 ST. mark’s rest. 
 
 2M January, 1877. 
 
 I’ve caught cold and can think of nothing to do me good 
 but making you miserable by telling you so. 
 
 It’s not a very bad one. And it’s a wonder I’ve got so far 
 through the winter without any. 
 
 Things have gone very well for me, hitherto, but I have 
 been depressed by hearing of my poor Kate’s ^ illness ; and 
 can’t think of Brantwood with any comfort, so I come across 
 the lake to the Thwaite. 
 
 A great many lovely things happened to me this Christmas, 
 but if I were to tell Susie of them I am sure she would be 
 frightened out of her bright little wits, and think I was going 
 to be a Eoman Catholic. I’m writing such a Catholic history 
 of Venice, and chiselling all the Protestantism off the old 
 “ Stones ” as they do here the grass off steps. 
 
 All the pigeons of St. Mark’s Place send you their love. 
 St. Ursula adds hers to the eleven thousand bird’s love. And 
 the darlingest old Pope who went a pilgrimage with her, hopes 
 you won’t be too much shocked if he sends his too ! (If you’re 
 not shocked, I am !) 
 
 My new Catholic history of Venice is to be called ‘‘St. 
 Mark’s Rest.” 
 
 27/7t January. 
 
 Joanie tells me you are writing her such sad little letters. 
 How can it be that anyone so good and true as my Susie should 
 be sad? I am sad, bitterly enough and often, but only with 
 sense of fault and folly and lost opportunity such as you have 
 never fallen into or lost. It is very cruel of Fate, I think, to 
 make us sad, who would fain see everybody cheerful, and 
 (cruel of Fate too) to make so many cheerful who make others 
 wretched. The little history of Venice is well on, and will 
 be clear and interesting, I think — more than most histories of 
 anything. And the stories of saints and nice people will be 
 
 * Then, my head servant ; now Kate Eaven, of Coniston. 
 
H0RTU8 INCLUSU8. 
 
 37 
 
 plenty. Oli me, I wonder, Susie dear, whetlier you and I are 
 saints, or what we are. You know you’re really a little wicked 
 sometimes as well as me, aren’t you ? 
 
 Such moonlight as there is to-night, but nothing to what it 
 is at Goniston ! It makes the lagoon water look brown in- 
 stead of green, which I never noticed before. 
 
 SAINTS AND FLOWERS. 
 
 Venice, \lth February. 
 
 It is very grievous to me to hear of your being in that woful 
 weather while I have two days’ sunshine out of three, and 
 starlight or moonlight always ; to-day the whole chain of the 
 Alps from Vicenza to Trieste shining cloudless all day long, 
 and the seagulls floating high in the blue, like little dazzling- 
 boys’ kites. 
 
 Yes, St. Francis would have been greatlj^ pleased with you 
 watching pussy drink your milk ; so would St. Theodore, as 
 you will see by next Fors, which I have ordered to be sent 
 you in first proof, for I am eager that you should have it. 
 What wonderful flowers these pinks of St. Ursula’s are, for 
 life ! They seem to bloom like everlastings. 
 
 I get my first rosebud and violets of this year from St. 
 Helena’s Island to-day. How I begin to pit}^ people who have 
 no saints to be good to them ! Who is yours at Goniston ? 
 There must have been some in the country once upon a time. 
 
 With their help I am really getting well on with my history 
 and drawing, and hope for a sweet time at home in the heath- 
 ery days, and many a nice afternoon tea at the Thwaite. 
 
 Venice, Qth March. 
 
 That is entirely new and wonderful to me about the sing- 
 ing mouse. Douglas (was it the Douglas?) saying “he had 
 
 * A pleasant story that a friend sent me from France. The mouse 
 often came into their sitting-room and actually sang to them, the notes 
 being a little like a canary's. — S. B, 
 
38 
 
 H0ETU8 INCLUBU8. 
 
 rather hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak ” needs re- 
 vision. It is a marvellous fact in natural history. 
 
 The valid is singing a wild tune to-night — cannot be colder 
 on our own heaths — and the waves dash like our Waterhead. 
 Oh me, whenFm walking round it again, how like a sad dream 
 all this Venice will be I 
 
 Oxford, 2d Becemher. 
 
 I write first to you this morning to tell you that I gave yes- 
 terday the twelfth and last of my course of lectures this term, 
 to a room crowded by six hundred people, two-thirds members 
 of the University, and with its door wedged open by those 
 v/ho could not get in ; this interest of theirs being granted to 
 me, I doubt not, because for the first time in Oxford, I have 
 been able to speak to them boldly of immortal life. I intend- 
 ed, when I began the course, only to have read “ Modern Paint- 
 ers ” to them • but when I began, some of your favorite bits 
 interested the men so much, and brought so much larger a 
 proportion of undergraduates than usual, that I took pains to 
 reinforce and press them home ; and jieople say I have never 
 given so useful a course yet. But it has taken all my time and 
 strength, and I have not been able even to tell Susie a word 
 about it until now. In one of my lectures I made my text your 
 pretty peacock and the design * of him. But did not venture 
 to say, what really must be true, that his voice is an example of 
 “ the Devil sow^ed tares,’’ and of the angels letting both grow 
 together. Joanie was“wae”to leave Brantw’ood and you 
 (and betw^een you and me her lettei's have been so dull ever 
 since, that I think she has left her wits as w’ell as her heart with 
 you). I am going to see her on Monday week, the 10th, and 
 shall start from home about the 20th, undertaking (D. V.), 
 at all events, to come on Christmas morning to your ever 
 kindly opening door. 
 
 Love to Mary, and cousin Mary ; how happy it is for me 
 you are all so nice ! 
 
 Decorative art of liis plumage. 
 
HORTUS INCLUSU8. 
 
 39 
 
 My grateful compliments to the peacock. And little (but 
 warm) loves to all your little birds. And best of little loves 
 to the squirrels, only you must send them in dream-words, I 
 suppose, up to their nests. 
 
 Herne Hill, Sunday, \Qth December. 
 
 It is a long while since I’ve felt so good for nothing as I do 
 this morning. My very wristbands curl up in a dog’s-eared 
 and disconsolate manner ; my little room is all a heap of 
 disorder. I’ve got a hoarseness and wheezing and sneezing 
 and coughing and choking. I can’t speak and I can’t think, 
 I’m miserable in bed and useless out of it ; and it seems to 
 me as if I could never venture to open a window or go out of 
 a door any more. I have the dimmest sort of diabolical 
 pleasure in thinking how miserable I shall make Susie by tell- 
 ing her all this ; but in other respects I seem entirely devoid 
 of all moral sentiments. I have arrived at this state of things, 
 first by catching cold, and since by trying to “amuse myself” 
 for three days. I tried to read “ Pickwick,” but found that 
 vulgar, and, besides, I know it all by heart. I sent from town 
 for some chivalric romances, but found them immeasurably 
 stupid. I made Baxter read me the Daily Telegraph, and 
 found that the Home Secretary had been making an absurd 
 speech about art, without any consciousness that such a person 
 as I had ever existed. I read a lot of games of chess out 
 of Mr. Staunton’s handbook, and couldn’t understand any of 
 them. I analyzed the Dock Company’s bill of charges on a box 
 from Venice, and sent them an examination paper on it. I 
 think that did amuse me a little, but the account doesn’t. £1 8s. 
 Gd. for bringing a box two feet square from the Tower "Wharf 
 to here ! But the worst of all is, that the doctor keeps me 
 shut up here, and I can’t get mj^ business done ; and now 
 there isn’t the least chance of my getting down to Brantwood 
 for Christmas, nor, as far as I can see, for a fortnight after 
 it. There’s perhaps a little of the diabolical enjoyment again 
 in that estimate ; but really the days do go, more like dew 
 
40 
 
 EOBTUS INCLU8U8. 
 
 shaken off branches than real sunrisings and settings. But 
 I’ll send you word every day now for a little while how things 
 are going on. 
 
 Corpus Christi College, 
 Oxford, 2Qth December. 
 
 I don’t know really whether T ought to be at Brantwood 
 or here on Christmas. Yesterday I had two lovely services 
 in my own cathedral. You know the cathedral of Oxford is 
 the chapel of Christ Church College, and I have my own high 
 seat in the chancel, as an honorary student, besides being 
 bred there, and so one is ever so proud and ever so pious all 
 at once, which is ever so nice, you know ; and my own dean, 
 that’s the Dean of Christ’s Church, who is as big as any 
 bishop, read the services, and the psalms and anthems were 
 lovely ; and then I dined with Henry Acland and his family, 
 where I am an adopted son — all the more wanted yesterday 
 because the favorite son Herbert died tliis year in Cey- 
 lon — tlie first death out of seven sons. So they were glad to 
 liave me. Then I’ve all my Turners here, and shall really 
 enjoy myself a little to-day, I think ; but I do wish I could 
 be at Brantwood too. 
 
 Oh dear, I’ve scribbled this dreadfully. Can you really 
 read my scribble, Susie ? Love, you may always read, how- 
 ever scribbled. 
 
 Oxford, 27^/i Decemhtr. 
 
 Yes, I really think that must be the way of it. I am wholly 
 cattish in that love of teasing. How delighted I used to be 
 if Eosie would ever condescend to be the least bit jealous ! 
 
 By the way, what a shame it is that we keep that word 
 in the second commandment, as if it meant that God w’as 
 jealous of images. It means burning, zealous or full of life, 
 visiting, etc., i.e., necessarily when leaving the father, leaving 
 the child ; necessaril}^ when giving the father life, giving life 
 to the child, and to thousands of the race of them that love 
 me. 
 
H0BTU8 INCLU8US. 
 
 41 
 
 It is very comic the way people have of being so particular 
 about the second and fourth commandments, and breaking 
 all the rest with the greatest comfort. For me, I try to keep 
 all the rest rather carefully, and let the second and fourth 
 take care of themselves. 
 
 Cold quite gone ; now it’s your turn, Susie. Fve got a 
 love letter in Chinese, and can’t read it ! 
 
 Windsor Castle, 2d January^ 1878. 
 
 I’m horribly sulky this morning, for I expected to have a 
 room with a view, if the room was ever so little, and I’ve got 
 a great big one looking into the Castle j^ard, and I feel ex- 
 actly as if I was in a big modern county gaol with beautiful 
 turrets of modern Gothic. 
 
 I came to see Prince Leopold, who has been a prisoner to 
 his sofa lately, but I trust he is better ; he is very bright and 
 gentle, under severe and almost continual pain. My dear 
 little Susie, about that rheumatism of 3’ours ? If it ^vasn’t 
 for that, how happy we both ought to be, living in Thwaites 
 and woods, instead of nasty castles? Well, about that Shake- 
 speare guide ? I cannot, cannot, at all fancy what it is. In 
 and out among the stars ; it sounds like a plan for stringing 
 the stars. I am so very glad you told me of it. 
 
 “ Unwritten books in my brain ? ” Yes, but also in how 
 many other brains of quiet people, books unthought of, “ In 
 the Book and Volume ” which will be read some day in 
 Heaven, aloud, “When saw we thee?” Yes, and “When 
 read we ourselves ? ” 
 
 My dear Susie, if I were to think really Zos^, what you for 
 instance have new found in your own powers of receiving and 
 giving pleasure, the beautiful faculties you have, scarcely ven- 
 turing even to show the consciousness of them, when it 
 awakes in you, what a woful conception I should have of 
 God’s not caring for us. He will gather all the wheat into 
 His garner. 
 
42 
 
 EOBTUS IN0LU8U8. 
 
 INGLETON, VUh January. 
 
 It’s a charming post here, and brings me my letters the 
 first thing in the morning ; and I took care to tell nobody 
 where I was going, except people I wanted to hear from. 
 What a little busy bee of a Susie you’ve been to get all those 
 extracts ready by this time. I’ve got nothing done all the 
 while I’ve been away, but a few mathematical figures, and the 
 less I do the less I find I can do it ; and yesterday, for the 
 first time these twenty years at -least, I hadn’t so much as 
 a “ plan ” in my head all day. But I had a lot to look at in 
 the moorland flowers and quiet little ancient Yorkshire farm- 
 houses, not to speak bf Ingleborough, who was, I think, a lit- 
 tle depressed because he knew you were only going to send 
 your remembrances, and not your love to him. The clouds 
 gathered on his brow occasionally in a fretful manner, but 
 toward evening he resumed his peace of mind and sends 
 you his “ remembrances ” and his “blessing.” I believe he 
 saves both you and me from a great deal of east wind. 
 
 Well, I’ve got a plan in my head this morning for the new 
 extracts. Shall v/e call them “Lapides (or “Marmora”) 
 Portici ; ” and put a little preface to them about the pave- 
 ment of St. Mark’s porch and its symbolism of what the edu- 
 cation of a good man’s early days must be to him ? I think 
 I can write something a little true and trustworthy about it. 
 Love to Mary and singing little Joan. You are very right 
 about it’s not being good for me to be alone, but I had some 
 nice little times in London with Mary Gladstone, or I shouldn’t 
 have known what to do. And now I’m coming home as fast 
 as I can. 
 
 26t/i November. 
 
 I have entirely resigned all hope of ever thanking you 
 rightly for bread, sweet odors, roses and pearls, and must just 
 allow myself to be fed, scented, rose-garlanded andbepearled 
 as if I were a poor little pet dog or pet pig. But my cold is 
 better, and I am getting on with this botany ; but it is really 
 loo important a work to be pushed for a week or a fortnight. 
 And Mary and you will be pleased at last, I am sure. 
 
HORTUS INGLUSUS. 
 
 43 
 
 I have only to-day got my four families, Clarissa, Lychnis, 
 Scintilla, and Mica, perfectly and simply defined. See how 
 nicely they come. 
 
 A. Clarissa clianged from Dianthus, whicli is bad Greek (and all 
 
 my pretty flowers have names of girls). 'PetoX jagged at the 
 outside. 
 
 B, Lychnis. Petal divided in two at the outside, and the fringe re- 
 
 tired to the top of the limb. 
 
 C, Scintilla (changed from Stellaria, because I want Stella for 
 
 the house leeks). Petal formed by the two lobes of Lychnis 
 without the retired fringe. 
 
 D. Mica. Single lobed petal. 
 
 When once these four families are well understood in typi- 
 cal examples, how easy it will be to attach either subordinate 
 groups or specialties of habitat, as in America, to some kinds 
 of them ! The entire order, for their purity and wildness, are 
 to be named, from Artemis, ‘‘ Artemides,” instead of Caryo- 
 phyllaceae ; and next them come the Vestals (mints, lavenders, 
 etc.) ; and then the Cytheride Viola, Veronica, Giulietta, the 
 last changed from Polygala. 
 
 That third herb Eobert one is just the drawing that no- 
 body but me (never mind grammar) could have made. No- 
 body ! because it means ever so much careful watcliing of the 
 ways of the leaf, and a lot of work in cramp perspective be> 
 sides. It is not quite right yet, but it is nice. 
 
 It is so nice to be able to find anything that is in the least 
 new to you, and interesting ; my rocks are quite proud of 
 rooting that little saxifrage. 
 
 Pm scarcely able to look at one flower because of the two 
 on each side, in my garden just now. I want to have bees’ 
 eyes, there are so many lovely things. 
 
 I must tell you, interrupting my botanical work this morn- 
 ing, something that has just chanced to me. 
 
 I am arranging the caryophylls which I mass broadly into 
 “ Clarissa, ” the true jagged-leaved and clove-scented ones ; 
 ‘‘Lychnis, those whose leaves are essentially in two lobes ; 
 
44 
 
 H0BTU8 INCLU8US, 
 
 “ Arenaria,’' which I leave untouched; and “Mica,” a new 
 name of own for the pearlworts, of which the French name 
 is to be Miette, and the representative type (now Sagina pro- 
 cumbent) is to be in — 
 
 Latin — Mica arnica. 
 
 French — Miette I’amie. 
 
 English — Pet peaiiwort. 
 
 Then the next to this is to be — 
 
 Latin — Mica millegrana. 
 
 French — Miette aux mille perles. 
 
 English — Thousand pearls. 
 
 Now this on the whole I consider the prettiest of the group, 
 and so look for a plate of it which I can copy. Hunting all 
 through my botanical books, I find the best of all is Baxter’s 
 Oxford one, and determine at once to engrave that. When 
 turning the page of his text I find : “ The specimen of this 
 curious and interesting little plant from which the accompa- 
 nying drawing was made, was communicated to me by Miss 
 Susan Beever. To the kindness of this young lady, and that 
 of her sister. Miss Mary Beever, I am indebted for the four 
 plants figured in this number.” 
 
 I have copied lest you should have trouble in looking for 
 the book, but now, you darling Susie, please tell me whether 
 I may not separate these lovely pearlworts wholly from the 
 spergulas — by the pearlworts having only two leaves like real 
 pinks at the joints, and the spergulas, a cluster ; and tell me 
 how the spergulas scatter their seeds, I can’t find any account 
 of it. 
 
 I would fain have come to see that St. Bruno lily ; but if I 
 don’t come to see Susie and you, be sure I am able to come 
 to see nothing. At present I am very deeply involved in the 
 classification of the minerals in the Sheffield Museum, impor- 
 tant as the first practical arrangement ever yet attempted for 
 popular teaching, and this with my other work makes me fit 
 for nothing in the afternoon but wood-chopping. But I will 
 call to-day on Dr. Brown’s friends. 
 
U0ETU8 IKCLUSU8. 
 
 45 
 
 I hope you will not be too much shocked with the audacities 
 of the new number of “Proserpina,” or Avitli its ignorances. 
 I am going during my wood-chopping really to ascertain in 
 my own way what simple persons ought to know about tree 
 growth, and give it clearly in the next number. I ineaiit to do 
 the whole book very differently, but can only now give the 
 fragmentary pieces as they chance to come, or it would never 
 be done at all. 
 
 You must know before anybody else how the exogens are 
 to be completely divided. I keep the four great useful 
 groups, mallow, geranium, mint, and wail-flower, under the 
 head of domestic orders, that their sweet service and com- 
 panionship with us may be understood ; then the water-lily 
 and the heath, both four foils, are to be studied in their soli- 
 tudes (I shall throw all that are not four foils out of tlie Eri- 
 caceae) ; then finally there are to be seven orders of the dark 
 proserpine, headed by the draconids (snapdragons), and in- 
 cluding the anemones, hellebores, ivies, and forget-me-nots. 
 
 What plants I cannot get arranged under these 12-f 4-[-2-f- 
 7 = 25 in all, orders, I shall give broken notices of, as I have 
 time, leaving my pupils to arrange them as they like. I can’t 
 do it all. 
 
 The whole household was out after breakfast to-day to the 
 top of the moor to plant cranberries ; and wm squeezed and 
 splashed and spluttered in the boggiest places the lovely sun- 
 shine had left, till we found places squashy and squeezy 
 enough to please the most particular and coolest of cranberry 
 minds ; and then each of us choosing a little special bed of 
 bog, the tufts were deeply put in with every manner of tacit 
 benediction, such as might befit a bog and a beny, and many 
 an expressed thanksgiving to Susie and to the kind sender of 
 the luxuriant plants. I have never had gift from you, dear 
 Susie, more truly interesting and gladdening to me, and many 
 a day I shall climb the moor to see the fate of the plants and 
 look across to the Thwaite. I’ve been out most of the fore- 
 noon and am too sleepy to shape letters, but will try and get 
 a word of thanks to the far finder of the dainty things to- 
 morrow. 
 
46 
 
 H0ETU8 INGLUSUB. 
 
 What loveliness everywhere in a duckling sort of state just 
 now. 
 
 Ne'e ember. 
 
 We’ve all been counting and considering how old you can 
 possibly be to-day, and have made up our minds that you are 
 really thirteen, and must begin to be serious. There have 
 been some hints about the necessity of sending you to school, 
 which I have taken no notice of, hoping that you will really 
 at last make up your mind to do your lessons at home like a 
 dear good little girl as yon are. And because to-day you 
 enter into your “ teens ” I have sent you a crystal, and a little 
 bit of native gold, and a little bit of native silver, for symbols 
 of this lovely “ nativity ” of previous years ; and I do wish 
 you all love and joy and peace in them. 
 
 TO MISS BEEVER. 
 
 20i57i January., 1879. 
 
 You will not doubt the extreme sorrow with which I have 
 heard of all that was ordered to be, of terrible, in your peace- 
 ful and happy household. Without for an instant supposing, 
 but, on the contrary, utterly refusing to admit, that such 
 calamities'^ may be used to point a moral (all useful morality 
 having every point that God meant it to have, perfectly sharp 
 and bright without any burnishing of ours), still less to adorn 
 a tale (the tales of modern days depending far too much upon 
 Scythian decoration with Death’s heads) ; I, yet, if I had been 
 Mr. Chapman, would have pointed out that all concealments, 
 even of trivial matters, on the part of young servants from 
 kind mistresses, are dangerous no less than unkind and un- 
 generous, and tliat a great deal of preaching respecting the 
 evil nature of man and the anger of God might be spared, if 
 children and servants were only taught, as a religious prin- 
 
 * One of our younger servants had gone on to the frozen lake ; the ice 
 gave way, and she was drowned. — S. B. 
 
IIORTUS INCLUSUS. 
 
 47 
 
 ciple, to tell their mothers and mistresses, when they go out, 
 exactly where they are going and what they are going to do. 
 I think both you and Miss Susan ought to use every possible 
 means of changing, or at least checking, the current of such 
 thoughts in your minds ; and I am in hopes that you may have 
 a little pleasure in examining the plates in the volume of Sib- 
 thorpe s “F. Graeca” which I send to-day, in comparison with 
 those of “F. Danica.” The vulgarity and lifelessness of Sib- 
 thorpe s plates are the more striking, because in mere execu- 
 tion tliey are the inore elaborate of the two ; the chief point 
 in the ‘‘F. Danica ” being the lovely artistic skill. The draw- 
 ings for Sibthorpe, by a young German, were as exquisite as 
 the Danes, but the English engraver and colorist spoiled all. 
 
 I will send you, if you like them, the other volumes in suc- 
 cession. I find immense interest in comparing the Greek 
 and Danish forms or conditions of the same English flower. 
 
 I send the second volume, in which the Rufias are lovely, 
 and scarcely come under my above condemnation. The/?’S^ 
 is nearly all of grass. 
 
 Ath February. 
 
 You know I’m getting my Oxford minerals gradually to 
 Brantwood, and whenever a box comes, I think whether there 
 are any that I don t want myself, which might yet have leave 
 to live on Susie’s table. And to-day I’ve found a very soft 
 purple agate, that looks as if it were nearly melted away 
 with pity for birds and flies, which is like Susie ; and an- 
 other piece of hard wooden agate with only a little ragged 
 sky of blue here and there, which is like me ; and a group of 
 crystals with grass of Epidote inside, which is like what my 
 own little cascade has been all the winter by the garden side ; 
 and so I’ve had them all packed up, and I hope you will let 
 them live at the Thwaite. 
 
 Then here are some more bits, if you will be a child. 
 Here’s a green piece, long, of the stone they cut those green, 
 weedy brooches out of, and a nice mouse-colored natural agate, 
 
48 
 
 H0BTU8 INGLU8US. 
 
 and a great black and white one, stained with sulphuric acid, 
 black, but very fine always, and interesting in its lines. 
 
 Oh, dear, the cold ; but it’s worth any cold to have that 
 delicious Kobin dialogue. Please write some more of it ; 
 you hear all they say, I’m sure. 
 
 I cannot tell you how delighted I am with your lovely gift 
 to Joanie. The perfection of the stone, its exquisite color, 
 and superb weight, and flawless clearness, and the delicate 
 cutting, which makes the light flash from it like a wave of 
 the Lake, make it altogether the most perfect mineralogical 
 and heraldic jewel that Joanie could be bedecked with, and 
 it is as if Susie had given her a piece of Coniston Water it- 
 self. 
 
 And the setting is delicious, and positively must not be 
 altered. I shall come on Sunday to thank you myself for 
 it. Meantime I’m working hard at the Psalter, which I am 
 almost sure Susie will like. 
 
 25^^ May, 
 
 This is a most wonderful stone that Dr. Kendall has found 
 — at least to me. I have never seen anything quite like it, 
 the arborescent forms of the central thread of iron being 
 hardly ever assumed by an ore of so much metallic lustre. I 
 think it would be very desirable to cut it, so as to get a per- 
 fectly smooth surface to show the arborescent forms ; if Dr. 
 Kendall would like to have it done, I can easily send it uj) to 
 London with my own next parcel. 
 
 I want very much to know exactly where it was found ; 
 might I come and ask about it on Dr. Kendall’s next visit to 
 you ? I could be there waiting for him any day. 
 
 I am thinking greatly of our George Herbert, but me's so 
 wicked I don’t know where to begin. 
 
 But I never have had nicer letters “ since first I saw your 
 face ” and tried to honor and reverence you. 
 
 Violet’s better, and I’m pretty well, but have a little too 
 much thinking of old days. 
 
IIORTUS INCLU8U8. 
 
 49 
 
 Have you any word of the Collies lately ? I keep sending 
 stones and books ; they answer not. It is delightful of you 
 to be interested in that stone book. I send you one of my 
 pictures of stones. They’re not very like, but they’re prett}\ 
 I wish they did such pictures now. 
 
 What lovely pies (pictures?) 3 'ou would have made, in the 
 old butterfly times, of opal and felspar ! W^hat lost creat- 
 ures we all are, we nice ones ! The Alps and clouds that 1 
 could have done, if I had been shown how. 
 
 June. 
 
 Everybody’s gone ! and I have all the new potatoes, and all 
 the asparagus, and all the oranges and everything, and my 
 Susie too, all to myself. 
 
 I wrote in my diary this morning that really on the whole 
 I never felt better in my life. Mouth, eyes, head, feet, and 
 fingers all fairly in trim ; older than they were, yes, but if 
 the head and heart grow wiser, they won’t want feet or 
 fingers some day. 
 
 Indeed that is too sad about Florence. I’ve written a line 
 to her by this post, and will do all the little I can to cheer 
 her. 
 
 And I’ll come to be cheered and scolded myself the 
 moment I’ve got things a little to rights here. I think imps 
 get into the shelves and drawers, if the}^’re kept long locked, 
 and must be caught like mice. The bo^'S have been very 
 good, and left everything untouched but the imps ; and to 
 hear people say there aren’t any ! How happy you and I 
 should always be if it weren’t for them ! But we’re both so 
 naughty we can’t expect them to let us alone. Can we ? 
 
 How gay you were and how you cheered me up after the 
 dark lake. 
 
 Please say “John Inglesant” is harder than real history 
 and of no mortal use. I couldn’t read four pages of it. 
 Clever, of course. 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 H0BTU8 INGLU8US. 
 
 Herne Hill, lUTi August^ 1880. 
 
 I’ve just finished my Scott paper, but it has retouchings 
 and notings yet to do. I couldn’t write a word before ; 
 haven’t so much as a syllable to Diddie, and only a move at 
 chess to Macdonald, for you know, to keep a chess-player 
 waiting for a move is like keeping St. Lawrence unturned. 
 
 August^ 1880. 
 
 I’m leaving to-day for Dover, and a line from you to-morrow 
 or Monday would find me certainly at Poste Kestante, Abbe- 
 ville, and please, please tell me the funny thing Miss 
 
 said. 
 
 I have not been working at all, but enjoying myself 
 (only that takes up time all the same) at Crystal Palace 
 concerts, and jugglings, and at Zoological Gardens, where I 
 had a snake seven feet long to play with, only I hadn’t much 
 time to make friends, and it rather wanted to get away all 
 the time. And I gave the hippopotamus whole buns, and he 
 was delighted, and saw the cormorant catch fish thrown to 
 him six yards off ; never missed one ; you would have thought 
 the fish ran along a wire up to him and down his throat. 
 And I saw the penguin swim under water, and the sea-lions 
 sit up, four of them on four wooden chairs, and catch fish 
 also ; but they missed sometimes and had to fioj3 off’ their 
 chairs into the water, and then flop out' again and flop up 
 again. 
 
 And I lunched with Cardinal Manning, and he gave me 
 such a plum pie. I never tasted a Protestant pie to touch it. 
 
 Now you’re just wrong about my darling Cardinal. See 
 what it is to be jealous ! He gave me lovely soup, roast 
 beef, hare and currant jelly, puff pastry like Papal preten- 
 sions — you had but to breathe on it and it w^as nowhere — 
 raisins and almonds, and those lovely preserved cherries like 
 
nORTUS INGLU8US. 
 
 51 
 
 kisses kept iu amber. And told me delicious stories all 
 through lunch. There! 
 
 And we really do see the sun here ! And last night the 
 sky was all a spangle and delicate glitter of stars, the glare of 
 them and spikiness softened off by a young darling of a 
 moon. 
 
 And I’m having rather a time of it in boudoirs, turned into 
 smiling instead of pouting service. But I’m not going to 
 stay over my three weeks. How nice that you can and will 
 walk round the dining-room for exercise ! 
 
 Calais, Aufjust. 
 
 I’m not very far away yet, you see. I stayed here for 
 auld lang syne, but with endless sorrow, of which I need not 
 give you any part of the burden. 
 
 The sea has been beautiful, and I am better for the great 
 rest and change. 
 
 Amiens, 29^7a Augmt. 
 
 You have been made happy doubtless with us by the news 
 from Herne Hill. I’ve only a telegram yet though, but write 
 at once to congratulate you on your little goddaughter. 
 
 Also to say that I am very well, and sadly longing for 
 Brantwood ; but that lam glad to see some vestige of beloved 
 things here, once more. 
 
 We have glorious weather, and I am getting perfect rest 
 most of the day — mere saunter in the sunny air, taking all the 
 good I can of it. To-morrow we get (H. V.) to Beauvais, 
 where perhaps I may find a letter from Susie ; in any case 
 you may write to Hotel IMeurice, Paris. 
 
 The oleanders are coming out and geraniums in all cottage 
 windows, and golden corn like Etruscan jewelry over all the 
 fields. 
 
 Beauvais, 3cZ September. 
 
 We are having the most perfect weather I ever saw in 
 France, much less anywhere else, and I’m taking a thorough 
 
52 
 
 H0RTU8 INGLU8U8. 
 
 rest, writing scarcely anything and sauntering about old town 
 streets all day. 
 
 I made a little sketch of the lake from above the Waterhead 
 which goes everywhere with me, and it is so curious when the 
 wind blows the leaf open when I am sketching here at Beau- 
 vais, where all is so differently delightful, as if we were on 
 the other side of the world. 
 
 I think I shall be able to write some passages about archi- 
 tecture yet, which Susie will like. I hear of countless 
 qualities being discovered in the new little Susie ! And all 
 things will be happy for me if you send me a line to Hotel 
 Meurice, saying you are happy too. 
 
 Pakis, Ath 8eptemher. 
 
 I have all your letters, and rejoice in them ; though it is a 
 little sadder for you looking at empty Brantwood, than for me 
 to fancy the bright full Thwaite, and then it’s a great shame 
 that I’ve everything to amuse me, and lovely Louvres and 
 shops and cathedrals and coquettes and pictures and plays 
 and prettinesses of every color and quality, and you’ve only 
 your old, old hills and quiet lake. Very thankful I shall be 
 to get back to them, though. 
 
 We have finished our Paris this afternoon, and hope to 
 leave for Chartres on Monday. 
 
 Hotel de Meurice, Parts, Uh 8eptember. 
 
 Is it such pain to you when people say what they ought not 
 to say about me ? But when do they say what they ought to 
 say about anything ? Nearly everything I have ever done or 
 said is as much above the present level of public understand- 
 ing as the Old Man is above the Waterhead. 
 
 We have had the most marvellous weather thus far, and 
 have seen Paris better than ever I’ve seen it yet— and to-day at 
 the Louvre we saw the Casette of St. Louis, the Coffre of 
 Anne of Austria, the porphyry vase, made into an eagle, of an 
 
HORTUa INCLU8U8. 
 
 53 
 
 okl Abbe Segur, or some such name. All these you can see 
 also, you know, in those lovely photographs of Miss Eigb}’^e’s, 
 if you can only make out in this vile writing of mine what I 
 mean. 
 
 But it is so hot. I can scarcely sit up or hold the pen, but 
 tumble back into the chair every half-minute and unbutton 
 anotlier button of waistcoat, and gasp a little, and nod a little, 
 and wink a little, and sprinkle some eau de Cologne a little, 
 and try a little to write a little, and forget what I had to say, 
 and where I was, and whether it’s Susie or Joan I’m writing 
 to ; and then I see some letters I’ve never opened that came 
 by this morning’s post, and think I’d better open them per- 
 haps ; and here I find in one of them a delightful account of 
 the quarrel that goes on in this weather between the nicest 
 elephant in the Zoo’ and his keeper, because he won’t come 
 out of his bath. I saw them at it myself, when I was in 
 London, and saw the elephant take up a stone and throw it hard 
 against a door which the keeper was behind — but my friend 
 writes, I must believe from what I saw that the elephant 
 knew he would injure the man with the stones, for he threw 
 them hard to the side of him, and then stood his ground ; 
 when, however, he threw water and wetted the man, he 
 plunged into the bath to avoid the whip ; not fearing punish- 
 ment when he merely showed what he could do and did not.” 
 
 The throwing the stone hard at the door when the keeper 
 was on the other side of it, must have been great fun for him ! 
 
 I am so sorry to have crushed this enclosed scrawl. It has 
 been carried about in my pocket to be finished, and I see 
 there’s no room for the least bit of love at the bottom. So 
 here’s a leaf full from the Bois de Boulogne, which is very 
 lovely ; and we drive about by night or day, as if all the sky 
 were only the roof of a sapphire palace set with 'warm stars. 
 
 Chahtiies, dtth Septemher. 
 
 {Hotel dll Grand Morutrqne. ) 
 
 I suppose Vm the grand Monarque ! I don’t know of any 
 other going just now, but I don’t feel quite the right thing 
 
54 
 
 H0RTU8 INGLU8US. 
 
 without a wig. Anyhow, I’m having everything my own way 
 just now — weather, dinner, news from Joanie and news from 
 Susie, only I don’t like her to be so very, very sad, though it 
 is nice to be missed so tenderly. But I do hope you will like 
 to think of my getting some joy in old ways again, and once 
 more exploring old streets and finding forgotten churches. 
 
 The sunshine is life and health to me, and I am gaining 
 knowledge faster than ever I could when I was young. 
 
 This is just to say where I am, and that you might know 
 where to write. 
 
 The cathedral here is the grandest in France, and I stay a 
 week at least. 
 
 Chartres, 13^/i 8eptember. 
 
 I must be back in England by the 1st October, and by the 
 10th shall be myself ready to start for Brantwood, but may 
 perhaps stay, if Joanie is not ready, till she can come too. 
 Anyway, I trust very earnestly to be safe in the shelter of my 
 own woodside by the end of October. I wonder what you 
 will say of my account of the Five Lovers of Nature* and se- 
 clusion in the last Nineteenth Century. 
 
 I am a little ashamed to find that, in spite of my sublimely 
 savage temperament, I take a good deal more pleasure in 
 Paris than of old, and am even going back there on Friday 
 for three more daj^s. 
 
 We find the people here very amiable, and the French old 
 character unchanged. The perfect cleanliness and unrufiied- 
 ness of white cap is alwaj^s a marvel, and the market groups 
 exquisite, but our enjoyment of the fair is subdued by pity 
 for a dutiful dog, who turns a large wheel (by walking up it 
 inside) the whole afternoon, producing awful sounds out of a 
 huge grinding organ, of which his wheel and he are the un- 
 fortunate instruments. Him we love, his wheel we hate ! and 
 in general all French musical instruments. I have become 
 quite sure of one thing on this journey, that the French of 
 
 * Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Turner, and John Ruskin. 
 
HOU T IKCL 
 
 55 
 
 to-day have no sense of harniony, but only of more or less 
 lively tune, and even, for a time, will be content with any 
 kind of clash or din produced in time. 
 
 The Cathedral service is, however, still impressive. 
 
 liUh FeJrnmry^ 1881. 
 
 I’ve much to tell you “ to-day of answer to those prayers 
 you prayed for me. But you must be told it by our good 
 angels, for your eyes must not be worn. God willing, you 
 shall see men as trees walking in the garden of God, on this 
 pretty Coniston earth of ours. Don’t be afraid, and please be 
 happy, for I can’t be, if you are not. Love to Mary, to Miss 
 Bigbye, and my ov/n St. Ursula,! and mind you give the 
 messages to all three, hearlihj. 
 
 22(? April. 
 
 I’m not able to scratch or fight to-day, or I wouldn’t let 
 you cover me up with this heap of gold ; but I’ve got a rheu- 
 matic creak in my neck, which makes me jjhysically stiff and 
 morally supple and unprincipled, so I’ve put two pounds six- 
 teen in my own “till,” where it just fills up some lowering of 
 the tide lately by German bands and the like ; and I’ve put 
 ten pounds aside for Sheffield Museum, now in instant men- 
 dicity ; and I’ve put ten pounds aside till you and I can have 
 a talk and you bo made reasonable, after being scolded and 
 scratched ; after which, on your promise to keep to our old 
 bargain and enjoy spending your little “Frondes” income. 
 I’ll be your lovingest again. And for the two pounds ten, 
 and the ten, I am really most heartily grateful, meaning as 
 they do so much that is delightful for both of us in the good 
 done by this work of yours. 
 
 I send you Spenser ; perhaj^s you had better begin with 
 
 * Tlie motto on Mr. Raskin’s seal. See Frseterita, Vol. II., p. 28G. 
 f Pliotograph of Carpaccio’s. 
 
5G 
 
 H0BTU8 INCLU8US. 
 
 the Hymn to Beauty, page 39, and then go on to the Tears ; 
 but you’ll see how you like it. It’s better than Longfellow ; 
 see line 52 
 
 “The house of blessed gods which men call skye.” 
 
 Now I’m going to look out Dr. Kendall’s crystal. It must 
 be crystal,* for having brought back the light to your eyes. 
 
 12^7i July. 
 
 How delightful that you have that nice Mrs. Howard to 
 hear you say “The Ode to Beaut}^” and how nice that you 
 can learn it and enjoy saying it ! 'j* I do not know it myself. 
 I only know that it should be known and said and heard and 
 loved. 
 
 I am often near you in thought, but can’t get over the lake, 
 somehow. There’s always somebody to be looked after here, 
 now. I’ve to rout the gardeners out of the greenhouse, or I 
 should never have a strawberry or a pink, but only nasty 
 gloxinias and glaring fuchsias ; and I’ve been giving lessons to 
 dozens of people, and writing charming sermons in the 
 “ Bible of Amiens ; ” but I get so sleepy in the afternoon, I 
 can’t pull myself over it. 
 
 I was looking at your notes on birds, yesterday. How 
 sweet they are ! But I can’t forgive that young blackbird for 
 getting wild again. 
 
 Last day of 1881. And the last letter 
 I write on it^ with new pen. 
 
 I’ve lunched on your oysters, and am feasting eyes and 
 mind on your birds. 
 
 What birds ? 
 
 * For a present to Dr. Kendall. 
 
 I I learned tlie whole of it by heart, and could then sa}*^ it without a 
 break. I have always loved it, and in return it has helped me through 
 many a long and sleepless night. — S. B. 
 
IIORTUS INCLUSUS. 
 
 57 
 
 w Inrsn\r9 Ygs I supposG, aiid iiGver bcforG noticed tlie 
 toll, ‘^'“1 o starligUt, iiiKl wooda and 
 
 r“=; 
 
 coming year. 
 
 Easter Day, 1882. 
 
 I have had a liappy Easter morning, 
 
 ri;r/rr.:t.s;ridr:f : 
 
 have known without lessoning ; but I Ua.e learnt d, from 
 these repeated dreams and fantasies, that 
 
 “ t’ etryS"^^^ aX "as^h“e iLble 
 
 arpossihle- but people re.H take it, you know, sometnnes, 
 even when I don’t give it, and there’s a great fuss about me 
 
 L%^trrrror„rr.;:^^ 
 
 danger, I think one runs more risks in a single railway jouiney 
 tlian in the sicknesses of a whole year. 
 
 8th June. 
 
 You write as well as ever, and the eyes must surely be 
 better, and it was a joyful amazement to “® ° , ^ ‘ 
 
 Mary was able to read and could eu 3 oy my ch ds botany. 
 You always have things before other people; will you please 
 
58 
 
 H0RTU8 1NGLU8U8. 
 
 send me some rosemary and lavender as soon as they are out? 
 I am busy on the Labiatse, and a good deal bothered. Also 
 St, Benedict, whom I shall get done with long before I’ve 
 made out the nettles he rolled in. 
 
 I’m sure I ought to roll myself in nettles, burdocks, and 
 blackthorn, for here in London I can’t really think now of 
 anything but flirting, and I’m only much the worse for it 
 afterward. 
 
 And I’m generally wicked and weary, like the people who 
 ought to be put to rest. But you’d miss me, and so would 
 Joanie ; so I suppose I shall be let stay a little while longer. 
 
 Sallenches, Savoy, IWi 8e'ptemler. 
 
 I saw Mont Blanc again to-day, unseen since 1877 ; and was 
 very thankful. It is a sight tliat always redeems me to what 
 I am capable of at my poor little best, and to what loves and 
 memories are most precious to me. So I write to yon, one of 
 the few true loves left. The snow has fallen fresh on the 
 hills, and it makes me feel that I must soon be seeking- 
 shelter at Brantwood and the Thwaite. 
 
 Genoa, Sunday, September. 
 
 I got your delightful note yesterday at Turin, and it made 
 me wish to run back through the tunnel directly instead of 
 coming on here. But I had a wonderful day, the Alps clear 
 all the morning all round Italy — two hundred miles of them ; 
 and then in the afternoon blue -waves of the Gulf of Genoa 
 breaking like blue clouds, thunder-clouds, under groves of 
 olive and palm. But I washed they were my sparkling waves 
 of Coniston instead, when I read your letter again. 
 
 What a gay Susie, receiving all the w-orld, like a Queen 
 Susan (how odd one has never hekrd of a Queen Susan !), only 
 you are so naughty, and you never do tell me of any of those 
 nice girls when they’re coming, but only when they’re gone, 
 and I never shall get glimpse of them as long as I live. 
 
HORTUS INGLUSUS. 59 
 
 But you know you really represent the entire Euskin 
 school of the Lake Country, and I think these levees of yours 
 must be very amusing and enchanting ; but it’s very dear and 
 good of you to let the people come and enjoy themselves, and 
 how really well and strong you must be to be able for it. 
 
 I am very glad to hear of those sweet, shy girls, poor 
 things.^ I suppose the sister they are now anxious about is 
 the one that would live by herself on the other side of the 
 Lake, and study Emerson and aspire to Buddhism. 
 
 I’m trying to put my own poor little fragmentary Ism into 
 a rather more connected form of imagery. I’ve never quite 
 set myself up enough to impress some people ; and I’ve 
 written so much that I can’t quite make out what I am my- 
 self, nor what it all comes to. 
 
 lOth Junuary^ 1883. 
 
 I cannot tell you how grateful and glad I am, to have your 
 lovely note and to know that the Bewick gave you pleasure, 
 and that you are so entirely well now, as to enjoy anything 
 requiring so much energy and attention to this degree. For 
 indeed I can scarcely now take pleasure myself in things that 
 give me the least trouble to look at, but I know that the 
 pretty book and its chosen woodcuts ought to be sent to you, 
 first of all my friends (I have not yet thought of sending it to 
 anyone else), and I am quite put in heart after a very despon- 
 dent yesterday, past inanely, in thinking of what / couldn't do, 
 by feeling what you can, and hoping to share the happy 
 Christmas time with you and Susie in future years. Will j^ou 
 please tell my dear Susie I’m going to bring over a drawing 
 to show ! (so thankful that I am still able to draw after these 
 strange and terrible illnesses) this afternoon. I am in hopes it 
 may clear, but dark or bright I’m coming, about half-past 
 three, and am ever your and her most affectionate and faithful 
 servant. 
 
 * Florenee; Alice, and May Bennett, Florence is gone. Alice and. 
 May still sometimes at Coniston, D. G. (Marcli, 1887). 
 
60 
 
 HORTUS INGLU8US. 
 
 2Uh Sepiembery 1884. 
 
 I wandered literally “up and down” your mountain 
 garden — (how beautifully the native rocks slope to its paths 
 in the sweet evening light, Susiesque light !) — with great 
 happiness and admiration, as I went home, and I came indeed 
 upon what I conceived to be — discovered in the course of 
 recent excavations — two deeply interesting thrones of the 
 ancient Abbots of Furness, typifying their humility in that 
 the seats thereof were only level w'ith the ground between two 
 clusters of the earth ; contemplating cyclamen, and their 
 severity of penance, in the points of stone prepared for the 
 mortification of their backs ; but truly, Susie’s seat of repose 
 and meditation I was unable as yet to discern, but propose to 
 myself further investigation of that apple-perfumed paradise, 
 and am ever your devoted and enchanted. 
 
 December. 
 
 I gave my fourteenth, and last for this year, lecture this 
 afternoon with vigor and effect, and am safe and well (D. G.), 
 after such a spell of work as I never did before. I have been 
 thrown a week out in all my plans, by having to write two new 
 Lectures, instead of those the University was frightened at. 
 The scientists slink out of my way now, as if I was a mad dog, 
 for I let them have it hot and heavy whenever I’ve a chance 
 at them. 
 
 But as I said, I’m a week late, and though I start for the 
 North this day week, I can’t get home till this day fortnight at 
 soonest, but I hope not later than to-morrow fortnight. Very 
 thankful I shall be to find myself again at the little room door. 
 
 Fancy Mary Gladstone forgiving me even that second 
 naughtiness ! She’s going to let me come to see her this 
 week, and to play to me, which is a great comfort. 
 
 St. Susie, November ^ 1885. 
 
 Behold Athena and Apollo both come to bless you on your 
 birthday, and all the buds of the year to come, rejoice with 
 
HOBTUS INCLU8U8. 
 
 61 
 
 yon, and your poor cat is able to purr again, and is extremely 
 comfortable and even cheerful “ to-day.” And we will make 
 more and more of the days, won’t we, and we will burn our 
 candle at both beginnings instead of both ends, every day 
 beginning two worlds — the old one to be lived over again, 
 the new to learn our golden letters in. Not that I mean to 
 write books in that world. I hope to be set to do something, 
 there ; and what lovely “ receptions ” you will have in your 
 little heavenly Thwaite, and celestial teas. And you won’t 
 spoil the cream with hot water, will you, any more ? 
 
 The whole village is enjoying itself, I hear, and the widows 
 and orphans to be much the better for it, and altogether, you 
 and I have a jolly time of it, haven’t we ? 
 
 20th Februaryy 1886. 
 
 I haven’t had anything nice to send you this ever so long, 
 but here’s a little bird’s nest f)f native silver which you could 
 almost live in as comfortabl;^ as a tit. It will stand nicely 
 on your table without upsetting, and is so comfortable to 
 hold, and altogether I’m pleased to have got it for you. 
 
 Isi March. 
 
 Yes, I knew you would like that silver shrine ! and it is an 
 extremely rare and perfect specimen. But you need not be 
 afraid in handling it ; if the little bit of spar does come off 
 it, or out of it, no matter. 
 
 But of course nobody else should touch it, till you give 
 them leave, and show them how. 
 
 I am sorry for poor Miss Brown, and for your not having 
 known the Doctor. He should have come here when I told 
 him. I believe he would have been alive yet, and I never 
 should have been ill. 
 
 *J. R. 
 
62 
 
 IIOETUS INGLUSUS. 
 
 I believe you know more Latin than I do, and can certainly 
 make more delightful use of it. 
 
 Your mornings’ ministry to the birds must be remembered 
 for you by the angels who paint their feathers. They will 
 all, one day, be birds of Paradise, and say, when the adverse 
 angel accuses you of being naughty to some people, ‘‘ But we 
 were hungry and she gave us corn, and took care that nobody 
 else ate it.” 
 
 I am indeed thankful you are better. But you must please 
 tell me what the thing was I said w^hich gave you so much 
 pain. Do you recollect also what the little bit in “ Proser- 
 pina ” was that said so much to you ? Were you not think- 
 ing of “Fors?” 
 
 I am very thankful for all your dear letters always — greatly 
 delighted above all with the squirrel one, and Chaucer. 
 Didn’t he love squirrels ! and don’t I wish I was a squirrel in 
 Susie’s pear-trees, instead of a hobbling disconsolate old man, 
 with no teeth to bite, much less crack, anything, and particu- 
 larly forbidden to eat nuts ! 
 
 Your precious letter, showing me you are a little better, 
 came this morning, with the exquisite feathers, one, darkef 
 and lovelier than any I have seen, but please, I still want one 
 not ill the least flattened ; all these have lost just the least 
 bit of their shell-like bending. You can so easily devise a 
 little padding to keep two strong cards or bits of wood sepa- 
 ate for one or two to lie happily in. I don’t mind giving you 
 this tease, for the throat will be better the less you remember 
 it. But for all of us, a dark sky is assuredly a poisonous 
 and depressing power, which neither surgery nor medicine 
 can resist. The difference to me between nature as she is 
 now, and as she was ten years ago, is as great as between 
 Lapland and Italy, and the total loss of comfort in morning 
 and evening sky, the most difficult to resist of all spiritual 
 hostility. 
 
houtus mcLusus. 
 
 63 
 
 TT 71 i IsiMa^, 1886 . 
 
 VVliat lovely letters you are writiuo- me ius<- now e 
 
 my not having said any pvetty things of yiu for a long 
 you know perlectly that lam sayino- them in mv 
 
 J» (lo look .t if, 1„ M oil “f 
 
 Of shells, in a shell, as if in a pot I ^ ^ ^ 
 
 and'n/^‘'“i’ youfora 1 %-day gift, with all loving May June 
 a. d December, and January wishes, such a pretry gre raS 
 
 »r:,r,ri.r;s.r”- 
 
 caf “ “* ’"f ‘ your curled up old 
 
 cat. I shall come out of curl and get frisky when the 
 
 hyacinths come out. Telegram just come from Ireknd 
 ose queen elected ; sweetly pretty, and all most happy.” 
 
 ne kLi ^2d Map, 1886. 
 
 Of course the little pyramid in crystal is a present. Win, 
 that enjoyment of Pinkerton,* you will have mn'te 
 doors interest, whatever the rain may 1 " 
 
 111110^''] you asked me what basalt was ! How 
 
 much has come out of it (written in fallino- asleeni 9 r 
 
 been out all the morning and am so sleepy. ° ^ ' 
 
 But I’ve written a nice little bit of “ Praiterit-i ” b„fo. r 
 
 Susie will like it, if nobody else. ^ ^ 
 
 „ f"joyiuS the beauty of things ’’goes ever so 
 
 much deeper than mere blindness. It is a foruf of antao-on 
 mm, and is essentially Satanic. A most strange form of 
 
 n good people ? You know ice are not good at all, are we, 
 
 vof, “iC‘% IVe sen* 
 
 you a bit enclosed with some jealous spots in. 
 
 Pinkerton on Petralogj. 
 
64 
 
 HORTUS INCLU8U8. 
 
 Last day of May. 
 
 I’m bringing to - day with the strawroots, twelve more 
 sketches in folio, and the plan is that out of those, making 
 with the rest twenty-four, you choose twelve to keep next 
 week, with the new folio of twelve to be then brought, and 
 you then put aside twelve to be given back in exchange for it ; 
 then next to next week you choose twelve out of that twenty- 
 four, and then next week twelve out of its twenty-four, and 
 then when I can’t send any more you choose the one to keep 
 out of the last lot, which you see will then be the creamiest 
 cream, not to say cheesiest cheese of the rest ! Now isn’t that 
 a nice amusing categorical, cataloquizical, catechismic, cat- 
 cataceous plan? 
 
 1th June. 
 
 You have been what Joanie calls a “ Doosie Dandy ” about 
 those dozens of sketches ! You’re always to have twenty-four 
 on hand, then those I send to-day are to stay with the twelve 
 you have, till next Monday, and you’ll have time then to 
 know which you like best to keep. Next Monday I aend 
 another twelve and take back the twelve you’ve done with. 
 
 It was very beautiful yesterday looking from here. 
 
 I’m pretty well, and writing saucy things to everybody. 
 
 I told a Cambridge man yesterday that he had been clever 
 enough to put into a shilling pamphlet all the mistakes of his 
 generation. 
 
 ^th Nomrher. 
 
 Do you know how to make sugar candy ? In my present 
 abject state the only way of amusing myself I can hit on is 
 setting the girls of the school to garden and cook ! By way 
 of beginning in cooking, I offered to pay for any quantity of 
 wasted sugar if they could produce me a crystal or two of 
 sugar candy. (On the way to twelfth cakes, you know, and 
 sugar animals. One of Francesca’s friends made her a life-size 
 Easter lamb in sugar.) The first try this morning was brought 
 me in a state of sticky jelly. 
 
JIOBTUS INGLUSUS. 
 
 65 
 
 And after sending me a recipe for candy, would you please 
 ask Harry to look at the school garden ? I’m going to get 
 the boys to keep that in order ; but if Harry would look at it 
 and order some mine gravel down for the walks, and, with Mr. 
 Brocklebank’s authority (to whom I have spoken already), 
 direct any of the boys who are willing to form a corps of little 
 gardeners, aud under Harry’s orders make the best that can be 
 made of that neglected bit of earth, I think you and I should 
 enjoy hearing of it. 
 
 Mr. Kendall is a Delphic oracle. Do you think you could 
 take sherry instead of port ? My sherry is — well, I only wish 
 Falstaff were alive to tell you what it is, or Will himself ; but 
 shall I send you a bottle? And mind you don’t mind the 
 smarting if Dr. K. gives you things to make you cry. And 
 I’ll be so good, and not make you cry for a week at least. 
 
 27^/i November^ 1886. 
 
 For once, I have a birthday stone for you, a little worth 
 your having, and a little gladsome to me in the giving. It is 
 blue like the air that you were born into, aud always live in. 
 It is as deep as gentians, and has their gleams of green in it, 
 and it is precious all through within and without, as Susie 
 herself is. Many aud many returns of all the birthdays that 
 have gone aw'ay, and crowds yet of those that never were here 
 before. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 I never heard the like, ray writing good ! and just now ! ! If 
 you only saw the wretched notes on the back of lecture leaves. 
 
 But I am so ver 3 ^ glad you think it endurable, and it is so 
 nice to be able to give you a moment’s pleasure by such a 
 thing. I’m better to-day, but still extremely languid. I be- 
 lieve that there is often something in the spring which 
 weakens one by its very tenderness ; the violets in the w^ood 
 5 
 
66 
 
 HORTUS INGLUSU8. 
 
 send one home sorrowful that one isn’t worthy to see them, or 
 else, that one isn’t one of them. 
 
 It is mere Midsummer dream in the wood to-day. 
 
 You could not possibly have sent me a more delightful pre- 
 sent than this Lychnis ; it is the kind of flower that gives me 
 pleasure and health and memory and hope and everything 
 that Alpine meadows and air can. I’m getting better gen- 
 erally, too. The sun did take one by surprise at first. 
 
 How blessedly happy Joanie and the children were yester- 
 day at the Thwaite ! I’m coming to be happy myself there 
 to-morrow (D. Y.). 
 
 Here are the two bits of study I did in Malham Cove ; the 
 small couples of leaves are different portraits of the first shoots 
 of the two geraniums. I don’t find in any botany an account 
 of their little round side leaves, or of the definite central one 
 above the branching of them. 
 
 Here’s your lovely note just come. I am very thankful that 
 “ Venice ” gives you so much pleasure. 
 
 I hamy at least, one certainty, which few authors could hold 
 so surely, that no one was ever harmed by a book of mine ; 
 they may have been offended, but have never been discouraged 
 or discomforted, still less corrupted. 
 
 There’s a saucy speech for Susie’s friend. You won’t like 
 me any more if I begin to talk like that. 
 
 The nice bread is come. May I come to tea again to- 
 morrow? 
 
 I never send my love to Miss Beever, but I do love her for 
 all that. 
 
 A sapphire is the same stone as a ruby ; both are the pure 
 earth of clay crystallized. No one knows why one is red and 
 the other blue. 
 
 A diamond is pure coal crystallized. 
 
 An opal, pure flint — in a state of fixed 
 I’ll find a Susie-book on them. 
 
 I’ll send II. Carlyle. I am so very glad you enjoy it. 
 
 I’m in a great passion with the horrid people who write 
 
U0RTU8 INCLUSUf^. 67 
 
 letters to tease my good little Susie. I ivo)it have it. She 
 sliall have some more stones to-morrow. 
 
 I must have a walk to-day, and can’t give account of them, 
 1)11 1 I’ve looked them out. It’s so very nice that you like 
 stones. If my father, when I was a little boy, would only 
 have given me stones for bread, how I should have thanked 
 liiin, but one doesn’t expect such a taste in little girls. 
 
 What infinite power and treasure you have in being able 
 thus to enjoy the least things, yet having at the same time all 
 the fastidiousness of taste and imagination which lays hold of 
 what is greatest in the least, and best in all things ! 
 
 Never hurt jmur eyes by writing ; keep them wholly for 
 admiration and wonder. I hojie to write little more myself 
 of books, and to join with you in joy over crystals and flowers 
 in the way we used to do when we were botli more children 
 than we are. 
 
 I have been rather depressed by that tragic story of the 
 codling. I hoped the thief of that apple Ijas suffered more 
 than Eve, and fallen farther than either she or Adam. 
 
 Joan liad to be out early this morning, and I won’t let her 
 write more, for it’s getting dark ; but she thinks of you and 
 loves you, and so do I, every da}^ more and more. 
 
 TO MISS BEEVER. 
 
 I am ashamed not to have sent you a word of expression 
 of my real and very deep feelings of regard and respect for 
 you, and of n\y, not fervent (in the usual phrase, which means 
 only hasty and ebullient), but serenely warm, hope that you 
 may keep your present power of benevolent happiness to 
 length of many days to come. But I hope you will some- 
 times take the simpler view of the little agate box than that 
 of birthday token, and that you will wonder sometimes at its 
 labyrinth of mineral vegetable ! I assure you there is noth- 
 ing in all my collection of agates in its way quite so perfect 
 as the little fiery forests of dotty trees in the corner of the 
 
HORTUS INCLUSUS, 
 
 G8 
 
 piece Avliich forms the bottom. I ought to have set it in 
 silver, but was always afraid to trust it to a lapidaiy. 
 
 What you say of the Greek want of violets is also very 
 interesting to me, for it is one of my little pet discoveries 
 that Homer means the blue iris by the w'ord translated 
 “ violet.” 
 
 I am utterly sorry not to come to see you and Susie before 
 leaving for town, but can’t face this bitter day. I hope and 
 solemnly propose to be back in a week. 
 
 Thursday morning. 
 
 I’m ever so much better, and the jackdaw has come. But 
 W'hy wasn’t I there to meet his pathetic desire for art knowl- 
 edge ? To think of that poor bird’s genius and love of scar- 
 let ribbons, shut up in a cage ! What it might have come 
 to! 
 
 If ever my St. George’s schools come to any perfection, 
 they shall have every one a jackdaw to give the children their 
 first lessons in arithmetic. I’m sure he could do it perfectly. 
 “ No"\v, Jacli, take two from four, and show them how many 
 are left.” “Now, Jack, if }'ou take the teaspoon out of this 
 saucer, and put it into that^ and then if you take two tea- 
 spoons out of two saucers, and put them into this, and then 
 if you take one teaspoon out of this and put it into that, 
 how many spoons are there in this, and how many in that? ” 
 — and so on. 
 
 Oh, Susie, when we do get old, you and I, won’t we have 
 nice schools for the birds first, and then for the children ? 
 
 That photograph is indeed like a visit ; how thankful I am 
 that it is still my hope to get the real visit some day 1 
 
 I was yesterday, and am always, certainly at present, very 
 unwell, and a mere trouble to my Joanies and Susies and all 
 who care for me. But I’m painting another bit of moss 
 which I think Susie will enjoy, and hope for better times. 
 
 Did you see the white cloud that stayed quiet for three 
 hours this morning over the Old Man’s summit ? It was one 
 
H0RTU8 INGLUSUS. 
 
 C9 
 
 of the few remains of the heaven one used to see. The 
 heaven one had a Father in, not a raging enemy. 
 
 I send you Eogers’ “Italy,” that is no more. I do think 
 you’ll have pleasure in it. 
 
 I’ve been made so miserable by a paj^er of Sir J. Lubbock’s 
 on flowers and insects, that I must come and whine to you. He 
 says, and really as if he knew it, that insects, chiefly bees, en- 
 tirely originate flowers ; that all scent, color, pretty form, is 
 owing to bees ; that flowers which insects don’t take care of, 
 have no scent, color, nor honey. 
 
 It seems to me that it is likelier that the flowers which 
 have no scent, color, nor honey, don’t get any attention from 
 the bees. 
 
 But the man really knows so much about it, and has tried 
 so many pretty experiments, that he makes me miserable. 
 
 So I’m afraid you’re miserable too. Write to tell me about 
 it all. 
 
 It is very lovely of you to send me so sweet a note ^^ hen I 
 have not been near 3^ou since the tenth centur^a But it is 
 all I can do to get my men and my moor looked after ; they 
 have both the instinct of doing what I don’t want, the mo- 
 ment my back’s turned ; and then there has not been light 
 enough to know a hawk from a hand-saw, or a crow from a 
 ptarmigan, or a moor from a meadow. But how much better 
 your eyes must be when you can write such lovely notes ! 
 
 I don’t understand how the strange cat came to love you 
 so quickly, after one dinner and a rest by the fire ! I slionld 
 have thought an ill-treated and outcast animal would have re- 
 garded everything as a trap, for a month at least — dined in 
 tremors, warmed itself with its back to the fire, watching the 
 door, and jumped up the chimney if you stepped on the rug. 
 
 Tlie pheasant had come from Lachin-^^-gair, with two 
 others, which I’ve been eating hot, cold, broiled, and dev- 
 illed, and with your oysters for lunch. Mattie, Diddie, and 
 Joanie have fine times of it together, they say, and that I 
 ought to be there instead of here. Do you think so ? 
 
70 
 
 nORTUS INCLUSU8. 
 
 If you only knew the good your peacock’s feathers have 
 done me, and if you could only see the clever drawing I’m 
 making, of one from the blue breast 1 You know what lovely 
 little fern or equisetum stalks of sapphire the filaments are ; 
 they beat me so, but they’re coming nice. 
 
 Joanie says she thinks you are not well; and I’m easily 
 frightened about you, because you never take any care of 
 yourself, and will not do what Mary or Joan or I bid you, 
 you naughty little thing. 
 
 You won’t even submit quietly to my publishing arrange- 
 ments, but I’m resolved to have the book (“Frondes”) re- 
 main yours altogether ; you had all the trouble with it, and it 
 will help me ever so much more than I could myself. 
 
 That is so intensely true what you say about Turner’s work 
 being like nature’s in its slowness and tenderness. I always 
 think of him as a great natural force in a human frame. 
 
 So nice all you say of .the “ Ethics ! ” And I’m a monster 
 of ingratitude, as bad as the Dragon of Wantley. Don’t like 
 Dr. Brown’s friend’s book at all. It’s neither Scotch nor 
 English, nor fish nor flesh, and it’s tiresome. 
 
 I’m in the worst humor I’ve been in this month, which is 
 saying much ; and have been writing the wickedest “ Fors ” 
 I ever wrote, which is saying more ; you will be so angry. 
 
 I’m so very glad you will mark the bits j'ou like, but are 
 there not a good many here and there that you dorit like ? — 
 I mean that sound hard or ironical. Please don’t mind 
 them. They’re partly because I never count on readers who 
 vdll really care for the prettiest things, and it gets me into a 
 bad habit of expressing contempt which is not indeed any 
 natural part of my mind. 
 
 It pleases me especially that you have read “ The Queen of 
 the Air.” As far as I know, myself, of my books, it is the 
 
HOUTUS INCLUSU8. 
 
 71 
 
 most useful and careful piece I have done. But that again — 
 did it not shock you to have a heathen goddess so much be- 
 lieved in? (I’ve believed in English ones long ago.) If you 
 can really forgive me for “ The Queen of the Air,” there are 
 all sorts of things I shall come begging you to read some day- 
 
 21 July. 
 
 I’m always looking at the Thwaite, and thinking how nice 
 it is that you are there. I think it’s a little nice, too, that i’m 
 within sight of you, for if I hadn’t broken, I don’t know how 
 many not exactly promises, but nearly, to be back at Oxford 
 by this time, I might have been dragged from Oxford to 
 London, from London to France, from France who knows 
 where? But I’m here, and settled to produce, as soon as 
 possible, the following works — 
 
 1. New number of “ Love’s Meinie,” on the Stormy Petrel. 
 
 2. New ditto of “Proserpina,” on sap, pith, and bark. 
 
 3. New ditto of “Deucalion,” on clouds. 
 
 4. New “Fors,” on new varieties of young ladies. 
 
 5. Two new numbers of “Our Fathers,” on Brunehaut, and 
 Bertha her niece, and St. Augustine and St. Benedict. 
 
 6. Index and epilogue to four Oxford lectures. 
 
 7. Keport and account of St. George’s Guild. 
 
 And I’ve had to turn everything out of every shelf in the 
 house, for mildew and moths. 
 
 And I want to paint a little bank of strawberry leaves. 
 
 And I’ve to get a year’s dead sticks out of the w’ood, and 
 see to the new oat field on the moor, and prepare lectures 
 for October ! 
 
 I‘m so idle. I look at the hills out of bed, and at the pic- 
 tures off the sofa. Let us dof/i be useless beings ; let us be 
 butterflies, grasshoppers, lambs, larks, anything for an easy life. 
 I’m quite horrified to see, now that these two have come back, 
 what a lot of books I’ve written, and how cruel I’ve been to 
 myself and everybody else who ever has to read them. I’m 
 too sleepy to finish this note. 
 
72 
 
 H0BTU8 INGLTI8US. 
 
 13^A June, 
 
 I do not know when I have received, or how I could receive, 
 so great an encouragement in all my work, as I do in hearing 
 that you, after all your long love and watchfulness of flowers, 
 have yet gained pleasure and insight from “Proserpina” as 
 to leaf structure. The examples you send me are indeed ad- 
 mirable. Can you tell me the exact name of the plant, that 
 I may quote it ? 
 
 Yes, and the weather also is a great blessing to me — so 
 lovely this morning. 
 
 I have been simply ashamed to write without being able to 
 say I was coming ; and this naughty Joanie has put us all 
 two months behindhand, and now Brant wood still seems as 
 far away as at Florence. (It never really seems far away, 
 anywhere.) 
 
 But you will like to know that I’m very well, and extremely 
 good, and writing beautiful new notes to “Modern Painters,” 
 and getting on with “Our Fathers.” And what lovely ac- 
 counts I have of “Frondes” from Allen. 
 
 I really think that one book has made all our business lively. 
 
 And I’m so delighted with the new brooch — the one !Mary 
 gave to Joan. I never saw a more lovely pearl in any queen’s 
 treasury, nor more exquisite setting. Joan and I have no 
 end of pleasure in playing with it, and I vainly try to summon 
 philosophy enough to convince either her or myself, that dew 
 is better than pearls, and moss than emeralds. 
 
 I think my da^'s of philosophy must be over. I certainly 
 shall not have enough to console me, if I don’t get to Brant- 
 wood soon. The fog here is perpetual, and I can only see, 
 and just that, where the edge of my paper is leaving me still 
 room to say how lovingly and faithfully I am 
 
 Yours, etc. 
 
 You won’t refuse to give house room or even parlor room 
 again to the first volume of your “ Stones.” It has your name 
 
HOIiTUS INCLUSUS, 
 
 73 
 
 in it, and feather sketches, which I like the memory of doing, 
 and I found another in my stores to make up the set. I have 
 to-day, regretfully, but in proud satisfaction, sent to Mr. 
 Brown’s friend, Miss Lawley. You will be thinking I’m never 
 going to write any new books more, I’ve promised so long and 
 done nothing. But No. 2 and No. 4, of “Amiens” have 
 been going on at once, and No. 3 and No. 4 of “ Love’s 
 Meinie,” and No. 7 of “ Proserpina ” had to be done in the 
 middle of all four, like the stamens in a torrnentilla. And 
 now my total tormentilla is all but out. But “ all-but ” is a 
 long, long word with my printers and me. Still, something 
 has been done every day, and not ill done, lately’- ; and Joanie 
 tells me your friends enjoyed their little visit, as I did seeing 
 them. And Joanie is well, and literally as busy as a bee, and 
 sometimes tumbles down at last on the sofa just at bedtime, 
 like the rather humbly bees in the grass when they’ve been 
 too busy. And I’m pretty well, and asking j^oung ladies to 
 come and see me. 
 
 I’m getting steadily better, and breathing the sunshine a 
 little again in soul and lips. But I always feel so naughty 
 after having had morning prayers, and that the whole house 
 is a sort of little Bethel that I’ve no business in. 
 
 I’m reading history of early saints too, for my Amiens 
 book, and feel that I ought to be scratched, or starved, or 
 boiled, or something unpleasant, and I don’t know if I’m a 
 saint or a sinner in the least, in mediaeval language. How did 
 saints feel themselves, I wonder, about their saintship ! 
 
 It is such a joy to hear that you enjoy anjdhing of mine, and 
 a double joy to have j^our sympathy in my love of those It- 
 alians. How I wish there were more like you ! What a 
 happy world it would be if a quarter of the people in it 
 cared a quarter as much as you and I do, for what is good and 
 true ! 
 
u 
 
 EOBTUS INCLU8US, 
 
 That Nativity is the deepest of all. It is by the master of 
 Botticelli, you know ; and whatever is most sweet and tender 
 in Botticelli he owes to Lippi. 
 
 But, do you know, I quite forget about Cordelia, and where 
 I said it ! please keep it till I come. I hope to be across to 
 see you to-morrow. 
 
 They’ve been doing photographs of me again, and I’m an 
 orang-outang as usual, and am in despair. I thought with 
 my beard I was beginningto be just the least bit nice to look 
 at. I would give up half my books for a new profile. 
 
 What a lovely day since twelve o’clock ! I never saw the 
 lake shore more heavenly. 
 
 I am very thankful that you like this St. Mark’s so much, 
 and do not feel as if I had lost power of mind. I think the 
 illness has told on me more in laziness than foolishness. I 
 feel as if there was as much in me as ever, but it is loo much 
 trouble to say it. And I find myself reconciled to staying in 
 bed of a morning to a quite woful extent. I have not been 
 affected so much by melancholy, being very thankful to be still 
 alive, and to be able to give pleasure to some people — foolish 
 little Joanies and Susies, and so on. 
 
 You have greatly helped me by this dear little note. And 
 the bread’s all right, brown again, and I’m ready for asparagus 
 of any stoutness, there ! Are you content ? But my new as- 
 paragus is quite visible this year, though how much would be 
 Avanted for a dish I don’t venture to count, but must be con- 
 gratulated on its definitely stalky appearance. 
 
 I was over the water this morning on school committee. 
 How bad I have been to let those poor children be torment- 
 ed as they are all this time ! I’m going to try and stop all the 
 spelling and counting and catechising, and teach them only — 
 to watch and pray. 
 
 The oranges make me think I’m in a castle in Spain ! 
 
 Your letters ahvays warm me a little, not with laughing, 
 but with the soft glow of life, for I live mostly with “la mort 
 dans Tame.” (It iscurious that the French, Avhom one thiuks 
 of as slight and frivolous, have this true and deep expression 
 for the forms of sorrow that kill, as opposed to those that 
 
nORTUS INGLU8U8. 
 
 75 
 
 discipline and strengthen.) And your words and thought just 
 soften and warm like west wind. 
 
 It is nice being able to please you with what I’m writing, 
 and that you can tell people I’m not so horrid. 
 
 Here’s the “ Fors ” you saw the proof of, but quite 
 
 right yet. 
 
 The Willy ^ quotations are very delightful. Do you know 
 that naughty “Cowley” at all? There’s all kind of honey 
 and strawberries in him. 
 
 It is bitter cold here these last days. I don’t stir out, but 
 must this afternoon. I’ve to go out to dinner and work at 
 the Arundel Society. And if you only knew what was in my 
 thoughts you would be so sorry for me, that I can’t tell you. 
 
 Corpus Ciiristi College, Oxford. 
 
 What a sad little letter ! written in that returned darkness. 
 
 How can you ever be sad, looking forward to eternal life 
 with all whom you love, and God over all. 
 
 It is only so far as I lose hold of that hoi3e, that anything 
 is ever a trial to me. But I can’t think how I’m to get on in 
 a world with no Venice in it. 
 
 You were quite right in thinking I would have nothing to 
 do with lawyers. Not one of them shall ever have so much 
 as a crooked sixpence of mine, to save him from being hanged, 
 or to save the Lakes from being filled up. But I really hope 
 there may be feeling enough in Parliament to do a right 
 thing without being deafened with lawyers’ slang. 
 
 I have never thanked you for the snowdrops. They 
 bloomed here beautifully for four days. Then I had to leave 
 them to go and lecture in London. It was nice to see them, 
 but my whole mind is set on finding whether there is a 
 country where the flowers do not fade. Else there is no 
 spring for me. People liked the lecture, and so many more 
 wanted to come than could get in, that I had to promise to 
 give another. 
 
 Sliakespeare. 
 
76 
 
 II0RTU8 INCLU8U8. 
 
 Here’s your little note, first of all. And if you only knew 
 how my wristbands are plaguing me you’d be very sorry. 
 They’re too much starched, and would come down like mit- 
 tens; and noY/ I’ve turned them ux3, they’re just like two hor- 
 rid china cups upside down, inside my coat, and I’m afraid 
 to write for fear of breaking them. And I’ve a week’s work 
 on the table, to be done before one o’clock, on pain of uproar 
 from my friends, execution from my enemies, reproach from 
 my lovers, triumph from my haters, despair of Joanie, and— 
 what from Susie ? I’ve had such a bad night, too ; woke at 
 half-past three and have done a day’s work since then — com- 
 posing my lecture for March, and thinking what’s to become 
 of a godson of mine whose — 
 
 Well, never mind. I needn’t give you the trouble, poor 
 little Susie, of thinking too. I wonder if that jackdaw story 
 will come to-day. 
 
 This must be folded up and directed all right at once, or 
 I’m sure it will never go. Love to Mary, very much, please, 
 and three times over ; I missed these two last times. 
 
 I’m going to Oxford to-day (D.V.), really quite well, and 
 rather merry. I went to the circus with my new pet, and 
 saw lovely riding and ball pla}^ ; and my pet said the onlj^ 
 drawback to it all, was that she couldn’t sit on both sides of 
 me. And then I went home to tea with her, and gave 
 mamma, who is Evangelical, a beautiful lecture on the piety 
 of dramatic entertainments, which made her laugh, whether 
 she would or no ; and then I had my Christmas dinner in 
 advance with Joanie and Arfie and Stacy Marks, and his wife 
 and two pretty daughters, and I had six kisses — two for 
 Christmas, two for New Year’s Day, and two for Twelfth 
 Night — and eveiybody ^vas in the best humor with everybody 
 else. And now my room is ankle deep in unanswered letters, 
 mostly on business, and I’m going to shovel them up and tie 
 them in a parcel labelled “Needing particular attention;” 
 and then that will be put into a cupboard in Oxford, and I 
 shall feel that everything’s been done in a business-like wa}% 
 
 That badger’s beautiful. I don’t think there’s any need 
 for such beasts as that to turn Christians. 
 
HORTUS INCLU8US. 
 
 77 
 
 I am indeed most thankful you are well again, though 
 I never looked on that deafness very seriously ; but if you 
 like hearing watches tick, and boots creak, and plates clatter, 
 so be it to you, for many and many a year to come. I think 
 I should so like to be deaf, mostly, not expected to answer 
 anybody in society, never startled by a bang, never tortured 
 by a railroad whistle, never hearing the nast}^ cicads in Italy, 
 nor a child cry, nor an owl. Nothing but a nice whisper into 
 my ear, by a pretty girl. Ah, well, I’m very glad I can chat- 
 ter to you with my weak voice, to my heart’s content ; and 
 you must come and see me soon, now. All that you say of 
 “ Proserpina ” is joyful to me. What a Susie you are, draw- 
 ing like that ! and I’m sure you know Latin better than I do. 
 
 I am better, but not right j’et. There is no fear of sore 
 throat, I think, but some of prolonged tooth worry. It is 
 more stomachic than coldic, I believe, and those tea-cakes are 
 too crisply seductive. What can it be, that subtle treachery 
 that lurks in tea-cakes, and is wholly absent in the rude 
 honesty of toast ? 
 
 The metaphysical effect of tea-cake last night was, that I 
 had a perilous and weary journey in a desert, in which I had 
 to dodge hostile tribes romid the corners of pyramids. 
 
 A very sad letter from Joanie tells me she was going to Scot- 
 land last night, at which I am not only very sorry, but very cross. 
 
 A chirping cricket on the hearth advises me to keep my 
 heart up. Foolish hedgehog, not to come for that egg. Don’t 
 let Abigail be cast down about her tea-cakes. An “honest” 
 egg is just as destructive of my j)eace of mind. 
 
 Your happy letters (with the sympathetic misery of com- 
 plaint of dark days) have cheered me as much as anything 
 could do. 
 
 The sight of one of my poor “ Companions of St. George,” 
 who has sent me, not a widow’s but a parlor-maid’s (an old 
 schoolmistress) “ all her living,” and whom I found hist 
 
78 
 
 H0BTU8 INGLUSU8. 
 
 night, dying, slowly and quietly, in a damp room, just the size 
 of your study (which her landlord won’t mend the roof of), 
 by the light of a single tallow candle — dying, I say, sloivly, of 
 consumption, not yet near the end, but contemplating it with 
 sorrow, mixed partly with fear, lest she should not have done 
 all she could for her children ! 
 
 The sight of all this and my own shameful comforts, three 
 wax candles and blazing fire and dry roof, and Susie and 
 Joanie for friends ! 
 
 Oh, me, Susie, what is to become of me in the next world, 
 who have in this life all my good things ! 
 
 What a sweet, careful, tender letter this is ! I re-enclose it 
 at once for fear of mischief, though I’ve scarcely read, for in- 
 deed my eyes are weary, but I see what gentle mind it means. 
 
 Yes, you will love and rejoice in }mur Chaucer more and 
 more. Fancy, I’ve never time, now, to look at him — obliged 
 to read even my Homer and Shakespeare at a scramble, half 
 missing the sense — the business of life disturbs one so. 
 
 Will you please thank Miss Watson for the “ Queen’s 
 Wake.” I should like to tell her about Hogg’s visit to Pleriie 
 Hill, and my dog Dash’s reception of him ; but I’m never 
 pleased with the Shepherd’s bearing to Sir W. Scott, as one 
 reads it in “Lockhart.” 
 
 There’s no fear of Susie’s notes ever being less bright as 
 long as she remains a child, and it’s a long while yet to look 
 forward to. 
 
 I had such a nice dinner all alone with Joanie, yesterday, 
 and Sarah waiting. Joanie coughed and startled me. I ac- 
 cused her of having a cold. To defend herself she si\id 
 (the mockery). Perhaps she oughtn’t to kiss me. I said, 
 “ Couldn’t Sarah * try first, and see if any harm comes of 
 
 * Our Herne Hill parlor-maid for four years. One of quite tlie 
 brightest and handsomest types of English beauty I ever saw, either in 
 life, or fancied in painting. 
 
HOBTUS INGLUSUS. 
 
 79 
 
 it?” (Sarah highly amused.) For gooduess’ sake don’t tell 
 Kate. 
 
 I’ve only a crushed bit of paper to express my crushed heart 
 upon. It’s the best ! 
 
 That you should be tliinking, designing, undermining, as 
 Mrs, Somebody says in that disgusting “Mill on the Floss,” 
 to send to Loudon for port. And my port getting crusty, 
 dusty, cobwebby, and generally like its master, just because 
 it's no use to nobody. I don’t drink it ; Joan don’t ; Arfie’s 
 always stuck up with his claret and French vinegaret things 
 (gave him all his rheumatism, I say); and now here’s my 
 Susie sending to London, and passing me b}" and my sorrow- 
 ful bin. I didn’t think she’d have bin and done it. Even 
 the Alpine plants of which I hear, as darlings, don’t at pres- 
 ent console me. 
 
 Just you try such a trick again, that’s all ! 
 
 Herne Hill. 
 
 Here’s your letter first thing in the morning, while I’m 
 sipping my coffee in the midst of such confusion as I’ve not 
 
 T e 
 
 often achieved at my best. The little room, which I think is 
 as nearly as possible the size of your study, but with a lower 
 roof, has to begin with — A, my bed ; B, my basin stand ; C, 
 my table ; D, my chest of drawers ; thus arranged in relation 
 to E, the window (which has still its dark bars to prevent 
 the little boy getting out ) ; F, the fireplace ; G, the golden 
 
80 
 
 HORTUS INGLUSUS. 
 
 or mineralogical cupboard ; and H, the grand entrance. 
 The two dots with a back represent my chair, which is prop- 
 erly solid and not im-easy. Three others of lighter disposi- 
 sion find place somewhere about. These, with the chimney- 
 piece and drawer’s head, are covered, or rather heaped, with 
 all they can carry, and the morning is just looking in, aston- 
 ished to see what is expected of it, and smiling — (yes, I may 
 fairly say it is smiling, for it is cloudless for its part above 
 the smoke of the horizon line) — at Sarah’s hope and mine, of 
 ever getting that room into order by twelve o’clock. The 
 chimney-piece with its bottles, spoons, lozenge boxes, matches, 
 candlesticks, and letters jammed behind them, does appear 
 to me entirely hopeless, and this the more because Sarah, 
 when I tell her to take a bottle away that has a mixture in it 
 which I don’t like, looks me full in the face, and says “ she 
 won’t, because I may want it.” I submit, because it is so nice 
 to get Sarah to look one full in the face. She really is the 
 prettiest, round-faced, and round-eyed girl I ever saw, and 
 it’s a great shame she should be a housemaid ; only I wish 
 she would take those bottles away. She says I’m looking- 
 better to-da}% and I think I’m feeling a little bit more — no, I 
 mean, a little bit less — demoniacal. But I still can do that 
 jackdaw beautifully. 
 
 I am quite sure you would have felt like Albert Diirer, had 
 you gone on painting wrens. 
 
 The way Nature and Heaven waste the gifts and souls they 
 give and make, passes all wonder. You might have done 
 anything you chose, only you were too modest. 
 
 No, I never will call you my dear lady ; certainly, if it 
 comes to that, something too dreadful will follow. 
 
 That is so very nice, isn’t it, about the poor invalid and 
 “ Frondes.” It is terrible that doctors should say such things, 
 but on the whole, when they feel them strongly they should 
 
H0RTU8 IjYCLUSUS. 
 
 81 
 
 speak, else it would be impossible for them to give trust- 
 worthy comfort and healing hope. 
 
 I wish that peacock of yours would teach me to brush my 
 hair before I come to dinner, for I am, though 
 
 Ever your loving 
 
 J. R, 
 
 not fit to be seen lately, with fighting midges in my hair. 
 
 I am most interested in your criticism of “ Queen Mary.’* 
 I have not read it, but the choice of subject is entirely morbid 
 and wrong, and I am sure all you say must be true. The 
 form of decline which always comes on mental power of 
 Tennyson’s passionately sensual character, is alwa3^s of seeing 
 ugly things, a kind of delirium tremens. Turner had it fa- 
 tally in his last years. 
 
 I am so glad you enjoy writing to me more than anyone else. 
 The book you sent me of Dr. John Brown’s on books, has 
 been of extreme utility to me, and contains matter of the deep- 
 est interest. Did you read it yourself? If not, I must lend it 
 to you. 
 
 I am so glad also to know of your happiness in Chaucer. 
 Don’t hurry in reading. I will get you an edition for your 
 own, that you may mark it in peace. 
 
 I send you two books, neither I fear very amusing, but on 
 my word, I think books are always dull when one really most 
 wants them. No, other people don’t feel it as you and I do, 
 nor do the dogs and ponies, but oughtn’t we to be thankful 
 that we do feel it. The thing I fancy we are both wanting in, 
 is a right power of enjoying the past. What sunshine there 
 has been even in this sad year ! I have seen beauty enough 
 in one afternoon, not a fortnight ago, to last me for a year if 
 I could rejoice in memory. 
 
 But I believe things are a little better at Seascale. Arfies’ 
 gone off there, but I have a painter friend, Mr. Goodwin, com- 
 ing to keep me company, and I’m a little content in this worst 
 of rainy days, in hopes there may be now some clearing for him. 
 
 Our little kittens pass the days of their youth up against 
 
82 
 
 HORTUS INGLU8U8. 
 
 the wall at the back of the house, where the heat of the oven 
 comes through. What an existence ! and yet with all my in- 
 door advantages 
 
 I am your sorrowful and repining 
 
 J. R 
 
 I am entirely grateful for ^’’our letter, and for all the sweet 
 feelings expressed in it, and am entirely reverent of the sor- 
 row which you feel at my speaking thus. If only all were like 
 you. But the chief sins and evils of the day are caused by the 
 Pharisees, exactly as in the time of Christ, and “ they make 
 broad their phylacteries ” in the same way, the Bible supersti- 
 tiously read, becoming the authority for every error and heresy 
 and cruelty. To make its readers understand that the God of 
 their own day is as living, and as able to speak to them 
 directly as ever in the days of Isaiah and St. John, and that 
 He would now send messages to His Seven Churches, if the 
 Churches would hear, needs stronger words than any I have 
 yet dared to use, against the idolatry of the historical record 
 of His messages loug ago, perverted by men’s forgetfulness, 
 and confused bj^ mischance and misapprehension ; and if in- 
 stead of the Latin form Scripture ” we put always “writing” 
 instead of “ written ”or “ write ” in one place, and “ Script- 
 ure,” as if it meant our English Bible, in another, it would 
 make such a difference to our natural and easy understanding 
 the range of texts. 
 
 The peacock’s feathers are marvellous. I am very glad 
 to see them. I never had any of their downy ones before. 
 My compliments to the bird, upon them, please. 
 
 I have had a tiring forenoon in the house with dark air, 
 and must go out ; and poor Susie will not only scarce find a 
 turned leaf, but an empty line in the unturned one. 
 
 But children always like to have letters about anything. 
 
 I found a strawberry growing just to please itself, as red as 
 a ruby, high up on Yewdale crag yesterday, in a little corner 
 of rock all its own ; so I left it to enjoy itself. It seemed as 
 happy as a lamb, and no more meant to be eaten. 
 
H0RTU8 IN0LU8US. 
 
 83 
 
 Yes, those are all sweetest bits from Chaucer (the pine new 
 to me) ; 3 'our own copy is being bound. And all the Kich- 
 ai-J — but you must not copy out the Richard bits, for I like 
 (dl my Richard alike from beginning to end. Yes, my “ seed 
 pearl ” bit is pretty, I admit ; it was like the thing. The 
 cascades here, I’m afraid, come down more like seed oatmeal. 
 
 Now it’s very naughty of you, Susie, to think everybody 
 else would have ate that strawberry. Mr. Severn and Mr. 
 Patmore were both with me ; and when I said, “ Noav, I don’t 
 believe three other people could be found who would let that 
 jilone,” Mr. Patmore was quite shocked, and said, “I’m quite 
 sure nobody but you would have thought of eating it ! ” 
 
 Ever your loving, gormandising (Patmore knows me!) 
 
 J. R. 
 
 Actually I’ve never thanked you for that exquisite cheese. 
 The mere look of it puts one in heart like a fresh field. I 
 ] lever tasted anything so perfect in its purity of cream nature. 
 The Chaucer bits, next to the cheese, are delicious, too. 
 
 About the railroad circular, I knew and know nothing but 
 that I signed my irame. They may have printed said circular 
 perhaps. 
 
 At all events, most thankful should I be to anyone who 
 would help in such cause. I’m at work on a piece of moss 
 again, far better, 1 hope likely to be, than the one you saw. 
 
 I believe in my hasty answ^er to your first kind letter I 
 never iroticed what }’Ou said about Aristophanes. If you will 
 indeed send me some notes of the passages that interest you 
 in the “ Birds,” it will not only be very pleasant to me, but 
 quite seriously useful, for the “Birds ’’have always been to 
 me so mysterious in that comedy, that I have never got the 
 good of it which I know is to be had. The careful study of 
 
HOBTUS INCLU8U8. 
 
 S± 
 
 it, i3ufc off from day to day, was likely enough to fall into the 
 great region of my despair, unless you had chanced thus to 
 remind me of it. 
 
 Please, if another chance of good to me come in your way, 
 in another brown spotty-purple peacock’s feather, will you yet 
 send it to me, and I will be always your most grateful and 
 faithful J. P- 
 
 Hekne Kill. 
 
 It is so very sweet and good of you to write such lovely 
 play letters to Joanie and me ; they delight and comfort us 
 more than I can tell you. 
 
 What translation of Aristophanes is that ? I must get it. 
 I’ve lost I can’t tell you how much knowledge and power 
 through false pride in refusing to read translations, though I 
 couldn’t read the original without more trouble and time than 
 I could spare ; nevertheless, you must not think this Eng- 
 lish gives you a true idea of the original. The English is 
 much more “ English ” in its temper than its words. Aris- 
 tophanes is far more drj^ severe, and concentrated ; his words 
 are fewer, and have fuller flavor ; this English is to him 
 what currant jelly is to currants. But it’s immensely useful to 
 me. Yes, that is very sweet about the kissing. I have done 
 it to rocks often, seldom to flowers, not being sure that 
 they would like it. 
 
 I recollect giving a very reverent little kiss to a young sap- 
 ling that was behaving beautifully in an awkward chink, be- 
 tween two great big ones that were ill-treating it. Poor me 
 (I’m old enough, I hope, to write grammar my own, way), my 
 own little self, meantime, never by any chance got a kiss 
 when I wanted it — and the better I behaved, the less chance 
 I had, it seemed. 
 
 I never thought the large packet was from you ; it was 
 thrown aside with the rest till evening, and only opened then 
 by chance. I was greatly grieved to find what I had thus left 
 unacknowledged. The drawings are entirely beautiful and 
 
HORTUS INCLU8US, 
 
 85 
 
 wonderful, but, like all the good work done in those b}^gone days 
 (Donovan’s own book being of inestimable excellence in this 
 kind), they affect me with profound melancholy in the thought 
 of the loss to the entire body of the nation of all this perfect 
 artistic capacity, and sweet will, for want of acknowledgment, 
 system, and direction. I must write a careful passage on this 
 matter in my new Elements of Drawing. Your drawings 
 have been sent me not by you, but by my mistress Fors, for a 
 text. It is no wonder, when you can draw like this, that you 
 care so much for all lovely nature. But I shall be ashamed to 
 show you my peacock’s feather ; I’ve sent it, however. 
 
 What a naughty child you are to pick out all that was use- 
 less and leave all that’s practical and useful for Frondes ! ” 
 You ought to have pounced on all the best bits on drawing 
 from nature ! 
 
 It is very sweet of you to give me jmur book, but I accept 
 it at once most thankfully. It is the best type I can show of 
 the perfect wmrk of an English lad}’’ in her own simple peace 
 of enjoyment and natural gift of truth, in her sight and in 
 her mind. And many pretty things are in my mind and heart 
 about it, if my hands were not too cold to shape words for 
 them. The book shall be kept with my Bewicks ; it is in no- 
 wise inferior to them in fineness of w^ork. The finished proof 
 of next “ Proserpina ” will, I think, be sent me by Saturday’s 
 post. Much more is done, but this number was hindered by 
 the revisal of the Dean of Christ Church, which puts me at 
 rest about mistakes in my Greek. 
 
 It is a great joy to me that you like the Wordsworth bits ; 
 there are worse coming (unless Diddie, perhaps, begs them 
 off) ; but I’ve been put into a dreadful passion by tw^o of my 
 cleverest girl pupils “ going off pious ! ” It’s exactly like a 
 nice pear getting “ sleepy ; ” and I’m pretty nearly in the 
 worst temper I can be in, for W. W. But what are these 
 blessed feathers ? Everything that’s best of grass and clouds 
 
86 
 
 HOETUS INGLU8U8. 
 
 and cbrysoprase. What incomparable little creature wears 
 such things, or lets fall ? The “ fringe of flame ” is Carlyle’s, 
 not mine, but we feel so much alike, that you may often mis- 
 take one for the other now. 
 
 You cannot in the least tell what a help 3^011 are to me, in 
 caring so much for my things and seeing what I try to do in 
 them. You are quite one of a thousand for sjmipathy with 
 everybody, and one of the ten times ten thousand, for special 
 sympathy with my own feelings and tries. Yes, that second 
 column is rather nicely touched, though I say it, for hands 
 and eyes of sixty-two ; but when once the wind stops I hope 
 to do a bit of primrosey ground that will be richer. 
 
 Here, not I, but a thing with a dozen of colds in its head, 
 am I 
 
 I caught one cold on Wednesday last, another on Thursday, 
 two on Friday, four on Saturday, and one at every station 
 between this and Ingleborough on Monda}\ I never was in 
 such ignoble misery of cold. I’ve no cough to speak of, nor 
 anything worse than usual in the way of sneezing, but my 
 hands are cold, my pulse nowhere, my nose tickles and wrings 
 me, my ears sing — like kettles, my mouth has no taste, my 
 heart no hope of ever being good for anything, any more. I 
 never passed such a wretched morning by my own fireside in 
 all my days, and I’ve quite a fiendish pleasure in telling you 
 all this, and thinking hov^ miserable you’ll be too. Oh, me, 
 if I ever get to feel like myself again, won’t I take care of 
 myself. 
 
 Seven of the eleven colds are better, but the other four are 
 worse, and they were the worst before, and I’m such a wreck 
 and rag and lump of dust being made mud of, that I’m 
 ashamed to let the maids bring me my dinner. 
 
 Your contemptible, miserable, beyond pitiable, past deplor- 
 able J. E. 
 
IIORTUS INCLU8U8. 
 
 87 
 
 The little book is very lovely, all of it that is your oimi. 
 The reiigiou of it you know is, anybody's, what my poor 
 little Susie was told when she was a year or two younger than 
 she is now. 
 
 What we should all try to do, is to find out something 
 certain about God, for ourselves. 
 
 The feathers nearly made me fly away from all my Psalters 
 and Exoduses, to you, and my dear peacocks. I wonder, 
 when Solomon got his ivory and apes and peacocks, whether 
 he ever had time to look at them. He couldn’t always be 
 ordering children to be chopped in two. Alas, I suppose his 
 wisdom, in England of to-day, would have been taxed to find 
 out which mother lied in saying which child ivasnt hers ! 
 
 But you ivill like my psalter, I’m sure. Diddie wouldn’t 
 copy the wickedest bits, so I was obliged to leave them out ! 
 
 Oh, dear, I feel so wicked to-day, I could even tease you, 
 by telling you Joanie was better, and how it came to pass. I 
 mustn’t say more, but that I love you ever so much, and am 
 ever, etc. 
 
 I began this note especially to tell you how delighted I was 
 with your idea of the flower show ; how good it will be for 
 the people, and how nice for you ! 
 
 I’ve been writing to Miss R again, and Miss L.’s quite right 
 to stay at home. “ She thinks I have an eagle’s eye.” Well, 
 what else should I have, in day time ? together wnth my 
 cat’s e}"e in the dark ? But you. ma}'’ tell her I should be 
 very sorry if my eyes were no better than eagles’ ! “Both 
 the eagle know what is in the pit ? ” I do. 
 
 I’m only going away for Sunday, coming back on the Mon- 
 da}^, and going to stay for a v<^eek longer. Mr. MacD. has 
 begun a pretty drawing of the study (and really depends on 
 my assistant criticism) ; and Diddie, I think, will enjoy her 
 dinner with you to-morrow better than if I had gone for 
 
88 
 
 EORTUS INGLUSUS. 
 
 good and all ; and I think I shall enjoy my Sunday at Shef- 
 field, if I had gone for evil and all. I’ve turned the page 
 to say I’m rather pleased with that trans-mutation (what a 
 stupid thing of me to divide tliat stupid word) of “ for good 
 and all,” mockingest of common phrases, even if one were go- 
 ing away for a honeymoon it would only be for better or 
 worse— or stay, perhaps it means for good and all ehe. One 
 uses it too without the all — “for good,” meaning that noth- 
 ing that isn’t good can be eternal. I am puzzled ; but I be- 
 lieve I’m coming back for good anyhow. And, there now, 
 I’ve to turn the page once more, and, I was going to say 
 something stupid about good-by, a word that makes me 
 shudder from head to foot. 
 
 I’ve found another stone for you, lapis lazuli, which never 
 fades, and is heaven color to all time. 
 
 That you may not make a complete infidel of yourself with 
 those insidious “Arabian Nights,” or a complete philosopher 
 of yourself, which would be unbecoming at your age, with 
 the “ Council of Friends ” I send you a Western book of a 
 character at once prosaic, graceful, and simple, which will dis- 
 enchant and refresh you at once. I will find a second volume 
 before you have finished the first, and meanwhile you must 
 come and choose the next book that is to be, out of my lib- 
 rary, which you never condescend to look at when you’re 
 here. 
 
 By hook or by crook, by swans and cygnets, by Carj^accio 
 and the Queen of Sheba, I’ll come to see you, please, to-da}'. 
 
 I’m really not quite so bad all over, }'et ; and I’ve written 
 things lately with much in them that will comfort you for 
 me, though I can’t quite comfort myself. And I’ll come 
 often to be lectured ; and I’m not reading novels just now, 
 but only birds and beasts. 
 
 I want to know the names of all your five cats ; they were 
 all at the door yesterday, and I should have made six, but 
 they ran away. 
 
 I send two of Miss Kate’s books for Mary and you to keep 
 
IIORTUS INCLUSUS. 
 
 89 
 
 aa long as you choose. Miss Arnold is coming to-morrow, 
 ]jut I ho^^e to get to the Thwaite at half-past twelve. Only 
 my morning goes just now like the Hash of a Christmas 
 cracker. 
 
 I’m better ; I trust you are ! It is a day at last ; and the 
 flov/ers are all off their heads for joy. I’ve been writing 
 some pretty things too, and thinking naughty ones, as I do 
 Avhen I’m pretty well. 
 
 But I’ve lost my voice and can’t sing them 1 
 
 Yes, of course keep that book, any time you like ; but I 
 think you’ll find most of it unreadable. If you do get 
 through it, you’ll have to tell me all about it, you know, for 
 Fve never read a word of it except just the j)lums here and 
 there. 
 
 Publishers are brutes, and always spoil one’s books, and 
 then say it’s our fault if they don’t sell ! 
 
 Yes, that is a lovely description of a picture. All the same 
 I believe the picture itself was merely modern sensationalism. 
 
 They can’t do without death nowadays, not because they 
 want to know how to die, but because they’re too stupid to 
 live. 
 
 I hope you will be comforted in any feeling of languor or 
 depression in yourself by hearing that I also am wholly lack 
 lustrous, df^pressed, oppressed, co?7zpressed, and r/o^ortpressed, 
 by a quite countless pressgang of despondencies, humilities, 
 remorses, shamefacednesses, all overnesses, all undernesses, 
 sicknesses, dulnesses, darknesses, sulkinesses, and everything 
 that rhymes to lessness and distress, and that I’m sure you 
 and I are at present the mere targets of the darts of the — , 
 etc., etc., and Mattie’s waiting and mustn’t be loaded with 
 more sorrow ; but I can’t tell you how sorry I am to break my 
 promise to-day, but it would not be safe for me to come. 
 
90 
 
 H0RTU8 INGLU8U8. 
 
 I’ll look at the dial to-night. What a cruel thing of you to 
 make me “ look upon it ! ” I’m not gone to Venice yet, hut 
 thinking of it hourly. I’m very nearly done with toasting my 
 bishop; he just wants another turn or two, and then a littlo 
 butter. 
 
 I’m a little better, but can’t laugh much yet, and won’t cry 
 if I can help it. Yet it always makes me nearly cry, to hear 
 of those poor working-men trying to express themselves and 
 nobody ever teaching them, nor anybody in all England, 
 knowing that painting is an art, and sculpture also, and that 
 an untaught man can no more carve or paint than play tho 
 fiddle. All efforts of the kind mean simply that we have 
 neither master nor scholars in any rank or any place. And 
 I, also, what have / done for Conistou schools }'et ? I don’t 
 deserve an oyster shell, far less an oyster. 
 
 Kiuby Lonsdale, 
 
 Thumday evening. 
 
 You won’t get this note to-morrow. I’m afraid, but after 
 that I think they will be regular till I reach Oxford. It is very 
 nice to know that there is someone who does care for a letter, 
 as if she were one’s sister. You would be glad to see the 
 clouds break for me ; and I had indeed a very lovely morning 
 drive and still lovelier evening, and full moonrise here over 
 the Lune. 
 
 I suppose it is Kirk-by -Lime’s Dale ? for the church, I find, 
 is a very important Norman rdic. By the way, I should tell 
 you that the colored plates in the “ Stones of Venice ” do 
 great injustice to my drawings ; the patches are worn on the 
 stones. My drawings were not good, but the plates are total 
 failures. The only one even of the engravings which is 
 rightly done is the {last, I think, in Appendix) inlaid dove and 
 raven. I’ll show you the drawing for that when I come back, 
 and perhaps for the San Michele, if I recollect to fetch it from 
 Oxford, and I’ll fetch you the second volume, which has 
 really good plates. That blue beginning, I forgot to say, is of 
 
U OUT US INCLUSUS. 
 
 91 
 
 the Straits of Messina, and it is really very like the color of 
 the sea. 
 
 That is intensely curious about the parasitical plant of 
 Borneo. But — very dreadful ! 
 
 You are like Timon of Athens, and I’m like one of his par- 
 asites. The oranges are delicious, the brown bread dainty ; 
 what the melon is goiiig to be I have no imagination to tell. 
 But, oh me, I had such a lovely letter from Dr. John, sent 
 me from Joan this morning, and I’ve lost it. It said, “Is 
 Susie as good as iier letters? If so, she must be better. 
 What freshness of enjoyment in everything she says ! ” 
 
 Alas ! not in everything she feels in this weather, I fear. 
 Was ever anything so awful ? 
 
 Do you know, Susie, everything that has happened to me 
 (and the leaf I sent you this morning may show you it has 
 had some hurting in it) is little in comparison to the crushing 
 and depressing eli’ect on me of what I learn day by day as I 
 work on, of the cruelty and ghastliness of the nature I used to 
 think so Divine? But I get out of it by remembering, This 
 is but a crumb of dust we call the “world,” and a moment of 
 eternity which we call “ time.” Can’t answer the great ques- 
 tion to-night. 
 
 I can only thank you for telling me ; and say, Praised be 
 God for giving him back to us. 
 
 Worldly people say “Thank God” when they get what 
 they "want ; as if it amused God to plague them, and was a 
 vast piece of self-denial on His part to give tliem what they 
 liked. But I, who am a simple person, thank God when He 
 hurts me, because I don’t think He likes it any more than I 
 do ; but I can’t Him, because — I don’t understand 
 
 why — I can only praise what’s pretty and pleasant, like get- 
 ting back our doctor. 
 
92 
 
 H0RTU8 INGLUSUS. 
 
 2&th November. 
 
 And to-morrow I’m not to be there ; and I’ve no present 
 for you, and I am so sorry for both of us ; but oh, my dear 
 little Susie, the good people all say this wretched makeshift 
 of a world is coming to an end next year, and you and I and 
 everybody who likes birds and roses are to have new birth- 
 days and presents of such sugar plums. Crystals of candied 
 cloud and manna in sticks with no ends, all the w'a}^ to the 
 sun, and white stones ; and new names in them, and heaven 
 knows what besides. 
 
 It sounds all too good to be true ; but the good people are pos- 
 itive of it, and so’s the great Pyramid, and the Book of Daniel, 
 and the “Bible of Amiens.” You can’t possibly believe in any 
 more promises of mine, I know, but if I do come to see j'ou this 
 day week, don’t think it’s a ghost ; and believe at least that ’we 
 all love you and rejoice in your birthday wherever we are. 
 
 I’m so thankful you’re better. 
 
 Beading my old diary, I came on a sentence of yours last 
 year about the clouds being all “ trimmed with swansdown,” 
 so prett}\ ( I copied it out of a letter.) The thoughts of you 
 alTvays trim me with swansdown. 
 
 I never got your note written yesterday ; meant at least to 
 do it even after post time, but was too stupid, and am infi- 
 nitely so to-day also. Only I must pray you to tell Sarah we 
 all had elder wine to finish our evening with, and I mulled it 
 myself, and poured it out from the saucepan into the expect- 
 ants’ glasses, and everybody asked for more ; and I slept like 
 a dormouse. But, as I said, I am so stupid this morning 
 
 that . Well, there’s no “that ” able to say how stupid I 
 
 am, unless the fly that wouldn’t keep out of the candle last 
 night ; and he had some notion of bliss to be found in candles, 
 and I’ve no notion of anything. 
 
 The blue sky is so wonderful to-day, and the woods after 
 the rain so delicious for walking in, that I must still delay 
 
HORTUS INGLU8US. 
 
 93 
 
 any school talk one day more. Meantime I’ve sent you a 
 book which is in a nice large print, and may in some parts 
 interest you. I got it that I might be able to see Scott’s 
 material for “ Peveril ; ” and it seems to me that he might 
 have made more of the real attack on Latham House than of 
 the fictitious one on Front de Boeuf’s castle, had he been so 
 minded, but perhaps he felt himself hampered by too much 
 known fact. 
 
 I’ve just finished and sent off the index to “Deucalion,” 
 first volume, and didn’t feel inclined for more schooling to- 
 day. 
 
 I’ve just had a charming message from Martha Gale, under 
 the address of “ that old duckling.” Isn’t that nice? Ethel 
 was coming to see you to-day, but I’ve confiscated her for the 
 woodcock, and she shan’t come to-morrow, for I want you all 
 to myself ; only it isn’t her fault. 
 
 But you gave my present before, a month ago, and I’ve 
 been presenting myself with all sorts of things ever since ; 
 and now it’s not half gone. I’m very thankful for this, how- 
 ever, just now, for St. George, Vv^ho is cramped in his career, 
 and I’ll accept it, if you like, for him. Meantime I’ve sent it 
 to the bank, and hold him your debtor. I’ve had the most 
 delicious gift besides I ever had in my life — the Patriarch 
 of Venice’s blessing written with his own hand, with his por- 
 trait. 
 
 I’ll bring you this to see to-morrow, and a fresh Turner. 
 
 I have forbidden Joanie’s going out to-day, for she got a 
 little chill in the wind last night, and looked pale and defaite 
 in the evening ; she’s all right again, but I can’t risk her out, 
 though she was much minded to come, and I am sure you 
 and Mary will say I am right. She will be delighted and re- 
 freshed by seeing the young ladies ; and the Turners look 
 grand in the gray light. 
 
94 
 
 H0BTU8 INGLU8U8. 
 
 So I have told Baxter to bring up a fly from the Water- 
 head, and to secure your guests on their way here, and put up 
 to bring them so far back. I shall also send back by it a 
 purple bit of Venice, which pleases me, though the mount’s 
 too large and spoils it a little ; but you will be gracious to i*t. 
 
 What delicious asparagus and brown bread I’ve been hav- 
 ing !!!!!!!! I should like to write as many notes of ad- 
 miration as there are waves on the lake ; the octave must do. 
 I’ve been writing a pretty bit of chant for Byron’s heroic 
 measure. Joan must play it to you when she next comes. 
 I’m mighty well, and rather mischievous. 
 
 The weather has grievously depressed me this last week, 
 and I have not been fit to speak to anybody. I had much in- 
 terruption in the early part of it, though, from a pleasant 
 visitor ; and I have not been able to look rightly at your pretty 
 little book. Nevertheless, I’m quite sure your strength is in 
 private letter writing, and that a curious kind of shyness pre- 
 vents your doing yourself justice in print. You might also 
 surely have found a more pregnant motto about birds’ nests I 
 Am not I cross ? But these gray skies are mere poison to 
 my thoughts, and I have been writing such letters that I don’t 
 think many of my friends are likely to speak to me again. 
 
 I think you must have been spinning the sunbeams into 
 gold to be able to scatter gifts like this. 
 
 It is your own light of the eyes that has made the woodland 
 leaves so golden brown. 
 
 Well, I have just opened a St. George account at the Conis- 
 ton Bank, and this will make me grandly miserly and careful. 
 
 I am very thankful for it. 
 
 Also for Harry’s saying of me that I am gentle ! I’ve been 
 quarrelling with so many people lately I had forgotten all 
 grace, till you brought it back yesterday and made me still 
 your gentle, etc. 
 
SUSIE’S LETTEES. 
 
SUSIE’S LETTERS, 
 
 The following Letters and the little notes on Birds are in- 
 Bcvted here by the express wish of Mr. Buskin. I had it in 
 my mind to pay Susie some extremely fine compliments about 
 these Letters and Notes, and to compare her method of ob- 
 servation with Thoreau’s, and, above all, to tell some very 
 pretty stories showing her St. Francis-like sympathy with, 
 and gentle power over, all living creatures ; but Susie 
 that she is already far too prominent, and we hope that the^ 
 readers of “ Hortus ” will see for themselves how she rever- 
 ences and cherishes all noble life, with a special tenderness, I 
 think, for furred and feathered creatures. To all outcast and 
 hungry things the Thwaite is a veritable Bethlehem, or House 
 of Bread, and to her, their sweet “Madonna Nourrice,” no 
 less than to her Teacher, the sparrows and linnets that crowd 
 its thresholds are in a very particular sense “Sons of God.” 
 
 A. F. 
 
 April Uth, 1874. 
 
 I sent off such a long letter to you yesterday, my dear 
 friend. Did you think of your own quotation from Homer, 
 when you told me that field of yours was full of violets? But 
 •where are the four fountains of ivhite water? — through a 
 meadow full of violets and parsley ? How delicious Calypso’s 
 fire of finely chopped cedar ! How shall I thank you for 
 allowing me, Susie the little, to distil 3’’our writings ? Such a 
 jo}" and comfort to me- — fori shall need much very soon now. 
 I do so thank and love you for it ; I am sure I may say so to 
 you. I rejoice again and again that I have such a friend. 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 HORTUS INGLUSU8, 
 
 May I never love him less, never prove unworthy of his friend- 
 ship ! How I wanted my letter, and now it has come, and I 
 have told our Dr. John of your safe progress so far. I trust 
 you will be kept safe from everything that might injure you 
 in any way. 
 
 The snow has melted away, and this is a really sweet April 
 day and ought to be enjoyed — if only Susie could. But both 
 she and her dear friend must strive with their grief. When 
 I was a girl — (I was once) — I used to delight in Pope’s 
 Homer. I do believe I rather enjoyed the killing and slaying, 
 specially the splitting down the chine! But wlien I tried to 
 read it again not very long ago, I got tired of this kind of 
 thing. If you had only translated Homer ! then I should 
 have had a feast. When a schoolgirl, going each day with 
 my bag of books into Manchester, I used to like Don 
 Quixote and Sir Charles Grandison with my milk porridge. 
 . ihust send you only this short letter to-day. I can see your 
 aolet field from this window. How sweetly the little limpid 
 stream would tinhle to-day ; and how the primroses are sitting 
 listening to it and the little birds sipping it ! I have come to 
 the conclusion that bees go more by sight than by scent. As 
 I stand by my peacock with his gloriously gorgeous tail all 
 spread out, a bee comes right at it (very vulgar, but expres- 
 sive) ; and I have an Alpine Primula on this window-stone 
 brightly in flower, and a bee came and alighted, but went 
 away again at once, not finding the expected honey. I won- 
 der what you do the livelong day, for I know you and idle- 
 ness are not acquaintances. I am so sorry your favorite 
 places are spoiled. But dear Brantwood will grow prettier 
 and prettier under your care. 
 
 April ^th. 
 
 I have just been pleased by seeing a blackbird enjoying, 
 with schoolboy appetite, portions of a moistened crust of 
 bread which I threw out for him and his fellow-creatures. 
 How he dug Avith his orange bill ! — even more orange than 
 usual perhaps at this season of the year. At length the 
 
HORTUS INCLUSU8. 
 
 99 
 
 robins have built a nest in the ivy in our yard — a very secure 
 and sheltered place, and a very convenient distance from the 
 crumb market. Like the old woman, he sings with a merry 
 devotion, and she thinks there never was such music, as she 
 sits upon her eggs ; he comes again and again, with every little 
 dainty that his limited income allows, and she thinks it all the 
 sweeter because /le brings it to her. Now and then she leaves 
 her nest to stretch her wings, and to shake off the dust 
 of care, and to prevent her pretty ankles being cramped. But 
 she knows her duty too well to remain absent long from her 
 precious eggs. 
 
 Now another little note from Dr. John, and he actually 
 begins, “My dear ‘Susie,’” — and ends, “Let me hear from 
 you soon. Ever yours affectionately.” Also he says, “It is 
 very kind in you to let me get at once close to j^ou.” The 
 rest of his short letter (like you, he was busy) is nearly all 
 about you, so of course it is interesting to me, and he hopes 
 you are already getting good from the change, and I indulge 
 the same hope. 
 
 IWi April. 
 
 Brantwood looked so very nice this morning decorated by 
 the coming into leaf of the larches. I wish you could have 
 seen them in the distance as I did : the early sunshine had 
 glanced upon them lighting up one side, and leaving the other 
 in softest shade, and the tender green contrasted with the 
 deep browns, and grab's stood out in a wonderful way, and the 
 trees looked like spirits of the wood, which you might think 
 would melt away like the White Lady of Avenel. 
 
 Dear sweet April still looks coldly upon us — the month you 
 love so dearly. Little white lambs are in the fields now, and 
 so much that is sweet is coming ; but there is a shadow over 
 this house now ; and, also, my dear kind friend is far away. 
 The horse-chestnuts have thrown away the winter coverings 
 of their buds, and given them to that dear economical mother 
 earth, who makes such good use of everything, and works up 
 old materials again in a wonderful way, and is delightfully 
 unlike most economists — the very soul of generous liberality. 
 
100 
 
 H0UTU8 INGLUSUS. 
 
 Now some of your own words, so powerful as they are — you 
 are speaking of the Alp and of the “ Great Builder ” — of your 
 own transientness, as of the grass upon its sides ; and in this 
 very sadness, a sense of strange companionship with past 
 generations, in seeing what they saw. They have ceased to 
 look upon it, you will soon cease to look also ; and the granite 
 wall will be for others, etc., etc. 
 
 My dear friend, was there ever anyone so pathetic as you ? 
 And you have the power of bringing things before one, both 
 to the eye and to the mind : you do indeed paint wdth your 
 pen. Now I have a photograph of you — not a very satisfactory 
 one, but still I am glad to have it, rather than none. It was 
 done at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Were you in search of something 
 of Bewick’s ? 
 
 I have just given the squirrel his little loaf (so you see I 
 am a lady),* he has bounded away with it, full of joy and 
 gladness. I wish that this were my case and yours, for what- 
 ever we may wish for, that we have not. We have a variety 
 and abundance of loaves. I have asked Dr. J. Brown whether 
 he would like photographs of your house and the picturesque 
 breakwater. I do so wish that you and he and I did not suffer 
 so much, but could be at least moderately happy. I am sure 
 you w^ould be glad if you knew, even in this time of sorrow, 
 when all seems stale, flat, unprofitable, the pleasure and 
 interest I have had in reading your Vol. 3 [“Modern 
 Painters”]. I study your character in your writings, and I 
 find so much to elevate, to love, to admire — a sort of educa- 
 tion for my poor old self — and oh ! such beauty of thought 
 and word. 
 
 Even yet my birds want so much bread ; I do believe the 
 worms are sealed up in the dry earth, and they have many 
 little mouths to fill just now — and there is one old blackbird 
 whose devotion to his wife and children is lovely. I should 
 like him never to die, he is one of my heroes. And now a dog 
 
 * See Fors Clavigera, Letter XLV. 
 
HORTuS INCLUSUS. 
 
 101 
 
 which calls upon me sometimes at the window, and I point 
 kitchenward and the creature knows what I mean, and goes 
 and gets a good meal. So if I can only make a dog happy 
 (as you do, only you take yours to live with you, and I cannot 
 do that) it is a pleasant thing. I do so like to make things 
 happier, and I should like to put bunches of hay in the fields 
 for the poor horses, for there is very scant supply of grass, and 
 too many for the supply. 
 
 May. 
 
 I cannot longer refrain from writing to yon, m3' dear kind 
 friend, so often are 3'ou in my thoughts. Dearest Joanie has 
 told you, I doubt not, and I know how sorry 3'ou are, and how 
 truly you are feeling for your poor Susie. So hnoioiny that, I 
 will say no more about my sorrow. There is no need for 
 w'ords. I am wishing, oh, so much, to know how you are : 
 quite safe and well, I hope, and able to have much real enjoy- 
 ment in the many beautiful things by which 3'ou are sur- 
 rounded. May you la}^ up a great stock of good health and 
 receive much good in many ways, and then return to those 
 who so much miss you, and by whom 3'ou are so greatly be- 
 loved. 
 
 Coniston would go into your heart if you could see it now 
 — so very lovelj', the oak trees so early, nearl}' in leaf alread}*. 
 Your beloved blue hyacinths will soon be out, and the cuckoo 
 has come, but it is long since Susie has been out. She only 
 stands at an open window, but she must try next week to go 
 into the garden ; and she is finding a real pleasure in making 
 extracts from 3’our writings foi' you,oiten w'ondering ‘‘will 
 he let that remain ? ” and hoping that he will. 
 
 Do 3'ou ever send home orders about your Brantwood ? I 
 have been wishing so much that your gardener might be told 
 to mix quantities of old mortar and soil together, and to fill 
 many crevices in your new walls w’ith it ; then the breezes 
 W'ill bring fern seeds and plant them, or rather sow them in 
 such fashion as no human being can do. When time and the 
 showers brought by the west wind have mellowed it a little, 
 
102 
 
 H0HTU8 INCLUSU8. 
 
 tlie tiny beginnings of mosses will be there. The sooner this 
 can be done the better. Do not think Susie presumptuous. 
 
 We have hot sun and a very cool air, which I do not at ail 
 like. 
 
 I hope your visit to Palermo and your lady have been all 
 that you could wish. Please do write to me ; it would do me 
 so much good and so greatly refresh me. 
 
 This poor little letter is scarcely worth sending, only it says 
 that I am your loving Susie. 
 
 \A.th May, 
 
 My deaeest Fkiend, — Your letter yesterday did me so much 
 good, and though I answered it at once yet here I am again. 
 A kind woman from the other side has sent me the loveliest 
 group of drooping and very tender ferns, soft as of some vel- 
 vet belonging to the fairies, and of the most exquisite green, 
 and primroses, and a slender-stalked white flower, and so ar- 
 ranged that they continually remind me of that enchanting 
 group of yours in Vol. 3, which you said I might cut out. 
 What would you have thought of me if I had ? Oh, that you 
 would and could sketch this group — or even that your eye 
 could rest upon it! Now you will laugh if I ask you whether 
 harpies ever increase in number ? or whether they are only 
 the “ old original.” They quite torment me when I open the 
 window, and blow chaff at me. I suppose at this moment 
 dearest Joanie is steaming away to Liverpool ; one always 
 wants to know now Vv^hether people accomplish a journey 
 safely. When the blackbirds come for soaked bread, they 
 generally eat a nice little lot themselves, before carrying any 
 away from the window for their little ones ; but Bobbie, “ our 
 little English Eobin,” has just been twice, took none for him- 
 self, but carries beak-load after beak-load for his speckled in- 
 fants. How curious the universal love of bread is ; so many 
 things like and eat it — even flies, and snails I 
 
 You know you inserted a letter from Jersey about fish I* 
 
 * See Fors Clavigera, Letter XXX. 
 
HOJRTUS INGLU8U8. 
 
 103 
 
 A lady there tells me that formerly 3'ou might have a bucket 
 of oysters for sixpence, and that now you can scarcely get 
 anything but such coarse kinds of fish as are not liked ; and 
 she has a sister, a sad invalid, to whom fish would be a very 
 pleasant and wholesome change. This is really a sad state of 
 things, and here the railways seem very likely to carry away 
 our butter, and it is now such a price, quite ex[h]orbitant. 
 Why did I put an /i in ? Is it to prove the truth of what you 
 say, that ladies do not spell well ? A letter which I once 
 wrote when a girl was a wonderful specimen of bad spelling. 
 
 15^/i May. 
 
 I have found such lovely passages in Vol. 1 this morning 
 that I am delighted, and have begun to copy one of them. 
 You do float in such beautiful things sometimes that you 
 make me feel I don’t know how ! 
 
 How I thank you for ever having written them, for though 
 late in the day, they were written for me, and have at length 
 reached me ! 
 
 You are so candid about your age that I shall tell 3^011 
 mine ! I am astonished to find m^^self sixty-eight — veiy near 
 the Psalmist’s threescore and ten. Much illness and much 
 sorrow, and then I woke up to find myself old, and as if I had 
 lost a great part of my life. Let us hope it was not all lost. 
 
 I think you can understand me when I say that I have a 
 great fund of love, and no one to spend it upon, because 
 there are not any to whom I could give it fully, and I love 
 m3' pets so dearly, but I dare not and cannot enjoy it fulty 
 because — they die, or get injured, and then my misery is in- 
 tense. I feel as if I could tell you much, because your sym- 
 pathy is so refined and so tender and true. Cannot I be a 
 a sort of second mother to you ? I am sure the first one was 
 often praying for blessings for you, and in this, at least, I re- 
 semble her. 
 
 Am I tiresome writing all this? It just came, and 3'ou 
 said I was to write v/hat did. We have had some nice rain, 
 but followed not by warmth, but a cruel east wind. 
 
104 
 
 HOBTUS IN0LU8U8. 
 
 ABOUT WBENS. 
 
 This year I have seen wrens’ nests in three different kinds 
 of places— one built in the angle of a doorway, one under a 
 bank, and a third hear the top of a raspberry bush ; this last 
 was so large that when our gardener first saw it, he thought 
 it w^as a swarm of bees. It seems a pleasure to this active 
 bird to build ; he will begin to build several nests sometimes 
 before he completes one for Jenny Wren to lay her eggs and 
 make her nursery. Think how busy both he and Jenny are 
 when the sixteen young ones come out of their shells — little 
 helpless gaping things wanting feeding in their turns the live- 
 long summer day ! What hundreds and thousands of small 
 insects they devour ! They catch flies with good-sized wings. 
 I have seen a parent wren with its beak so full that the wings 
 stood out at each side like the whiskers of a cat. 
 
 Once in America, in the month of June, a mower hung up 
 his coat under a shed near a barn ; two or three days passed 
 before he had occasion to put it on again. Thrusting his arm 
 up the sleeve he found it completely filled with something, 
 and on pulling out the mass he found it to be the nest of a 
 wren, completely finished and lined with feathers. What a 
 pity that all the labor of the little pair had been in vain ! 
 Great was the distress of the birds, who vehemently and 
 angrily scolded him for destroying their house ; happily it 
 was an empty one, without either eggs or young birds. 
 
 HISTORY OF A BLACKBIRD. 
 
 We had had one of those summer storms which so injure 
 the beautiful flowers and the young leaves of the trees. A 
 blackbird’s nest wdth young ones in it was blown out of the 
 ivy on the wall, and the little ones, with the exception of one, 
 were killed 1 The poor little bird did not escape without a 
 wound upon his head, and when he was brought to me it did 
 not seem very likely that I should ever be able to rear him ; 
 
HORTUS INGLU8U8. 
 
 105 
 
 but I could not refuse to take in the little helpless stranger, 
 so I put him into a covered basket for a while. 
 
 I soon found that I had undertaken what was no easy task, 
 for he required feeding so early in a morning that I was 
 obliged to take him and his bread crumbs into my bed-room, 
 and jump up to feed him as soon as he began to chirp, which 
 he did in very good time. 
 
 Then in the daytime I did not dare to have him in the sit- 
 ting-room with me, because my sleek favorites, the cats, 
 would soon have devoured him, so I carried him up into an 
 attic, and as he required feeding very often in the day, you 
 may imagine that I had quite enough of exercise in running- 
 up and down stairs. 
 
 But I was not going to neglect the helpless thing after 
 once undertaking to nurse him, and I had the pleasure of 
 seeing him thrive well upon his diet of dry-bread crumbs and 
 a little scrap of raw meat occasionally ; this last delicacy, you 
 know, was a sort of imitation of worms ! 
 
 Very soon my birdie knew my step, and though he never 
 exactly said so, I am sure he thought it had “music in’t,” for 
 as soon as I touched the handle of the door he set up a shriek 
 of joy ! 
 
 “The bird that we nurse is the bird that we love,” and I 
 soon loved Dick. And the love was not all on one side, for 
 my bonnie bird would sit upon my finger uttering complacent 
 little chirps, and when I sang to him in a low voice he would 
 gently peck my hair. 
 
 As he grew on and wanted to use his limbs, I put him into 
 a large wicker bonnet-basket, having taken out the lining ; it 
 made him a large, cheerful, airy cage. Of course I had a 
 perch put across it, and he had plenty of white sand and a 
 pan of water ; sometimes I set his bath on the floor of the 
 room, and he delighted in bathing until he looked half- 
 drowned ; then what shaking of his feathers, what preening 
 and arranging there was ! And how happy and clean and 
 comfortable he looked when his toilet was completed ! 
 
 You may be sure that I took him some of the first ripe 
 currants and strawberries, for blackbirds like fruit, and so 
 
106 
 
 HOBTUS INGLU8U8. 
 
 do boys ! When he was fledged I let him out in the room, 
 and so he could exercise his wings. It is a curious fact that 
 if I went up to him with my bonnet on he did not know me 
 at all, but was in a state of great alarm. 
 
 Blackbirds are wild birds, and do not bear being kept in a 
 cage, not even so well as some other birds do ; and as this 
 bird grew up he was not so tame, and was rather restless. I 
 knew that, though I loved him so much, I ought not to keep 
 him shut up against his will. He was carried down into the 
 garden while the raspberries were ripe, and allowed to fly 
 away ; and I have never seen him since. Do you wonder 
 that my eyes filled with tears when he left? 
 
m MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 STUDIES OF MOUNTAIN FORM 
 AND OF ITS VISIBLE CAUSES. 
 
 COLLECTED AND COMPLETED OUT OP 
 
 “MODERN PAINTERS.” 
 
I 
 
 1 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I RECEIVE at present with increasing frequency requests or 
 counsels from people whose wishes and advice I respect, for 
 the reprinting of “ Modern Painters.” When I formerly stated 
 my determination not to republish that work in its original 
 form, it was always with the purpose of giving its scientihc 
 sections with farther illustration in “Deucalion ” and “Proser- 
 pina,” and extracts from those relating to art and education in 
 my Oxford Lectures. But finding, usually, for these last, 
 subjects more immediately interesting ; and seeing that Deu- 
 calion and Proserpina have quite enough to do in their own 
 way — for the time they have any chance of doing it in — I am 
 indeed minded now to reprint the three scientific sections 
 of “ Modern Painters ” in their original terms, which, very 
 thankfully I find, cannot much be bettered, for Avhat they 
 intend or attempt. The scientific portions, divided prospec- 
 tively, in the first volume, into four sections, w^ere meant to 
 define the essential forms of sky, earth, w^ater, and vegetation ; 
 but finding that I had not the mathematical knowledge re- 
 quired for the analysis of wave-action, the chapters on Sea- 
 painting were never finished, the materials for them being* 
 partly used in the “Harbors of England,” and the rest of the 
 design remitted till I could learn more dynamics. But it 
 was never abandoned, and the corrections already given in 
 “ Deucalion ” of the errors of Agassiz and Tyndall on the 
 glacier theory are based on studies of wave-motion v hich I 
 hope still to complete the detail of in that work. 
 
 My reprints from “ Modern Painters ” will therefore fall 
 only into three divisions, on the origin of form in clouds, 
 mountains, and trees. They will be given in the pages and 
 
110 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 type now chosen for my Oxford Lectures ; and the two lect- 
 ures on existing Storm-cloud already published will form a 
 proper introduction to the cloud-studies of former times, of 
 which the first number is already in the press. In like 
 manner, the following paper, prepared to be read before the 
 Mineralogical Society on the occasion of their meeting in Ed- 
 inburgh, this year, and proposing, in brief abstract, the ques- 
 tions which are at the root of rock-science, may not unfitly 
 introduce the chapters of geological inquiry, begun at the 
 foot of the Matterhorn thirty years ago, inquiries which were 
 the proper sequel of those instituted by Saussure, and from 
 which the fury of investigation in extinct zoology has since so 
 far diverted the attention of mineralogists, that I have been 
 virtually left to pursue them alone ; not -without some re- 
 sults, for which, fortified as they are by the recent advance 
 of rock-chemistry, I might claim, did I care to claim, the 
 dignity of Discoveries. For the separate enumeration of 
 these, the reader is referred to the postscript to the opening- 
 paper. 
 
 The original wood-cuts will all be used in this edition, but 
 in order not to add to the expense of the republished text, I 
 have thought it best that such of the steel plates as are still 
 in a state to give fair impressions, should be printed and 
 bound apart ; purchasable either collectively or in separate 
 parts, illustrative of the three several sections of text. These 
 Avill be advertised when ready. 
 
 The text of the old book, as in the already ■ reprinted 
 second volume, will be in nothing changed, and only occa- 
 sionallj^ explained or amplified by notes in brackets. 
 
 It is also probable that a volume especially devoted to the 
 subject of Education may be composed of passages gathered 
 out of the entire series of my works; and since the parts of 
 “ Modern Painters ” bearing on the principles of art will be 
 incorporated in the school lectures connected with my duty at 
 Oxford, whatever is worth preservation in the whole book 
 will be thus placed at the command of the public. 
 
 Brantwood, 
 
 \^th Reptemher^ 1884. 
 
IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 OF THE DISTINCTIONS OF FORM IN SILICA, 
 
 {Read before the Mineralogical Society^ July 24, 1884.) 
 
 As this paper, by the courtesy of the secretaries, stands 
 first on the list of those to be read at the meeting, I avail my- 
 self of the privilege thus granted me of congratulating the 
 Society on this occasion of its meeting in the capital of a 
 country which is’itself one magnificent mineralogical speci- 
 men, reaching from Cheviot to Cape Wrath ; thus gathering 
 into the most convenient compass, and presenting in the 
 most instructive forms, examples of nearly every mineralogi- 
 cal process and phenomenon which have taken place in the 
 construction of the world. 
 
 May I be permitted, also, to felicitate myself, on the per- 
 mission thus given me, to bring before the Mineralogical So- 
 ciety a question which, in Edinburgh, of all cities of the 
 world, it should be easiest to solve, namely, the methods of 
 the construction and painting of a Scotch pebble ? 
 
 I am the more happy in this unexpected privilege, because, 
 though an old member of the Geological Society, my geolog- 
 ical observations have always been as completely ignored by 
 that Society, as my remarks on political economy by the 
 Directors of the Bank of England ; and although I have re- 
 peatedly solicited from them the charity of their assistance in 
 so small a matter as the explanation of an agate stone on the 
 forefinger of an alderman, they still, as I stated the case in 
 
112 
 
 JiT M0NTIBU8 8 AN OTIS, 
 
 closing my first volume of Deucalion,” discourse on the ca- 
 tastrophes of chaos, and the processes of creation, without 
 being able to tell why a slate splits, or how a pebble is col- 
 ored. 
 
 Pebble — or crystal ; here in Scotland the main questions 
 respecting these two main forms of silica are put to us, wnth 
 a close solicitude, by the beautiful conditions of agate, and 
 the glowing colors of the Cairngorm, which have always varie- 
 gated and illuminated the favorite jewelry of Scottish laird 
 and lassie. 
 
 May I hope, with especial reference to the 
 
 “ favorite gem 
 
 Of Scotland’s mountain diadem,” 
 
 to prevail on some Scottish mineralogist to take up the 
 hitherto totally neglected subject of the relation of color in 
 minerals to their state of substance : why, for instance, large 
 and well-developed quartz crystals are frequently topaz 
 color or smoke color, — never rose-color ; while massive quartz 
 may be rose-color, and pure white or gray, but never smoke 
 color; — again, why amethyst quartz may continually, as at 
 Schemnitz and other places, be infinitely complex and multi- 
 plex in crystallization, but never warped ; while smoky quartz 
 may be continually found warped, but never, in the amethys- 
 tine way, multiplex ; — why, again, smoky quartz and Cairn- 
 gorm are continually found in short crystals, but never in 
 long slender ones, — as, to take instance in another mineral, 
 white beryl is usually short or even tabular, and green beryl 
 long, almost in proportion to its purity ? 
 
 And, for the better solution, or at least proposition, of the 
 many questions, such as these, hitherto undealt with by 
 science, might I also hope that the efforts of the Mineralogi- 
 cal Society may be directed, among other quite feasible ob- 
 jects not yet attained, to the formation of a museum of what 
 might be called mineral-geology, showing examples of all 
 familiar minerals in association with their native rocks, on a 
 sufficiently large and intelligible scale. There may be, per- 
 haps, by this time, in the museum of Edinburgh, — but there 
 
IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 113 
 
 is not in the British Museum, nor have I ever myself seen, — 
 either a specimen of pure Cairngorm in the gangue, or a 
 block of trap containing agates of really high quality, whether 
 from Scotland, Germany, or India. 
 
 Knowing the value of time to the meeting, I leave this, to 
 my thinking, deeply important subject of the encouragement 
 of geognostic mineralogy, to their own farther consideration ; 
 and pass to a point of terminology which is of extreme sig- 
 nificance in the study of siliceous minerals, namely, the de- 
 sirableness, and I should myself even say the necessity, of 
 substituting the term “ spheroidal ” for “ reniform” in minera- 
 logical description. Eveiy so-called “ kidney-shaped ’’mineral 
 is an aggregate of spheroidal crystallizations, and it would be 
 just as rational and elegant to call sea-foam kidney-shaped, as 
 to call chalcedony so. The word “ Botryoidal ” is yet more 
 objectionable, because it is wholly untrue. There are many 
 minerals that resemble kidneys ; but there is no substance 
 in the whole mineral kingdom that resembles a bunch of 
 grapes. The pisolitic aggregations which a careless observer 
 might think grape-like, are only like grape-shoi, and lie in 
 heaps, not clusters. 
 
 But the change I would propose is not a matter of mere 
 accuracy or elegance in description. For w'ant of observing 
 that the segmental surfaces of so-called reniform and botryoi- 
 dal minerals are spheroidal, the really crystalline structure 
 producing that external form has been overlooked, and, in con- 
 sequence, minerals have been continually described either as 
 amorphous, or as mixtures of different substances, which are 
 neither formless nor mingled, but are absolutely defined in 
 structure, and absolutely homogeneous in substance. 
 
 There are at least six states of siliceous substance which are 
 thus entirely distinct, — flint, jasper, chalcedony, hyalite, opal, 
 and quartz. They are only liable to be confused with each 
 other in bad specimens ; each has its own special and separate 
 character, and needs peculiar circumstances for its production 
 and development. The careful history of the forms of these 
 six minerals, and the careful collection of the facts respecting 
 the mode of their occurrence, would require a volume as large 
 8 
 
114 
 
 m M0NTIBU8 8ANGTI8. 
 
 as any that are usually issued by way of complete systems of 
 miueralogy. Whereas, sufficient account is usually supposed 
 to be rendered of them in a few sentences, and, moreover, 
 every sentence of these concise abstracts usually contains, or 
 implies, an unchallenged fallacy. 
 
 I take, for example, from the account of “ chalcedonic vari- 
 eties of quartz ” given in Dana’s octavo of 456 close-printed 
 pages (Trubner, 1879), — the entire account occupies no more 
 than a page and three lines, — the following sentences : 
 
 “ Chalcedony oftens occurs lining or filling cavities in amyg- 
 daloidal rocks, and sometimes in other kinds. These cavities 
 are nothing but little caverns, into which siliceous waters 
 have filtrated at some period. The stalactites are ‘ icicles ’ of 
 chalcedony, hung from the roof of the cavity. 
 
 “ Agate, a variegated chalcedony. The colors are distrib- 
 uted in clouds, spots, or concentric lines. These lines take 
 straight, circular, or zigzag forms, and when the last, it is 
 called fortification agate, so named from the resemblance to 
 the angular outlines of a fortification. These lines are the 
 edges of layers of chalcedony, and these layers are successive 
 deposits during the process of its formation. 
 
 “ Mocha stone, or moss agate, is a brownish agate, consist- 
 ing of chalcedony with dentritic or moss-like delineations, of 
 an opaque j^ello wish-brown color.” 
 
 Now, with respect to the first of these statements, it is true 
 that cavities in amygdaloidal rocks are nothing but little cav- 
 erns, just as caverns in any rocks are nothing but large cavi- 
 ties. But the rocks are called “ amygdaloidal,” because their 
 cavities are in the shape of almonds, and there must be a 
 reason for this almond shape, which will bear on the struct- 
 ure of their contents. It is also true that in the rocks of Ice- 
 land there are cavities lined with stalactites of chalcedony". 
 But I believe no member of this Society has ever seen a cavity 
 in Scotch trap lined with stalactites of chalcedony ; nor a 
 Scotch pebble which gave the slightest evidence of the direc- 
 tion of its infiltration. 
 
 The second sentence is still more misleading, for in no 
 sense is it true that agate is a variegated chalcedony.” It is 
 
IN MONTIBUS 8ANGTI8. 
 
 115 
 
 chalcedony separated into bands of various consistence, and 
 associated with parallel bands of jasper and quartz. And 
 whether these bands are successive deposits during the pro- 
 cess of formation or not, must be questionable until we pro- 
 duce the resemblance of an agate by a similar operation, 
 which I would very earnestly request some of the members 
 of the Mineralogical Society to do, before allowing’ state- 
 ments of this positive kind to be made on the subject in pop- 
 ular text-books. 
 
 The third sentence confounds Mocha stone with moss 
 agate, they being entirely different minerals. The delinea- 
 tions in Mocha stone are dendritic, and produced by mechan- 
 ical dissemination of metallic oxides, easily imitable by drop- 
 ping earthy colors into paste. But moss agates are of two 
 kinds, brown and green, the one really like moss, the other 
 filiform and like seaweed ; and neither of them is at present 
 explicable or imitable. 
 
 The inaccuracy of the statements thus made in so elaborate 
 a work on mineralogy as Dana’s, may, I think, justify me in 
 asking the attention of the Mineralogical Society to tbe dis- 
 tinctions in the forms of silica which they will find illustrated 
 by the chosen examples from my own collection, placed on 
 the table for their inspection. I place, first, side by side, 
 No. 1, the rudest, and No. 7, the most delicate, conditions of 
 pure chalcedony ; the first, coarsely spheroidal, and associ- 
 ated with common flint ; the second, filiform, its threads and 
 rods combining into plates, — each rod, on close examination, 
 being seen to consist of associated spheroidal concretions. 
 
 Next to these I place No. 2, a common small-globed chal- 
 cedony formed on the common quartzite of South England, 
 wuth opaque concentric zones developing themselves subse- 
 quentl}^ over its translucent masses. I have not the slightest 
 idea how any of these three specimens can have been formed, 
 and simply lay them before the Society in hope of receiving 
 some elucidatory suggestions about them. 
 
 My ignorance need not have remained so abject, had my 
 other work left me leisure to follow out the deeply interest- 
 ing experiments instituted by Mr. E. A. Pankhurst and Mr. 
 
116 
 
 IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 J. I’Anson, of which the first results, being indeed the begin- 
 ning of the true history of silica, were published by those 
 gentlemen in the Mlnei'alogical Magazine for 1882. I have 
 laid their paper, kindly then communicated to me, on the 
 table, for immediate comparison of its plates with the speci- 
 mens, and I have arranged the first two groups of these, 
 adopting from that paper the terms exogenous and endogen- 
 ous, for the two great families of agates, so as to illustrate 
 the principal statements made in its pages. 
 
 It would materially facilitate the pursuit of their discov- 
 eries if some of the members ^of the Society would register 
 and describe the successive phenomena of crystallization in 
 any easily soluble or fusible minerals. The history of a min- 
 eral is not given by ascertainment of the number or the an- 
 gles of the planes of its crystals, but by ascertaining* the 
 manner in which those crystals originate, increase, and asso- 
 ciate. The ordinary mineralogist is content to tell us that 
 gold, silver, and diamond are all cubic ; — it is for the miner- 
 alogist of the future to say why gold associates its countless 
 cubes into arborescent laminse, and silver into capillary 
 wreaths ; while diamond condemns its every octahedron to 
 monastic life, and never, except by accident, permits one of 
 them to crystallize beside another. 
 
 At pages 5 and 6 of Mr. J. I’Anson’s paper wdll be found 
 explanations, more or less complete, of the forms which I 
 have called folded “ agates ” aud “lake” agates, reaching to 
 No. 40. The specimens from 40 to 60 then illustrate the 
 conditions of siliceous action which I am still alone among 
 modern mineralogists in my mode of interpreting. 
 
 The minor points of debate concerning them are stated in 
 the descriptions of each in the catalogue ; but there are some 
 examples among them from which branch lines of observa- 
 tion leading far beyond the history of siliceous pebbles. To 
 these I venture here to direct your special attention. 
 
 No. 3 is a fragment of black flint on which blue chalcedony 
 is deposited as a film extending itself in circles, exactlj’’ like 
 the growth of some lichens. I have never seen this form of 
 chalcedony solidify from circles into globes, and it is evident 
 
IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 117 
 
 that; for this condition we must use the term “ cycloidal,” in- 
 ste.'id of “ spheroidal.” I need not point out that “ reniform ” 
 would be here entirely absurd. 
 
 This apparently common specimen (and, as far as regards 
 frequency of occurrence, indeed common enough) is never- 
 theless one of the most profoundly instructive of the whole 
 series. It is, to begin with, a perfect type of the finest possi- 
 ble flint, properly so called. Its surface, eminently charac- 
 teristic of the forms of flint-concretioa, is literally a white 
 dust of organic fragments, while the narrow fissure which has 
 opened in it, apparently owing to the contraction of its mass, 
 is besprinkled and studded, as closely, with what might not 
 unfitly be called pearl-chalcedony, or seed-chalcedony, or 
 hail-chalcedony ; for seen through the lens it exactl}^ resem- 
 bles the grains of minute hail, sticking together as they melt ; 
 in places, forming very solid crests — in others, and esj)ecially 
 in the rifted fissure, stalactites, possibly more or less vertical 
 to the plane in which the flint lay. 
 
 In No. 5 the separation into concentric films is a condition 
 peculiar to flint-chalcedony, and never found in true agates. 
 
 In No. G (chalcedon}'’ in stalactitic coats, on amethyst) the 
 variation of the stalactites in direction, and their modes of 
 agglutination, are alike unintelligible. 
 
 No. 8 is only an ordinary specimen of chalcedony on 
 haematite, in short, closely combined vertical stalactites, each 
 with a central stalactite of black iron-oxide ; but it is to be 
 observed, in comparing it with No. 6, that when chalcedony 
 is thus formed on rods of heematite, the stalactites are almost 
 unexceptionally vertical, and quite straight. The radiate 
 ridge at one side of this example is, however, entirely anoma- 
 lous. 
 
 No. 9. The succeeding specimen, though small, is a notable 
 one, consisting of extremely minute and delicate shells or 
 crusts of spheroidal hsematite, establishing themselves in the 
 heart of Cjuartz. I have no idea of the method, or successions 
 in time, of this process. These I leave to the consideration 
 of the Society, but I point to the specimen as exquisitely ex- 
 liibiting the laws of true spheroidal crystallization, in a min- 
 
118 
 
 IN MONT I BUS SANCTIS. 
 
 eral wliicli both in its massive and crystalline state is continu- 
 ally associated with quartz. And it cannot but be felt that 
 this spheroidal structure of hsematite could as little be ex- 
 plained by calling or supposing it a mixture of micaceous 
 hsematite with amorphous hmmatite, as that of chalcedony b}" 
 calling it a mixture of hexagonal with amorphous quartz. 
 
 No. 10. Next follows a beautiful and perfectly character- 
 istic example of massively spheroidal agate, in which first 
 gray and then white chalcedony, peculiarly waved and faulted 
 by a tendency to become quartz, surrounds earthy centres, 
 and is externally coated with pure quartz. And here I must 
 ask the Society to ratify for me the general law, that in all 
 solid globular or stalactitic conditions of chalcedony, if any 
 foreign substance occurs mixed with them, it is thrown to 
 their centres, while the pure quartz is always found on the 
 outside.^ On the other hand, the usual condition of geodes 
 of chalcedony found in the cavities of rocks, is to purify 
 themselves toward the interior, and either coat themselves 
 with quartz on the interior surface, or entirely till the central 
 cavity with quartz. 
 
 No. 46 is a most literally amygdaloidal — almond-shaped — 
 mass of silica ; only, not poured into an almond-shaped cav- 
 ity in basalt, but gathered into a knot out of Jurassic lime- 
 stone, as flint is out of chalk. 
 
 It is, however, banded quite otherwise than flint, the bands 
 giving occasion to its form, and composed of different sub- 
 stances. Whereas those of flint are of the flint itself in dif- 
 ferent states, and always independent of external form. 
 
 Secondly. It seems to me a question of considerable inter- 
 est, why the coarse substance of flint and of this dull horn- 
 stone can be stained with black, but not chalcedony, nor 
 quartz. The blackest so-called quartz is only a clear umber, 
 and opaque quartz is never so stained at all. Natural black 
 onyx is of extreme rarity, the onyx of commerce being arti- 
 iicialty stained ; the black band in the lake agate. No. 32, is 
 
 * It is to be noticed, also tliat often in stalactitic or tnbnlar concre* 
 tions the purest chalcedony immediately surrounds the centre. 
 
IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS, 
 
 119 
 
 probably bitumiDous. And in connection with this part of 
 the inquiry, it seems to be the peculiar duty of the mineralo- 
 gist to explain the gradual darkening of the limestones tow- 
 ard the central metamorphic chains. 
 
 Thirdly, and principally. This stone gives us an example 
 of waved or contorted strata which are unquestionably pro- 
 duced by concretion and partial crystallization, not compres- 
 sion, or any kind of violence. I shall take occasion, in con- 
 cluding, to insist farther on the extreme importance of this 
 character. 
 
 The specimen was found by my good publisher, Mr. Allen, 
 on the southern slope of the Saleve ; and it is extremely de- 
 sirable that geologists in Savoy should obtain and describe 
 more pebbles of the same sort, this one being, as far as my 
 knowledge goes, hitherto unique. 
 
 71-77. These seven examples of opal have been chosen 
 merely to illustrate farther the modes of siliceous solution 
 and segregation, not with that of illustrating opal itself, — 
 every one of the seven examples presenting phenomena more 
 or less unusual. The two larger blocks, 71, 72 (Australian), 
 give examples in one or two places of obscurely nodular and 
 hollow concretion, before unknown in opal, but of which a 
 wonderful specimen, partly with a vitreous superficial glaze, 
 has been sent me by Mr. Henry Yvillett, of Arnold House, 
 Brighton, a most accurate investigator of the history of silica. 
 It is to be carefully noted, however, that the moment the 
 opal shows a tendency to nodular concretion, its colors 
 vanish. 
 
 No. 73 is sent only as an example of the normal state of 
 Australian opal, disseminated in a rock of which it seems 
 partly to have opened for itself the shapeless spaces it fills. 
 In No. 71, it may be observed, there is a tendency in them to 
 become tabular. No. 74, an apparently once fluent state of 
 opal in veins, shows in perfection the arrangement in straight 
 zones transverse to the vein, which I pointed out in my earl- 
 iest papers on silica as a constant distinctive character in 
 opal-crystallization. No. 75 is the only example I ever saw 
 of stellar crystallization in opal. No, 76, from the same 
 
120 
 
 IN MONT I BUS SANCTIS. 
 
 locality, is like a lake agate associated with a brecciate con- 
 dition of the g-angue ; while No. 77, though small, will be 
 found an extremely interesting example of hydrophane. The 
 blue bloom seen in some lights on it, when dry, as opposed 
 to the somewhat vulgar vivacity of its colors when wet, is a 
 perfect example of the opal’s faculty of selecting for its lustre 
 the most lovely combinations of the separated rays. A 
 diamond, or a piece of fissured quartz, reflects indiscrimin- 
 ately all the colors of the prism ; an opal, only those which 
 are most delightful to human sight and mental association. 
 
 78-80. These three geological specimens are placed at the 
 term of the series, that the importance of the structure 
 already illustrated by No. 46 may be finally represented to 
 the Society ; No. 46 being an undulated chalcedony ; No. 78 
 an undulated jasper ; No. 79, a hornstone ; and No. 80 a fully 
 developed gneiss. 
 
 I have no hesitation in affirming, — though it is not usual 
 with me to affirm anything I have not seen, and seen close, — 
 that every one of these types of undulated structure has been 
 produced by crystallization only, and absolutely without com- 
 pression or violence. But the transition from the contorted 
 gneiss wdiicli has been formed by crystallization onh% to that 
 which has been subjected to the forces of upheaval, or of 
 lateral compression, is so gradual and so mysterious, that all 
 the chemistry and geology of modern science is hitherto at 
 fault in its explanation ; and this meeting w^ould confer a 
 memorable benefit on future observers by merely determining 
 for them the conditions of the problem. Up to a certain 
 point, however, these were determined by Saussure, from 
 whose frequent and always acutely distinct descriptions of 
 contorted rocks I select the following, because it refers to a 
 scene of which the rock structure was a subject of constant 
 interest to the painter Turner ; the ravine, namely, by which, 
 on the Italian side of the St. Gothard, the Ticino escapes 
 from the valley of Airolo. 
 
 “At a league from Faido the traveller ascends by a road 
 carried on a cornice above the Ticino, which precipitates itself 
 between the rocks with the greatest violence. I made the 
 
IN MONTIBUS HANOT IS. 
 
 121 
 
 ascent on foot, in order to examine with care the beautiful 
 rocks, worthy of all the attention of a rock-lover. The veins 
 of that granite form in many places redoubled zigzags, pre- 
 cisely like the ancient tapestries known as point of Hungary, 
 ai]d there it is impossible to say whether the veins of the 
 stone are, or are not, parallel to the beds ; while finalty I ob- 
 served several beds which in the middle of their thickness 
 appeared filled with veins in zigzag, while near their borders 
 they were arranged all in straight lines. This observation 
 proves that the zig-zags are the effect of crystallization, and 
 not that of a compression of the beds when they were in a 
 state of softness. In effect, the middle of a bed could not be 
 pushed together (‘refoule ’) unless the upper and lower parts 
 of it were pushed at the same time.” 
 
 This conclusive remark of Saussure renders debate impos- 
 sible respecting the cause of the contortions of gneiss on a 
 small scale ; and a very few experiments with clay, dough, or 
 any other ductile substance, such as those of which I have 
 figured the results in the Vlth plate of “ Deucalion,” will 
 prove, what otherwise is evident on sufficient reflection, tliat 
 minutely rhythmic undulations of beds cannot be obtained 
 by compression on a large scale. But I am myself prepared 
 to go much farther than this. During half a century of 
 various march among the Alps, I never saw the gneiss yet, 
 which I could believe to have been wrinkled by pressure, and 
 so far am I disposed to carry this denial of external force, 
 that I live in hopes of hearing the Matterhorn itself, whose 
 contorted beds I engraved thirty years ago in the fourth 
 volume of “Modern Painters ” (the book is laid on Ihe table, 
 open at the plate), pronounced by the Mineralogical Society 
 to be nothing else than a large gneissitic crystal, curiously 
 cut ! 
 
 Whether this hope be vain or not, I believe it will soon be 
 felt by the members of this Society, that an immense field of 
 observation is opened to them by recent chemistry, peculiarly 
 their own: and that mineralogy, instead of being merely the 
 servant of geology, must be utimately her guide. No move- 
 ment of rocks on a large scale can ever be explained until we 
 
122 
 
 IN M0NTIBU8 SANCTIS. 
 
 understand rightly the formation of a quartz vein, and the 
 growth, to take the most familiar of fusible minerals, of an 
 ice-crystal.* 
 
 And I would especially plead with the younger members of 
 the Society, that they should quit themselves of the idea that 
 they need large laboratories, fine microscopes, or rare min- 
 erals, for the effective pursuit of their science. A quick eye, 
 a candid mind, and an earnest heart, are all the microscopes 
 and laboratories which any of us need ; and with a little claj^ 
 sand, salt, and sugar a man may find out more of the methods 
 of geological phenomenon than ever were known to Sir 
 Charles Lyell. Of the interest and entertainment of such 
 unpretending science I hope the children of this generation 
 may know more than their fathers, and that the study of the 
 Earth, which hitherto has shown them little more than the 
 monsters of a chaotic past, may at last interpret for them the 
 beautiful work of the creative present, and lead them day by 
 day to find a loveliness, till then un thought of, in the rock, 
 and a value, till then uncounted, in the gem. 
 
 POSTSCKIPT TO CHAPTER I. 
 
 I believe that one of the causes which has prevented my writings on 
 subjects of science from obtaining the influence with the public which 
 they have accorded to those on art, though precisely the same faculties 
 of eye and mind are concerned in the analysis of natural and of picto- 
 rial forms, may have been my constant practice of teaching by question 
 rather than assertion. So far as I am able, I will henceforward mend 
 this fault as T best may ; beginning here with the assertion of the four 
 facts for which, being after long observation convinced of them, I claim 
 now, as I said in the Preface, the dignity of Discoveries. 
 
 I. That a large number of agates, and other siliceous substances, 
 hitherto supposed to be rolled pebbles in a conglomerate paste, are in 
 trutli crystalline secretions out of that paste in situ, as garnets out of 
 mica-slate. 
 
 II. That a large number of agates, hitherto supposed to be formed by 
 
 * A translation into English of Dr. Schumacher’s admirable essay, Die 
 Krystallisation des Eises, Leipzig, 1844, is extremely desirable. 
 
IN MON TIB US SANCTIS. 
 
 123 
 
 broken fragments of older agate, cemented by a gelatinous chalcedony, 
 are indeed secretions out of a siliceous fluid containing miscellaneous 
 elements, and their apparent fractures are indeed produced by the 
 same kind of tranquil division which terminates the bands in banded 
 flints, 
 
 III. That the contortions in gneiss and other metamorphic rocks, con- 
 stantly ascribed by geologists to pressure, are only modes of crytalliza- 
 tion. 
 
 And IV. That many of the faults and contortions produced on a large 
 scale in metamorphic rocks are owing to the quiet operation of similar 
 causes. 
 
 These four principles, as aforesaid, I have indeed worked out and 
 discovered for myself, not in hasty rivalry with other mineralogists, 
 but continually laying before them what evidence I had noted, and 
 praying them to carry forward the inquiry themselves. Finding they 
 would not, I liave given much time this year to the collection of the 
 data in my journals, and to the arrangement of various collections of 
 siliceous and metallic minerals, illustrating such phenomena, of which 
 the primary one is that just completed and catalogued in the British 
 Museum (Nat. Hist.), instituting there, by the permission of the Trus- 
 tees, the description of specimens by separate numbers ; the next in 
 importance is that at St. George’s Museum in Sheffield ; the third is one 
 which I presented this spring to the Museum of Kirkcudbright ; the 
 fourth that placed at St. David’s School, Reigate ; and a fifth is in 
 course of arrangement for the Mechanics’ Institute here at Coniston ; 
 the sixth, described in the preceding chapter, may probably, with some 
 modification, be placed at Edinburgh, but remains for the present at 
 Brantwood, with unchanged numbers. 
 
 The six catalogues describing these collections will enable any stu- 
 dent to follow out the history of siliceous minerals with reference to the 
 best possible cabinet examples ; but for a guide to their localities and 
 the modes of their occurrence, he will find the following extracts from 
 Pinkerton's “ Petralogy,” * more useful than anything in modern 
 books; and I am entirely happy to find that my above-claimed discov- 
 eries were all anticipated by him, and are, by his close descriptions, in 
 all points confirmed. His general term “ Glutenites,” for stones ap- 
 parently formed of cemented fragments, entirely deserves restoration 
 and future acceptance. 
 
 “The division of glutenites into bricias and pudding-stones, the 
 former consisting of angular fragments, the latter of round or oval peb- 
 
 * Two vols. 8vo, Cochrane dr Co., Fleet Street, 1811. A quite invaluable 
 book for clearness of description, usefulness of suggestion, and extent of geog- 
 nostic reference. It has twenty beautiful little vignettes also, which are 
 models of steel engraving. 
 
124 : 
 
 m MON TIB us SANCTIS. 
 
 bles, would not be unadvisable, were it in strict conformity with nab 
 lire. But there are many rocks of this kind ; as, for example, the 
 celebrated Egyptian bricia, in which the fragments are parti}”- round 
 and partly angular ; while the term glutenite is liable to no such objec- 
 tions, and the several structures identify the various substances, 
 
 “The celebrated English pudding-stone, found nowhere in the world 
 but in Hertfordshire, appears to me to be rather an original rock, 
 formed in the manner of amygdalites, because the pebbles do not seem 
 to have been rolled by water, which would have worn off the substances 
 in various directions ; while, on the contrary, the white, black, brown, 
 or red circlets are always entire, and parallel with the surface, like 
 those of agates. Pebbles, therefore, instead of being united to form 
 such rocks, may, in many circumstances, proceed from their decompo- 
 sition; the circumjacent sand also arising from the decomposition of 
 the cement. 
 
 “ Mountains or regions of real glutenite often, however, accompany 
 the skirts of extensive chains of mountains, as on the northwest and 
 southeast sides of the Grampian Mountains in Scotland, in which in- 
 stance the cement is affirmed by many travellers to be ferruginous, or 
 sometimes argillaceous. The largeness or minuteness of the pebbles or 
 particles cannot be said to alter the nature of the substance ; so that a 
 fine sandstone is also a glutenite, if viewed by the microscope. They 
 may be divided into two structures : the large-grained, comprising bri- 
 cias and pudding-stones ; and the small-grained, or sandstones. 
 
 “ At Dunstaffnage, in Scotland,* romantic rocks of a singularly abrupt 
 appearance, in some parts resembling walls, are formed by glutenite, 
 in which the kernels consist of white quartz, with green or black trap 
 porphyries, and basalts. 
 
 “ In the glutenite from the south of the Grampians, from Ayrshire, 
 from Inglestone Bridge, on the road between Edinburgh and Lanark, 
 the cement is often siliceous, as in those at the foot of the Alps ob- 
 served by Saussure. 
 
 “Another glutenite consists of fragments of granite, cemented by 
 trap. 
 
 “ Siderous glutenite, or pudding-stone of the most modern formation, 
 is formed around cannon, pistols, and other instruments of iron, by 
 the sand of the sea. 
 
 “ Glutenite of small quartz pebbles, in a red ferruginous cement, is 
 found in the coal mines near Bristol, etc. 
 
 “ Porphyritic hricia {Linn, a Omelin, 247), from Dalecarlia in Sweden, 
 and Saxony. Calton-hill, Edinburgh ? 
 
 * For convenience in quotation, I occasionally alter Pinkerton’s phrases — 
 but, it will be found by reference to the original, without the slightest change 
 in, or loss of, their meaning. 
 
IN M0NTIBU8 SANCTIS. 
 
 125 
 
 “The entirely siliceous gluteuites will comprehend many important 
 substances of various structures, from the celebrated Egyptian bricia, 
 containing large pebbles of jasper, granite, and porphyry, to the silice- 
 ous sandstone of Stonehenge. These gluteuites are of various forma- 
 tions ; and the pudding-stone of England would rather seem, as already 
 mentioned, to be an original rock, the pebbles or rather kernels having 
 no appearance of having been rolled in water. Patrin* has expressed 
 the same idea concerning those pudding-stones which so much embar- 
 rassed Sanssure, as he found their beds in a vertical position, while he 
 argues that they could only have been formed on a horizontal level. 
 This curious question might, as would seem, be easily decided by ex- 
 amining if the kernels have been rolled, or if, on the contrary, they 
 retain their uniform concentric tints, observable in the pudding stone 
 of England, and well represented in the specimen which Patrin has 
 engraved. But the same idea had arisen to me before I had seen 
 Patrin’s ingenious system of mineralogy. In like manner rocks now 
 universally admitted to consist of granular quartz, or that substance 
 crystallized in the form of sand, were formerly supposed to consist 
 of sand agglutinated. Several primitive rocks contain glands of 
 the same substance, and that great observer, Saussure, has called 
 them Glandulites, an useful denomination when the glands are of 
 the same substance with the rock ; while Amygdalites are those rocks 
 which contain kernels of quite a different nature. He observes, that 
 in such a rock a central point of crystallization may attract the cir- 
 cumjacent matter into a round or oval form, perfectly defined and dis- 
 tinct; while other parts of the substance, having no point of attraction, 
 may coalesce into a mass. The agency of iron may also be suspected, 
 that metal, as appears from its ores, often occurring in detached round 
 and oval forms of many sizes, and even a small proportion having a 
 great power. 
 
 “ On the other hand, many kinds of pudding-stone consist merely of 
 rounded pebbles. Saussure describes the liigiberg, near the lake of 
 Lucerne, a mountain not less than 5,800 feet in height above the sea, 
 and said to ba eight leagues in circumference, which consists entirely 
 of rolled pebbles, and among them some of pudding-stone, probably 
 original, disposed in regular layers, and embedded in a calcareous ce- 
 ment. The pudding rocks around the great lake Baikal, in the centre 
 of Asia, present the same phenomenon ; but it has not been observed 
 whether the fragments be of an original or derivative rock. 
 
 “The siliceous sandstones form another important division of this 
 class. They may sometimes, as already mentioned, be confounded with 
 granular quartz, which must be regarded as a primary crystallization. 
 The sand, which has also been found in micaceous scliist\is, and at a 
 
 * i., 154. 
 
128 
 
 MONTIBUS SAWGTIS. 
 
 vast depth in many mines, may be well regarded as belonging to this 
 formation ; for it is well known that, if the crystallization be much 
 disturbed, the substance will descend in small irregular particles. 
 
 “ Siliceous sandstones are far more uncommon than the calcareous or 
 argillaceous. The limits of the chalk country in England are singularly 
 marked by large masses of siliceous sandstone, irregularly dispersed. 
 Those of Stonehenge afford remarkable examples of the size and nature 
 of those fragments, but the original rock has not been discovered. 
 Trap or basaltin often reposes on siliceous sandstone. 
 
 “But the most eminent and singular pudding-stones are those oc- 
 curring in Egypt, in the celebrated bricia of the Valley of Cosseir, and 
 in the siliceous bricia of the same chain, in which are embedded those 
 curious pebbles known by the name of Egyptian jasper ; and wdiich 
 also sometimes contain agates. Bricias, with red jasper, also occur in 
 France, Switzerland, and other countries ; but the cement is friable, 
 and they seldom take a good polish. All these rocks present both 
 round and angular fragments, which shows that the division into 
 bricias and pudding-stones cannot be accepted : a better division, when 
 properly ascertained, would be into original and derivative glutenites. 
 In a geological point of view, the most remarkable pudding-stones, 
 which might more classically be called Kollanites, from the Greek,* 
 are those which border the chains of primitive mountains, as already 
 mentioned. The English Hertfordshire pudding-stone is unique, and 
 beautiful specimens are highly valued in France, and other countries. 
 It is certainly an original rock, arising from a peculiar crystallization, 
 being composed of round and oval kernels of a red, yellow, brown, or 
 gray tint, in a base consisting of particles of the same, united by a silt 
 ceous cement. 
 
 “Of small-grained argillaceous glutenite, the most celebrated rock is 
 the Orison, or Bergmanite, just mentioned, being composed of grains 
 of sand, various in size, sometimes even kernels of quartz ; which, 
 with occasional bits of hard clay slate, are embedded in an argillaceous 
 cement, of the nature of common gray clay slate. When the particles 
 are very fine, it assumes the slaty structure, and forms the grauwack 
 slate of the Germans. It is the chief of Werner’s transitive rocks, 
 nearly approaching to the primitive ; while at the same time it some- 
 times contains shells and other petrifactions. 
 
 “This important rock was formerly considered as being almost pe- 
 culiar to the Hartz, where it contains the richest mines ; but has since 
 been observed in many other countries. The slaty grison, or Bergman- 
 ite, has been confounded with a clay slate, and we are obliged to Mr. 
 Jameson for the following distinctions : 1. It is commonly of a bluish. 
 
 * KoAAa, cement ; the more proper, as it also implies iron, often the 
 chief agent. 
 
IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 127 
 
 ash, or smoke gray, and rarely presents the greenish orliglit yellowish- 
 gray color of primitive clay slate. 2. Its lustre is sometimes glimmer- 
 ing from specks of mica, but it never shows the silky lustre of clay 
 slate. 3. It never presents siderite nor garnets. 4. It alternates with 
 massive grauwack. But is not the chief distinction its aspect of a sand- 
 stone, which bas led to the trivial French name of fjrh-yris^ and the 
 English ruhhlc-stone., which may imply that it was formed of rubbed 
 fragments, or of the rubbish of other rocks ? The fracture is also differ- 
 ent ; and three specimens of various fineness, which I received from 
 Daubuisson, at Paris, could never be confounded with clay slate. 
 
 “This rock is uncommonly productive of metals, not only in beds 
 but also in veins, which latter are frequently of great magnitude. Thus 
 almost the whole of the mines in the Hartz are situated in greywack. 
 These mines afford principally argentiferous lead-glance, which is usu- 
 ally accompanied with blend, fahl ore, black silver ore, and copper 
 pyrites. A more particular examination discloses several distinct veni- 
 genous formations that traverse the mountains of the Hartz. The grey- 
 wack of the Saxon Erzgebirge, of the Khine at Rheinbreidenbach, 
 Andernach, etc., of Leogang in Salzburg, is rich in ores, particularly 
 those of lead and copper. At Vorospatak and Facebay, in Transylvania, 
 the greywack is traversed by numerous small veins of gold.” 
 
 These passages from Pinkerton, with those translated at p. 9 from 
 Saussure, are enough to do justice to the clear insight of old geologists, 
 respecting matters still at issue among younger ones ; and I must 
 therefore ask the reader’s patience with the hesitating assertions in the 
 following chapters of many points on which a wider acquaintance with 
 the writings of the true Fathers of the science might have enabled me 
 to speak with grateful confidence. 
 
CHAPTER n. 
 
 THE DRY LAND. 
 
 Modern Painters^'" Vol. IV., chap. vii. 
 
 And God saidf Let the waters which are under the heaven 
 be gathered together unto one place^ and let the dry land appear."' 
 
 We do not, perhaps, often enough consider the deep sig- 
 nificance of this sentence. We are too apt to receive it as the 
 description of an event vaster only in its extent, not in its 
 nature, than the compelling the Red Sea to draw back, that 
 Israel might pass by. We imagine the Deity in like manner 
 rolling the waves of the greater ocean together on an heap, 
 and setting bars and doors to them eternally. 
 
 But there is a far deeper meaning than this in the solemn 
 words of Genesis, and in the correspondent verse of the Psalm, 
 “His hands prepared the dry land.” Up to that moment the 
 earth had been void, for it had been without form. The com- 
 mand that the waters should be gathered, was the command 
 that the earth should be sculptured. The sea was not driven 
 to his place in suddenly restrained rebellion, but withdrawn 
 to his place in perfect and patient obedience. The dry land 
 appeared, not in level sands, forsaken by the surges, which 
 those surges might again claim for their own ; but in range 
 beyond range of swelling hill and iron rock, forever to claim 
 kindred with the firmament, and be companioned by the 
 clouds of heaven. 
 
 2. What space of time was in reality occupied by the 
 “ day ” of Genesis, is not, at present, of any importance for 
 us to consider. By what furnaces of fire the adamant was 
 melted, and by what wheels of earthquake it was torn, and by 
 
IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 129 
 
 what teeth of glacier * and weight of sea-waves it was en- 
 graven and finished into its perfect form, we ma}" perhaps 
 hereafter endeavor to conjecture ; but here, as in few v/ords 
 the work is summed by the historian, so in few broad thoughts 
 it should be comprehended by us ; and as we read the mighty 
 sentence, “Let the dry land appear,” we should try to follow 
 the finger of God, as it engraved upon the stone tables of the 
 earth the letters and the law of its everlasting form ; as, gulf 
 by gulf, the channels of the deep were ploughed ; and, cape 
 by cape, the lines were traced, with Divine foreknowledge, of 
 the shores that were to limit the nations ; and, chain by chain, 
 the mountain walls were lengthened forth, and their founda- 
 tions fastened for ever ; and the compass was set upon the 
 face of the depth, and the fields, and the highest part of the 
 dust of the world were made ; and the right hand of Christ 
 first strewed the snow on Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes 
 of Calvary. 
 
 3. It is not, I repeat, always needful, in many respects it is 
 not possible, to conjecture the manner, or the time, in vvdiicli 
 this work was done ; but it is deeply necessary for all men 
 to consider the magnificence of the accomplished purpose, 
 and the depth of the wisdom and love which are manifested 
 in the ordinances of the hills. For observe, in order to bring 
 the world into the form which it now bears, it was not mere 
 sculpture that was needed ; the mountains could not stand 
 for a day unless they were formed of materials altogether 
 different from those which constitute the lower hills, and tlio 
 surfaces of the valleys. A harder substance had to be pre- 
 pared for every mountain chain ; yet not so hard but that it 
 might be capable of crumbling down into earth fit to nourish 
 the Alpine forest and the Alpine flow^er ; not so hard but 
 that, in the midst of the utmost majesty of its enthroned 
 strength, there should be seen on it the seal of death, and the 
 
 * Though I had already learned from James Forhes the laws of 
 glacier motion, I still fancied that ice could drive embedded blocks and 
 wear down rock surfaces. See for correctioji of this error, Arrows of 
 the Chase, vol. i , pp. 255-273, and Deucalion, passim. 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 IN MONTIBUS SANG TIB. 
 
 writing of the same sentence that had gone forth against the 
 human frame, “ Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt re- 
 turn.” * And witli this perishable substance the most majes- 
 tic forms were to be framed that w^ere consistent with the 
 safety of man ; and the peak was to be lifted, and the cliff 
 rent, as high and as steeply as was possible, in order yet to 
 permit the shepherd to feed his flocks upon the slope, and 
 the cottage to nestle beneath their shadow. 
 
 4. And observe, two distinct ends were to be accomplished 
 in the doing this. It was, indeed, absolutely necessary that 
 such eminences should be created, in order to fit the earth in 
 any wise for human habitation ; for without mountains the 
 air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sus- 
 tained, and the earth must have become for the most part 
 desert plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the riv- 
 ers and the purifying of the winds are the least of the services 
 appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart 
 for the beauty of God’s working — to startle its lethargy with 
 the deep and pure agitation of astonisliment — are their 
 higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture ; 
 first giving shelter, comfort, and rest ; and covered also with 
 mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is impossible to 
 examine in their connected s^'stem the features of even the 
 most ordinaiy mountain scenery, without concluding that it 
 has been prepared in order to unite, as far as possible, and in 
 the closest compass, every means of delighting and sanctify- 
 ing the heart of man. “ As far as|90ssi6/c ; ” that is, as far as 
 is consistent with the fulfilment of the sentence of condem- 
 nation on the whole earth. Death must be upon the hills ; 
 and the cruelty of the tempests smite them, and the brier 
 and thorn spring up upon them : but they so smite, as to 
 bring their rocks into the fairest forms ; and so spring, as 
 to make the very desert blossom as the rose. Even among 
 
 * “Surely tlie mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is 
 removed out of his place. The waters wear the stones : thou washest 
 away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth, and thou de- 
 stroyest the hope of man .^’ — Joh xiv. 18, 19. 
 
IN MONTI BUS SANCTIS. 
 
 131 
 
 our own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, though often too 
 barren to be perfectly beautiful, and always too lov/ to be 
 ])erfectly sublime, it is strange how many deep sources of de- 
 light are gathered into the compass of tlieir glens and vales ; 
 and how, down to the most secret cluster of their far-away 
 flowers, and the idlest leap of their straying streamlets, the 
 whole heart of Nature seems thirsting to give, and still to 
 give, shedding forth her everlasting beneficence with a pro- 
 fusion so patient, so passionate, that our utmost observance 
 and thankfulness are but, at last, neglect of her nobleness, 
 and apathy to her love. 
 
 But among the true mountains of the greater orders the 
 Divine purpose of appeal at once to all the faculties of the 
 human spirit becomes still more manifest. Inferior hills or- 
 dinarily interrupt, in some degree, the richness of the valleys 
 at their feet ; the gray downs of southern England, and tree- 
 less coteaux of central France, and gray swells of Scottish 
 moor, whatever peculiar charm they may possess in themselves, 
 are at least destitute of those which belong to the •woods and 
 fields of the lowlands. But the great mountains lift the low- 
 lands on their sides. Let the reader imagine, first, the appear- 
 ance of the most varied plain of some richly cultivated coun- 
 try ; let him imagine it dark wdth graceful woods, and soft 
 with deepest pastures ; let him fill the space of it, to the ut- 
 most horizon, with innumerable and changeful incidents of 
 scenery and life ; leading pleasant streamlets through its mead- 
 ows, strewing clusters of cottages beside their banks, tracing 
 sweet footpaths through its avenues, and animating its fields 
 with happy flocks, and slow wandering spots of cattle ; and 
 when he has wearied himself -^vith endless imagining, and left 
 no space without some loveliness of its own, let him conceive 
 all this great plain, with its infinite treasures of natural beauty 
 and happy human life, gathered up in God’s hands from one 
 edge of the horizon to the other, like a woven garment ; and 
 shaken into deep falling folds, as the robes droop from a king’s 
 shoulders ; all its bright id vers leaping into cataracts along the 
 holloAvs of its fall, and all its forests rearing themselves aslant 
 against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when hishor^ 
 
l’S2 
 
 IN M0NTIBU8 8ANCTI8, 
 
 plunges ; and all its villages nestling themselves into the new 
 windings of its glens ; and all its pastures thrown into steep 
 waves of greensward, dashed with dew along the edges of their 
 folds, and sweeping down into endless slopes, with a cloud 
 here and there lying quietly, half on the grass, half in the air ; 
 and he will have as yet, in all this lifted world, only the foun- 
 dation of one of the great Alps. And whatever is lovely in 
 the lowland scenery becomes lovelier in this change ; the trees 
 which grew heavily and stiffly from the level line of plain 
 assume strange curves of strength and grace as they bend 
 themselves against the mountain side ; they breathe more 
 freely, and toss their branches more carelessly as each climbs 
 higher, looking to the clear light above the topmost leaves of 
 its brother tree : the flowers which on the arable plain fell 
 before the plough, now find out for themselves unapproacha- 
 ble places, where year by year they gather into happier fel- 
 lowship, and fear no evil ; and the streams which in the 
 level land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome banks, now 
 move in showers of silver, and are clothed with rainbows, 
 and bring health and life wherever the glance of their waves 
 can reach. 
 
 5. And although this beauty seems at first, in its wildness, 
 inconsistent with the service of man, it is in fact more neces- 
 sary to his happy existence than all the level and easily subdued 
 land which he rejoices to possess. It seems almost an insult 
 to the reader’s intelligence to ask him to dwell (as if they could 
 be doubted) on the uses of the hills, and yet so little until 
 lately have those uses been understood that, in the seventeenth 
 century, one of the most enlightened of the religious men of 
 his day (Fleming), himself a native of a mountain country, 
 casting about for some reason to explain to himself the exist- 
 ence of mountains, and prove their harmony with the provi- 
 dential government of creation, can light upon this reason 
 only, “ They are inhabited by the beasts.” 
 
 6. It may not, therefore, even at this day, be profitless to 
 review briefly the nature of the three great offices which 
 mountain ranges are appointed to fulfil, in order to preserve 
 the health and increase the happiness of mankind. 
 
m MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 13S 
 
 I. Their first use is of course to give motion to (fresh) water, 
 
 Eveiy fountain and river, from the inch-deep streamlet 
 that crosses the village lane in trembling clearness, to the 
 massy and silent march of the everlasting multitude of waters 
 in Amazon or Ganges, owe their play and purity and power 
 to the ordained elevations of the Earth. Gentle or steep, 
 extended or abrupt, some determined slope of the earth’s 
 surface is of course necessary, before any wave can so much 
 as overtake one sedge in its pilgrimage ; and how seldom do 
 we enough consider, as we walk beside the margins of our 
 pleasant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that ordi- 
 nance, of which every blade of grass that waves in their clear 
 water is a perpetual sign ; that the dew and rain fallen on the 
 face of the earth shall find no resting-place ; shall find, on the 
 contrary, fixed channels traced for them, from the ravines of 
 the central crests down which they roar in sudden ranks of 
 foam, to the dark hollows beneath the banks of lowland past- 
 ure, round which they must circle slowly among the stems 
 and beneath the leaves of the lilies ; paths prepared for 
 them, by which, at some appointed rate of journey, they 
 must evermore descend, sometimes slow and sometimes swift, 
 but never pausing ; the daily portion of the earth they have 
 to glide over marked for them at each successive sunrise, the 
 place which has known them knowing them no more, and the 
 gateways of guarding mountains opened for them in cleft and 
 chasm, none letting them in their pilgrimage ; and, from far 
 off, the great heart of the sea calling them to itself ! Deep 
 calleth unto deep. 
 
 I know not which of the two is the more wonderful,— that 
 calm, gradated, invisible slope of the champaign land, which 
 gives motion to the stream ; or that passage cloven for it 
 through the ranks of hill, which, necessary for the health of 
 the land immediately around them, would yet, unless so su- 
 pernaturally divided, have fatally intercepted the flow of the 
 
 * (Only true on a large scale. I have perhaps not allowed enough 
 for the mere secession of flowing water, supplying the evaporation of 
 the sea, Avhether the plains be level or not ; — it must find its way to 
 the place where there is a fall, as through a mill pond to the weir.) 
 
lU 
 
 IN MONTIBUS 8AN0TI8. 
 
 waters from far-off countries. When did the great spirit of 
 the river first knock at those adamantine gates ? When did 
 the porter open to it, and cast his keys away for ever, lapped 
 in whirling sand ? I am not satisfied — no one should be sat- 
 isfied with that vague answer — the river cut its way. Not 
 so. The river found its way.* I do not see that rivers, in 
 their own strength, can do much in cutting their way ; they 
 are nearly as apt to choke their channels up, as to carve them 
 out. Only give a river some little sudden power in a valley, 
 and see how it will use it. Cut itself a bed? Not so, 
 by any means, but fill up its bed, and look for another, in 
 a wild, dissatisfied, inconsistent manner. Any way, rather 
 than the old one, vrill better please it ; and even if it is 
 banked up and forced to keep to the old one, it will not 
 deepen, but do all it can to raise it, and leap out of it. And 
 although, wherever water has a steep fall, it will swiftly cut 
 itself a bed deep into the rock or ground, it will not, when 
 the rock is hard, cut a wider channel than it actually 
 needs ; so that if the existing river beds, through ranges of 
 mountain, had in reality been cut by the streams, they would 
 be found, wherever the rocks are hard, only in the form of 
 narrow and profound ravines — like the well-known channel 
 of the Niagara, below the fall ; not in that of extended val- 
 leys. And the actual work of true mountain rivers, though 
 often much greater in proportion to their body of water than 
 that of the Niagara, is quite insignificant when compared with 
 the area and depth of the valleys through 'which they flow ; 
 so that, although in many cases it appears that those larger 
 valleys have been excavated at earlier periods by more pow- 
 erful streams, or by the existing stream in a more powerful 
 condition, still the great fact remains always equally plain, 
 and equally admirable, that, whatever the nature and dura- 
 tion of the agencies emploj^ed, the earth was so shaped at 
 first as to direct the currents of its rivers in the manner most 
 
 * ( It is very delightful to me, — at least to tlie proud spirit in me, — 
 to find myself thus early perceiving and clearly announcing a fact of 
 which modern geology is still incognizant ; see the postscript to this 
 chapter. ) 
 
MON TIB US SANCTIS, 
 
 135 
 
 healthy and convenient for man. The valley of the Rhone 
 may, though it is not likely, have been in great part exca- 
 vated in early time by torrents a thousand times larger than 
 the Rhone ; but it could not have been excavated at all, un- 
 less the mountains had been thrown at first into two chains, 
 between which the torrents were set to work in a given di- 
 rection. And it is easy to conceive how, under any less be- 
 neficent dispositions of their masses of hill, the continents of 
 the earth might either have been covered with enormous 
 lakes, as parts of North America actually are covered ; or 
 have become wildernesses of pestiferous marsh ; or lifeless 
 plains, upon which the water would have dried as it fell, 
 leaving them for great part of the year desert. Such dis- 
 tricts do exist, and exist in vastness ; the ivhole earth is not 
 prepared for the habitation of man ; only certain small por- 
 tions are prepared for him — the houses, as it were, of the 
 human race, from which they are to look abroad upon the 
 rest of the world, not to wonder or complain that it is not all 
 house, but to be grateful for the kindness of the admirable 
 building, in the house itself, as compared with the rest. It 
 would be as absurd to think it an evil that all the world is 
 not fit for us to inhabit, as to think it an evil that the globe 
 is no larger than it is. As much as we shall ever need is evi- 
 dently assigned to us for our dwelling-place ; the rest, cov- 
 ered with rolling waves or drifting sands, fretted with ice, 
 or crested with fire, is set before us for contemplation in an 
 uninhabitable magnificence ; and that part which we are en- 
 abled to inhabit owes its fitness for human life chiefly to its 
 mountain ranges, which, throwing the superfluous rain off as 
 it falls, collect it in streams or lakes, and guide it into given 
 places, and in given directions ; so that men can build their 
 cities in the midst of fields which they know will be always 
 fertile, and establish the lines of their commerce upon 
 streams which will not fail. 
 
 7. Nor is this giving of motion to water to be considered 
 as confined only to the surface of the earth. A no less im- 
 portant function of the hills is in directing the flow of the 
 fountains and springs, from subterranean reservoirs. There 
 
13G 
 
 IN M0NTIBU8 SANCTIS. 
 
 is no miraculous springing up of water out of the ground at 
 our feet ; but every fountain and well is supplied from a 
 reservoir among the hills, so placed as to involve some slight 
 fall or pressure, enough to secure the constant flowing of the 
 stream. And the incalculable blessing of the power given to 
 us in most valleys, of reaching by excavation some point 
 whence the water will rise to the surface of the ground in 
 perennial flow, is entirely owing to the concave disposition of 
 the beds of clay or rock raised from beneath the bosom of 
 the valley into ranks of enclosing hills. 
 
 8. II. The second great use of mountains is to maintain a 
 constant change in the currents and nature of the air. Such 
 change would, of course, have been partly caused by differ- 
 ences in soils and vegetation, even if the earth had been level ; 
 but to a far less extent than it is now by the chains of hills, 
 which, exposing on one side their masses of rock to the full 
 heat of the sun (increased by the angle at which the rays 
 strike on the slope), and on the other casting a soft shadow for 
 leagues over the plains at their feet, divide the earth not only 
 into districts, but into climates, and cause perpetual currents 
 of air to traverse their passes,^ and ascend or descend their 
 ravines, altering both the temperature and nature of the air 
 as it passes, in a thousand different ways ; moistening it with 
 the spray of their waterfalls, sucking it down and beating it 
 hither and thither in the pools of their torrents, closing it 
 within clefts and caves, where the sunbeams never reach, till 
 it is as cold as November mists, then sending it forth again 
 to breathe softly across the slopes of velvet fields, or to be 
 scorched among sunburnt shales and grassless crags ; then 
 drawing it back in moaning swirls through clefts of ice, and 
 up into dewy wreaths above the snow-fields ; then piercing it 
 with strange electric darts and flashes of mountain fire, and 
 tossing it high in fantastic storm-cloud, as the dried grass is 
 tossed by the mower, only suffering it to depart at last, when 
 
 * This second division of my subject, compressed into one paragraph, 
 is treated with curious insufficiency. See again postscript to this 
 chapter. 
 
IJY MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 137 
 
 chastened and pure, to refresh the faded air of the far-off 
 plains. 
 
 . 9. III. The third great use of mountains is to cause per- 
 
 petual change in the soils of the earth. Without such pro- 
 vision, the ground under cultivation would in a series of 
 3'ears become exhausted, and require to be upturned labori- 
 ously by the hand of man. But the elevations of the earth’s 
 surface provide for it a perpetual renovation. The higher 
 mountains suffer their summits to be broken into fragments 
 and to be cast down in sheets of massy rock, full, as we shall 
 see presently, of every substance necessary for the nourish- 
 ment of plants ; these fallen fragments are again broken by 
 frost, and ground by torrents, into various conditions of sand 
 and clay — materials which are distributed perpetually by the 
 streams farther and farther from the mountain’s base. Every 
 shower which swells the rivulets enables their waters to 
 carry certain portions of earth into new positions, and ex- 
 poses new banks of ground to be mined in their tui’ii.. That 
 turbid foaming of the angry water — that tearing down of 
 bank and rock along the flanks of its fury — are no disturb- 
 ances of the kind course of nature ; they are beneficent opera- 
 tions of laws necessary to the existence of man and to the 
 beauty of the earth. The process is continued more gently, 
 but not less effectively, over all the surface of the lower un- 
 dulating country ; and each filtering thread of summer rain 
 which trickles through the short turf of the uplands is bear- 
 ing its own appointed burden of earth to be thrown down on 
 some new natural garden in the dingles below. 
 
 And it is not, in reality, a degrading, but a true, large, and 
 ennobling view of the mountain ranges of the world, if we 
 compare them to heaps of fertile and fresh earth, laid up by 
 a prudent gardener beside his garden beds, whence, at in- 
 tervals, he casts on them some scattering of new and virgin 
 ground. That whicli we so often lament as convulsion or 
 destruction is nothing else * than tlie momentary shaking of 
 
 * (T should call it a good deal else, now ! hut must leave the text un- 
 touched ; being, in its statements of pure fact — putting its theology 
 aside for the moment— quite one of the best pieces I have ever done.) 
 
138 
 
 JiY M0NTIBU8 SANG T 18. 
 
 the dust from the spade. The winter floods, which inflict a 
 temporary devastation, bear with them the elements of suc- 
 ceeding fertility ; the fruitful field is covered with sand and 
 shingle in momentaiy judgment, but in enduring mercy ; and 
 the gxeat river, which chokes its mouth with marsh, and tosses 
 terror along its shore, is but scattering the seeds of the har- 
 vests of futurity, and preparing the seats of unborn genera- 
 tions. 
 
 10. I have not spoken of the local and peculiar utilities of 
 mountains ; I do not count the benefit of the supply of sum- 
 mer streams from the moors of the higher ranges — of the 
 various medicinal plants which are nested among their rocks 
 — of the delicate pasturage which they furnish for cattle * — 
 of the forests in which they bear timber for shipping — the 
 stones they supply for building, or the ores of metal which 
 they collect into spots open to discovery, and easy for work- 
 ing. All these benefits are of a secondary or a limited na- 
 ture. But the three gi’eat functions which I have just de- 
 scribed — those of giving motion and change to water, air, and 
 earth — are indispensable to human existence ; they are oper- 
 ations to be regarded with as full a depth of gratitude as 
 the laws which bid the tree bear fruit, or the seed multiply 
 itself in the earth. And thus those desolate and threatening- 
 ranges of dark mountains, which, in nearly all ages of the 
 w^orld, men have looked upon with aversion or with terror, 
 and shrunk back from as if they were haunted by perpetual 
 images of death, are, in reality, sources of life and happiness 
 far fuller and more beneficent than all the bright fruitfulness 
 of the plain. Tlie valleys onh" feed ; the mountains feed, and 
 guard, and strengthen us. We take our ideas of fearfulness 
 and sublimity alternately from the mountains and the sea ; 
 but we associate them unjustly. The sea wave, with all its 
 beneficence, is yet devouring and terrible ; but the silent 
 wave of the blue mountain is lifted toward heaven in a still- 
 ness of perpetual mercy ; and the one surge, unfathomable 
 
 * The highest pasturages (at least so say the Savoyards) being always 
 the best and richest. 
 
IX MOXTIBUS SAXCTIS. 
 
 139 
 
 in its darkness, the other, unshaken in its faithfulness, for 
 ever bear the seal of their appointed symbolism, 
 
 “ THY JUSTICE IS LIKE THE GEEAT M0UXT.\INS : 
 
 THY JUDGMENTS AKE A GEEAT DEEP.” 
 
 POSTSCEIPT TO CHAPTER H 
 
 The subject of erosion by water, referred to in tlie note at p. 134, is 
 treated of at length in the 13th chapter of “Deucalion,” of which the 
 conclusions may be summed in the warning to young geologists not to 
 suppose that because Shankliu Chine was “chined ’’ by its central gutter, 
 therefore Salisbury Craigs were cut out by the Water of Leith — Ingle- 
 borough by the Kibble, or Monte Rosa by the Rhone. 
 
 The subject has since been farther illustrated by the admirable 
 drawings and sections given by Mr, Collingwood in his “ Limestone Alps 
 of SavoV,” 1884. 
 
 The paragraph at p. 136 is chiefly, and enormously, defective in speak- 
 ing only of the changes effected by mountains in the nature of air, and 
 not following out their good oflices in lifting the mountaineer nations 
 to live in the air they purify, or rise into, already pure. 
 
CHAPTER m. 
 
 OP THE MATEBIALS OP MOUNTAINS. 
 
 ** Modern Painters''* Part F., the beginning of cliap. viii. 
 
 In the early days of geological science the substances 
 which composed the crust of the earth, as far as it could be 
 examined, were supposed to be referable to three distinct 
 classes : the first consisting of rocks which not only sup- 
 ported all the rest, but from which all the rest were derived, 
 therefore called “ Primary ; ” the second class consisting of 
 rock formed of the broken fragments or altered substance of 
 the primary ones, therefore called “ Secondary and, thirdly, 
 rocks or earthy deposits formed by the ruins and detritus of 
 both jirimary and secondary rocks, called therefore “ Ter- 
 tiary.” This classification was always, in some degree, un- 
 certain ; and has been lately superseded by more complicated 
 systems, founded on the character of the fossils contained in 
 the various deposits, and on the circumstances of position, by 
 Vvdiich their relative ages are more accurately ascertainable. 
 But the original rude classification, though of little, if an}% 
 use for scientific purposes, was based on certain broad and 
 conspicuous phenomena, which it brought clearly before the 
 popular mind. In this way it may still be serviceable, and 
 ought, I think, to be permitted to retain its place, as an in- 
 troduction to systems more defined and authoritative.* 
 
 2. For the fact is, that in approaching any large mountain 
 
 * I am still entirely of this opinion. See postscript to chapter. 
 These opening paragraphs are to my mind extremely well put, and 
 should be read to young people by their tutors as an introduction to 
 geological study. I have here and there retouched a loose sentence, 
 and leave them as good as I could do now. 
 
IN MONTIBUS SANCTIB. 
 
 141 
 
 range, the ground over which the spectator passes, if he ex- 
 amine it with any intelligence, will almost always arrange 
 itself in his mind under three great heads. There will be, 
 first, the ground of the plains or valleys he is about to quit, 
 composed of sand, clay, gravel, rolled stones, and variously 
 mingled soils ; which, when there is opportunity, at the banks 
 of a stream, or the sides of a railway cutting, to examine to 
 any depth, he will find arranged in beds exactly resembling 
 those of modern sandbanks or sea-beaches, and appearing to 
 have been formed under natural laws such as are in opera- 
 tion daily around us. At the outskirts of the hill district, 
 he may, perhaps, find considerable eminences, formed of these 
 beds of loose gravel and sand ; but, as he enters into it far- 
 ther, he will soon discover the hills to bo composed of some 
 harder substance, properly deserving the name of rock, sus- 
 taining itself in picturesque forms, and appearing, at first, to 
 owe both its hardness and its outlines to the action of laws 
 such as do not hold at the present day. He can easily explain 
 the nature, and account for the distribution, of the banks 
 which overhang the lowland road, or of the dark earthy de- 
 posits which enrich the lowland pasture ; but he cannot so 
 distinctly imagine how the limestone hills of Derbyshire and 
 Yorkshire were hardened into their stubborn whiteness, or 
 raised into their cavernous cliffs. Still, if he carefully ex- 
 amine the substance of these more noble rocks, he will, in 
 nine cases out of ten, discover them to be composed of fine 
 calcareous dust, or closely united particles of sand ; and will 
 be ready to accept as possible, or even probable, the sugges- 
 tion of their having been formed, by slow deposit, at the 
 bottom of deep lakes and ancient seas, and then gradually 
 consolidated under such laws of Nature as are still in opera- 
 tion. 
 
 3. But, as ho advances yet farther into the hill district, he 
 finds the rocks around him assuming a gloomier and more 
 majestic condition. Their tint darkens ; their outlines become 
 wild and irregular ; and whereas before they had only ap- 
 peared at the roadside in narrow ledges among the turf, or 
 glanced out from among the thickets above the brooks in 
 
142 
 
 IN M0NTIBU8 SANCTIS. 
 
 white walls and fantastic towers, they now rear themselves up 
 in solemn and shattered masses far and near ; softened, indeed, 
 with strange harmony of clouded * colors, but possessing the 
 whole scene with their iron spirit ; and rising, in all proba- 
 bility, inter eminences as much prouder in actual elevation than 
 those of the intermediate rocks, as more powerful in their in- 
 fluence over every minor feature of the landscape. 
 
 4. And when the traveller proceeds to observe closely the 
 materials of which these nobler ranges are composed, he finds 
 also a complete change in their internal structure. They are 
 no longer formed of delicate sand or dust — each particle of 
 that dust the same as every other, and the whole mass de- 
 pending for its hardness merely on their closely cemented 
 unity ; but they are now formed of several distinct substances 
 visibly unlike each other ; and not pressed^ but crystallized 
 into one mass — crystallized into a unity far more perfect 
 than that of the dusty limestone, but yet without the least 
 mingling of their several natures with each other. Such a 
 rock, freshly broken, has a spotty, granulated, and, in almost 
 all instances, sparkling, appearance ; it requires a much 
 harder blow to break it than the limestone or sandstone ; but 
 when once thoroughly shattered, it is easy to separate from 
 each other the various substances of which it is composed, 
 and to examine them in their individual grains or crystals ; of 
 which each variety will be found to have a different degree 
 of hardness, a different shade of color, a different character 
 of form, and a different chemical composition. 
 
 But this examination will not enable the observer to com- 
 prehend the method either of their formation or aggregation, 
 at least by any process such as he now sees taking place 
 around him ; he will at once be driven to admit that some 
 
 * “ Clouded referring to tlie peculiar softness and richness of the 
 dark lichens on many primitive rocks, as opposed to the whiteness or 
 gray yellow of many among the secondaries. “ Iron spirit,” just after, 
 meaning a strength having the toughness of iron in it, unassailable ; 
 but I find with pleasant surprise in extremely “old English” geology, a 
 large family of these rooks called “ siderous,” from the quantity of latent 
 iron they contain. 
 
IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 143 
 
 strange and powerful oj)eration lias taken place upon these 
 rocks, different from any of which he is at present cognizant.* 
 5. Now, although these three great groups of rocks do indeed 
 often pass into each other by imperceptible gradations, and 
 although their peculiar aspect is never a severe indication of 
 their relative ages, yet their characters are for the most part 
 so defined as to make a strong impression on the mind of an 
 ordinary observer ; and their age is also for the most part 
 approximately indicated by their degrees of hardness and 
 crystalline aspect. It does, indeed, sometimes f happen that 
 a soft and slimy clay will pass into a rock like Aberdeen 
 granite by transitions so subtle that no point of separation 
 can be determined ; and it very often happens that rocks 
 like Aberdeen granite are of more recent formation than 
 certain beds of sandstone and limestone. But in spite of all 
 these uncertainties and exceptions, I believe that unless actual 
 pains be taken to efface from the mind its natural impressions, 
 the idea of three great classes of rocks and earth will main- 
 tain its ground in the thoughts of the generally intelligent 
 observer ; that, whether he desire it or not, he will find him- 
 self throwing the soft and loose clays and sands together 
 under one head ; placing the hard rocks, of a dull, compact, 
 homogeneous substance, under another head ; and the 
 hardest rocks, of a crystalline, glittering, and various sub- 
 stance, under a third head ; and having done this, he wall also 
 find that, with certain easily admissible exce^Dtions, these 
 three classes of rocks are, in every district which he examines, 
 of three different ages ; that the softest are the youngest, the 
 hard and homogeneous ones are older, and the crystalline are 
 the oldest ; and he will, perhaps, in the end, find it a somewhat 
 
 * The original text proceeded thus — “ and farther inquiry will prob- 
 ably induce him to admit, as more than probable, the supposition that 
 their structure is in great part owing to the action of enormous lieat pro- 
 longed for indefinite periods” — which sentence I remove into thisnote to 
 prevent the lucidity and straightforward descriptional truth of these 
 paragraphs to be soiled with conjecture. 
 
 f Very rarely ! I forget what instance I was thinking of — anyhow 
 the sentence is too strongly put. 
 
144 
 
 IN MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 inconvenient piece of respect to the complexity and accuracy 
 of modern geological science, if he refuse to the three classes, 
 thus defined in his imagination, their ancient titles of Tertiary, 
 Secondary, and Primary. 
 
 6. But however this may be, there is one lesson evidently 
 intended to be taught by the different characters of these 
 rocks, which we must not allow to escape us. We have to ob- 
 serve, first, the state of perfect powerlessness, and loss of all 
 beauty, exhibited in those beds of earth in which the sepa- 
 rated pieces or particles are entirely independent of each 
 other, more especially in the gravel whose pebbles have all 
 been rolled into one shape ; secondly, the greater degree of 
 permanence, power, and beauty possessed by the rocks whose 
 component atoms have some affection and attraction for each 
 other, though all of one kind ; and, lastly, the utmost form 
 and highest beauty of the rocks in which the several atoms 
 have all different shapes, characters, and offices ; but are in- 
 separably united by some fiery, or baptismal,* process which 
 has purified them all. 
 
 It can hardly be necessary to point out how these natural 
 ordinances seem intended f to teach us the great truths which 
 are the basis of all political science ; how the polishing 
 friction which separates, the affection that binds, and the 
 affliction that fuses and confirms, are accurately symbolized 
 by the processes to which the several ranks of hills appear to 
 owe their present aspect ; and how, even if the knowledge 
 of those processes be denied to us, that present aspect may m 
 itself seem no imperfect image of the various states of man- 
 kind : first, that which is powerless through total disorgan- 
 ization ; secondly, that which, though united, and in some 
 degree powerful, is yet incapable of great effort, or result, 
 owing to the too great similarity and confusion of offices, both 
 
 * The words “or baptismal ” now inserted. 
 
 f Most people being unable to imagine intention under the guise of 
 fixed law, I should have said now, rather than “ seem intended to teach 
 us,” *^do, if we will consider them, teach us.” See however, below, the 
 old note to § 9. This 6th paragraph is the germ, or rather bulb, of 
 Ethics of the Dust. 
 
7iY MONTIBU.^ .^ANCTIf<. 
 
 145 
 
 in ranks and individuals ; and finally, the perfect state of 
 brotherhood and strength in which each character is clearly 
 distinguished, separately perfected, and employed in its 
 proper place and office. 
 
 7. I shall not, however, so oppose myself to the views of our 
 leading geologists as to retain here the names of Primary, 
 Secondary, and Tertiary rocks. But as I wish the reader to 
 keep the ideas of the three classes clearly in his mind, I will 
 ask his leave to give them names which involve no theory, and 
 can be liable, therefore, to no grave objections. We will call 
 the hard, and (generally) central, masses. Crystalline Rocks, 
 because they almost always present an appearance of crys- 
 tallization.* The less hard substances, which appear compact 
 and homogeneous, we will call Coherent Rocks, and for the 
 scattered debris we will use the general term Diluvium. 
 
 8. All these orders of substance agree in one character, that 
 of being more or ^ess frangible or soluble. One material, in- 
 deed, which enters largely into the composition of most of 
 them,y?b7, is harder than iron ; but even this, their chief 
 source of strength, is easily broken by a sudden blow ; and it 
 is so combined in the large rocks with softer substances, that 
 time and the violence or chemical agency of the weather 
 invariably produce certain destructive effects on their masses. 
 Some of them become soft, and moulder away ; others break, 
 little by little, into angular fragments or slaty sheets ; but all 
 yield in some way or other ; and the problem to be solved in 
 every mountain range appears to be, that under these condi- 
 tions of decay, the cliffs and peaks may be raised as high and 
 thrown into as noble forms, as is possible, consistently with 
 an effective, though not perfect, permanence, and a general, 
 though not absolute, security. 
 
 9. Perfect permanence and absolute security were evidently 
 in nowise intended. f It would have been as easy for the 
 
 *Not strongly enough put, this time. They always are crystalline, 
 whether they present the appearance of it or not. 
 
 f I am well aware that to the minds of many persons nothing bears a 
 greater appearance of presumption than any attempt at reasoning re- 
 
 10 
 
146 
 
 IN M0NTIBU8 SANCTIS. 
 
 Creator to have made mountains of steel as of granite, oi 
 adamant as of lime ; but this was clearl}' no part of the Divine 
 counsels : mountains were to be destructible and frail — to 
 melt under the soft lambency of the streamlet, to shiver 
 before the subtle wedge of the frost, to wither with un- 
 traceable decay in their own substance — and yet, under all 
 these conditions of destruction, to be maintained in magnifi- 
 cent eminence before the eyes of men. 
 
 Nor is it in anywise difficult for us to perceive the benefi- 
 cent reasons for this appointed frailness of the mountains. 
 They appear to be threefold : the first, and the most im- 
 portant, that successive soils might be supplied to the plains, 
 in the manner explained in the last chapter, and that men 
 might be furnished with a material for their works of archi- 
 tecture and sculpture, at once soft enough to be subd ued, and 
 hard enough to be preserved ; the second, that some sense of 
 danger might always be connected with the most precipitous 
 forms, and thus increase their sublimity ; and the third, that 
 a subject of perpetual interest might be opened to the human 
 mind in observing the changes of form brought about by time 
 on these monuments of Creation. 
 
 10. In order, therefore, to understand the method in which 
 these various substances break, so as to produce the forms 
 which are of chief importance in landscape, as well as the ex- 
 quisite adaptation of all their qualities to the service of men, 
 it will be well that I should take some note of them in their 
 order ; not with any far-followed mineralogical detail, but 
 with care enough to enable me hereafter to explain, wdthout 
 
 specting tlie purposes of the Divine Being ; and that in many cases it 
 would be thought more consistent with the modesty of humanity to 
 limit its endeavor to the ascertaining of physical causes than to form 
 conjectures respecting Divine intentions. But I believe this feeling to 
 be false and dangerous. Wisdom can only be demonstrated in its ends, 
 and goodness only perceived in its motives. He who in a morbid mod- 
 esty supposes that he is incapable of apprehending any of the purposes 
 of God renders himself also incapable of witnessing His wisdom ; and he 
 who supposes that favors may be bestowed without intention will soon 
 learn to receive them without gratitude. 
 
M0NTIBU8 8ANGTI8. 147 
 
 obscurity, any phenomena dependent upon such peculiarities 
 of substance. 
 
 (I have cut the eighth chapter of the old book in half here, 
 for better arrangement of subject. The reader will perhaps 
 forego, once in a way, without painful sense of loss, my cus- 
 tomary burst of terminal eloquence.) 
 
 POSTSCRIPT TO CH.iPTER m. 
 
 For many reasons, which will a]>pear one by one in the course of this 
 work, I think it well to give, for postscript to this chapter, a translation 
 of Saussure's introductory account of granite, published in 1803, at 
 Ncnchatel, chez Louis Fauche-Borel, imprimeur da Roi (King of 
 Prussia), “ Voyages dans les Alpes,” vol. i. chap. v. Les Roches Com- 
 posees. Granit. 
 
 “ Granites belong to that class of stones which naturalists name com- 
 posed stones, or rocks, or living rock, roc vif,* the saxa mixta of Wal- 
 lerius. This class includes stones which are composed of two, three, or 
 four different species of stones, intermixed under the form of angular 
 grains, or folia (feuillets) united by the intimacy of their contact, without 
 the help of any stronger gluten. 
 
 ‘‘ Those which divide themselves by folia are called schistous rocks, or 
 foliated rocks (Roches schisteuses on Roches feuilletees). Saxa fissilia, 
 Wall. Those which appear composed of grains, and which present 
 neither folia nor sensible veins, are named Rocks in mass. Saxa solida, 
 Wall. Such are the granites. 
 
 “ It is these two species of rocks which form the matter of the most 
 elevated mountains, such as the central chains of the Alps, the Cordil- 
 lera, the Ural, Caucasus, and Altaic mountains. One never finds them 
 seated upon (assises sur) mountains of slate (ardoise) or of calcareous 
 stone ; they serve, on the contrary, for base to these, and have conse- 
 quently existed before them. They bear then, by just claim, the name 
 
 * The modern reader passes as merely poetical the words “ living rock ” of 
 former good writers. But living rock is as distinct from dead, as heart of 
 oak from dry rot. In accuracy, “living” is the word used by the natural 
 human sense to express the difference between a crystalline rock and one of 
 mere coagulated sand or slime. 
 
U8 
 
 Ili MONTIBUS SANCTIS. 
 
 of primitive mountains, while those of slate and calcareous stone are 
 qualified as secondary.” 
 
 The young reader will do well to fix these simple statements in his 
 head, and by no means let them be shaken in it. Modern geologists 
 will tell him that Mont Blanc is young ; but the date of a mountain's 
 elevation is not that of its substance. Granite no more becomes a sec- 
 ondary rock in lifting a bed of chalk than an old man becomes a boy 
 in throwing off his bedclothes. All modern geologists will tell you that 
 granite and basalt are pretty much the same thing, that each may be- 
 come the other, and any come to the top. Recollect simply, to begin 
 with, that granite forms delightful and healthy countries, basalt gloomy 
 and oppressive ones, and that, if you have the misfortune to live under 
 Etna or Hecla, you and your house may both be buried in basalt to- 
 morrow morning ; but that nobody was ever buried in granite, unless 
 somebody paid for his tomb. Recollect farther, that granite is for the 
 most part visibly composed of three substances, always easily recogniz- 
 able — quartz, felspar, and mica ; but basalt may be made of anything 
 on the face or in the stomach of the Earth. And recollect finally, that 
 there was assuredly a time when the Earth had no animals upon it ; 
 another time when it had only nasty and beastly animals upon it ; and 
 that at this time it has a great many beautiful and angelic animals upon 
 it, tormented out of their lives by one extremely foolish two-legged 
 one. To these three periods, the first of chaotic solitude, the second of 
 rampant monstrosity, and the third of ruthless beauty, the names of 
 Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary may justly hold for ever — be the 
 Fourth Age what it may. 
 
CCELI ENAEEANT. 
 
 STUDIES OF CLOUD FORM 
 
 AND OP ITS VISIBIiE CAUSES. 
 
 COLLECTED AND COMPLETED OUT OF 
 
 “MODEEN PAINTEES.” 
 

 it 
 
 
 If 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 The studies of tlie nature and form of clouds, reprinted in 
 the following pages from the fourth and fifth volumes of 
 “Modern Painters,” will be in this series third in order, as 
 they are in those volumes, of the treatises on natural history 
 which w'ere there made the foundation of judgment in land- 
 scape art. But the essay on trees will require more careful 
 annotation than I have at present time for, and I am also de- 
 sirous of placing these cloud studies quickly in the hands of 
 anyone who may have been interested in my account of 
 recent storms. 
 
 I find nothing to alter,^ and little to explain, in the follow- 
 ing portions of my former work, in which such passages as 
 the eighth and ninth paragraphs of the opening chapter — usu- 
 ally thought of by the public merely as word-painting, but 
 wdiicli are in reality accurately abstracted, and finally concen- 
 trated, expressions of the general laws of natural phenomena f 
 — are indeed among the best I have ever written, and in their 
 
 * Sometimes a now useless reference to other parts of tlie hoolc is 
 omitted, or one necessary to connect tlie sentence broken by such omis- 
 sion ; otherwise I do not retoncli the original text. 
 
 •f Thus the sentence at page 7, ‘ murmuring only when the winds 
 raise tliem, or rocks divide.” does not describe, or word-paint, the sound 
 of waters, but (with only the admitted art of a carefully reiterated “ r ”) 
 sums the general causes of it ; while, again, the immediately following 
 one, defining the limitations of sea and river, “ restrained by established 
 shores, and guided tlirougli unchanging channels,” attempts no word- 
 painting either of coast or burnside ; but states, with only such orna- 
 ment of its simplicity as could be got of the doubled “ t” and doubled 
 “ ch,” the fact of the stability of existing rock structure which I was, at 
 that time, alone among geologists in asserting. 
 
152 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 way, I am not ashamed to express my conviction, unlikely to 
 be surpassed by any other author. But it may be necessary 
 to advise the student of these now isolated chapters not to in- 
 terpret any of their expressions of awe or wonder as meaning 
 to attribute any supernatural, or in any special sense miracu- 
 lous, character to the phenomena described, other than that 
 of their adaptation to human feeling or need. I did not in 
 the least mean to insinuate, because it was not easy to explain 
 the buoyancy of clouds, that they were supported in the air 
 as St. Francis in his ecstasy ; or because the forms of a 
 thunder-cloud were terrific, that they were less natural than 
 those of a diamond ; but in all the forms and actions of non- 
 sentient things, I recognized (as more at length explained in 
 the conclusion of my essay on the plague cloud) constant 
 miracle, and according to the need and deserving of man, 
 more or less constantly manifest Deity. Time, and times, 
 have since passed over my head, and have taught me to hope 
 for more than this — nay, perhaps so much more as that in 
 English cities, where two or three are gathered in His name, 
 such vision as that recorded by the sea-king Dandolo * 
 might again be seen, when he was commanded that in the midst 
 of the city he should build a church, “ in the place above 
 which he should see a red cloud rest.” 
 
 J. Kuskin. 
 
 Oxford, November %th, 1884. 
 
 * St. Mark’s, 
 
CCELI ENAKBANT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FIRMAMENT. 
 
 Modern Painters^'' Vol. IV., Part Y., Gimp. VI. 
 
 1. The task which we now enter upon, as explained in the 
 close of the preceding chapter, is the ascertaining as far as 
 possible what the proper effect of the natural beauty of differ- 
 ent objects ought to be on the human mind, and the degree 
 in v/hich this nature of theirs, and true influence, have been 
 understood and transmitted by Turner. 
 
 I mean to begin with the mountains, for the sake of conve- 
 nience in illustration, but, in the proper order of thought, 
 the clouds ought to be considered first ; and I think it will be 
 well, in this intermediate chapter, to bring to a close that line 
 of reasoning by which we have gradually, as I hope, strength- 
 ened the defences around the love of mystery, which distin- 
 guishes our modern art ; and to show, on final and conclusive 
 anthority, what noble things these clouds are, and with what 
 feeling it seems to be intended by their Creator that we should 
 contemplate them. 
 
 2. The account given of the stages of creation in the first 
 chapter of Genesis is in every respect clear and intelligible to 
 the simplest reader, except in the statement of the work 
 of the second day. I suppose that this statement is passed 
 over by careless readers as a sublime mystery which was not 
 intended to be understood. But there is no mystery in any 
 other part of the chapter, and it seems to me unjust to con- 
 clude that any was intended here. 
 
154 
 
 CCELI ENARBANT. 
 
 And the passage ought to be peculiarly interesting to us, as 
 being the first in the Bible in which the heavens are named, 
 and the only one in which the word “ Heaven,” all-important 
 as that word is to our understanding of the most precious 
 promises of Scripture, receives a definite explanation. 
 
 Let us, therefore, see whether by a careful comparison of 
 the verse with other passages in which the word occurs, we 
 may not be able to arrive at as clear an understanding of this 
 portion of the chapter as of the rest. 
 
 3. Ill the first place the English word “ Firmament ” itself 
 is useless, because we never employ it but as a synonym of 
 heaven ; it conveys no other distinct idea to us ; and the verse, 
 though from our familiarity with it we imagine that it pos- 
 sesses meaning, has in realit}^ no more point or value than if 
 it were written, “God said. Let there be a something in the 
 midst of the waters, and God called the something Heaved.” 
 
 But the marginal reading, “ Expansion,” has definite value ; 
 and the statement that “ God said. Let there be an expansion 
 in the midst of the waters, and God called the expansion 
 Heaven,” has an apprehensible meaning. 
 
 4. Accepting this expression as the one intended, we have 
 next to ask what expansion there is between two waters, de- 
 scribable by the term Heaven. Milton adopts the term “ ex- 
 panse ; ” * but he understands it of the whole volume of the 
 air which surrounds the earth. Whereas, so far as we can tell, 
 there is no water beyond the air, in the fields of space ; and 
 the whole expression of division of waters from waters is thus 
 rendered valueless. 
 
 5. Now, with respect to this whole chapter, we must re- 
 member always that it is intended for the instruction of ail 
 mankind, not for the learned reader only ; and that, therefore, 
 the most simple and natural interpretation is the likeliest in 
 
 * “God made 
 
 The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure, 
 Transparent, elemental air, diffused 
 In circuit to the uttermost convex 
 Of this great round.” 
 
 — Paradise Lost^ Book VII 
 
C(ELI ENARRANT. 
 
 155 
 
 genera] to be the true one. An unscientific reader knows lit- 
 tle about the manner in which the volume of the atmosphere 
 surrounds the earth ; but I imagine that he could hardly glance 
 at the sky when rain was falling in the distance, and see the 
 level line of the bases of the clouds from which the shower 
 descended, without being able to attach an instant and easy 
 meaning to the words “ expansion in the midst of the waters.’’ 
 And, if having once seized this idea, he proceeded to examine 
 it more accurate!}’, he would perceive at once, if he had ever 
 noticed anything of the nature of clouds, that the level line of 
 their bases did indeed most severely and stringently divide 
 “ waters from waters,” that is to say, divide water in its col- 
 lective and tangible state, from water in its divided and aereal 
 state ; or the waters which fall and flow, from those which 
 nsc and flow. Next, if we try this interpretation in the theo- 
 logical sense of the word Heaven, and examine whether the 
 clouds are spoken of as God’s dwelling-place, we find God 
 going before the Israelites in a pillar of cloud ; revealing Him- 
 self in a cloud on Sinai ; appearing in a cloud on the mercy 
 seat ; filling the Temple of Solomon v/ith the cloud -when its 
 ^ dedication is accepted ; appearing in a great cloud to Ezekiel ; 
 ascending into a cloud before the eyes of the disciples on 
 Mount Olivet, and in like manner returning to Judgment. 
 “ Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him.” 
 “ Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of 
 heaven, wdth power and great glory.”^ While farther, the 
 “ clouds ” and “ heavens ” are used as interchangeable words 
 in those Psalms wdiich most distinctly set forth the powder of 
 God : “ He bowed the heavens also, and came down ; He made 
 darkness pavilions around about Him, dark waters, and thick 
 clouds of the skies.” And again ; “ Tliy mercy, O Lord, is in 
 the heavens, and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.” 
 And again : “ His excellency is over Israel, and His strength 
 
 * The reader may refer to the following texts, which it is needless to 
 quote; — Exod. xiii. 21, xvi. 10, xix, 9, xxiv. 16, xxxiv. 5 ; Levit. xvi. 2 ; 
 Num. X. 34 ; Judges v. 4 ; 1 Kings viii. 10 ; Ezek. i. 4 ; Dan. vii. 13 ; 
 Matt. xxiv. 30 ; 1 Thess. iv. 17 ; E,ev. i. 7. 
 
156 
 
 GCELI EJSfAIUlAI^T. 
 
 is in the clouds.” Again : “ The clouds poured out water, 
 the skies sent out a sound, the voice of Thy thunder was in 
 the heaven.” Again : “Clouds and darkness are round about 
 Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His 
 throne ; the heavens declare His righteousness, and all the 
 people see His glory.” 
 
 6. In all these passages the meaning is unmistakable, if 
 they possess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to take 
 them merely for sublime and vagUe imageiy, and therefore 
 gradually to lose the apprehension of their life and power. 
 The expression, “ He bowed the heavens,” for instance, is, I 
 suppose, received by most readers as a magnificent hyperbole, 
 having reference to some peculiar and fearful manifestation 
 of God’s power to the WTiter of the Psalm in which the words 
 occur. But the expression either has plain meaning, or it has 
 
 meaning. Understand by the term “Heavens” the com- 
 pass of infinite space around the earth, and the expression, 
 “bowed the Heavens,” however sublime, is wholly without 
 meaning ; infinite space cannot be bent or bowed. But 
 understand by the “ Heavens ” the veil of clouds above the 
 earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor obscure ; 
 it is pure, plain, and accurate truth, and it describes God, 
 not as revealing Himself in any peculiar way to David, but 
 doing what He is still doing before our own eyes day by day. 
 By accepting the words in their simple sense, we are thus led 
 to apprehend the immediate presence of the Deity, and His 
 purpose of manifesting Himself as near us whenever the 
 storm-cloud stoops upon its course ; while by our vague and 
 inaccurate acceptance of the words we remove the idea of His 
 presence far from us, into a region which we can neither see 
 nor know ; and graduall^^ from the close realization of a liv- 
 ing God wdio “maketh the clouds His chariot,” we refine and 
 explain ourselves into dim and distant suspicion of an inac- 
 tive God, inhabiting inconceivable places, and fading into the 
 multitudinous formalisms of the laws of Nature. 
 
 7. All errors of this kind — and in the present day we are 
 in constant and grievous danger of falling into them — arise 
 from the originally mistaken idea that man can, “by search- 
 
VaSLI ENABRANT. 
 
 157 
 
 ing, find out God — find out the Almighty to perfection ; ” 
 that is to say, by help of courses of reasoning and accumula- 
 tions of science, apprehend the nature of the Deity in a more 
 exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of compara- 
 tive ignorance ; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the 
 beginning to the end of time, that God’s way of revealing 
 Himself to His creatures should be a simjjle way, which all 
 those creatures may understand. Whether taught or un- 
 taught, whether of mean capacity or enlarged, it is necessary 
 that communion with their Creator should be possible to all ; 
 and the admission to such communion must be rested, not on 
 their having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their having a 
 human soul. In order to render this communion possible, 
 the Deity has stooped from His throne, and has not onl}^ in 
 the person of the Son, taken upon Him the veil of our human 
 Jiesh, but, in the person of the Father, taken upon Him the 
 veil of our human thoughts, and permitted us, by His own 
 spoken authority, to conceive Him simply and clearly as a 
 loving Father and Friend ; — a being to be walked with and 
 reasoned with ; to be moved by our entreaties, angered by 
 our rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, 
 and glorified by our labor ; and finally, to be beheld in imme- 
 diate and active presence in all the powers and changes of 
 creation. 
 
 This conception of God, which is the child’s, is evidently 
 the only one which can be universal, and therefore, the only 
 one which for us can be true. The moment that, in our pride 
 of heart, we refuse to accept the condescension of the Al- 
 mighty, and desire Him, instead of stooping to hold our 
 hands, to rise up before us into His glory — we, hoping that 
 by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge 
 higher than our fellows, we may behold the Creator as He 
 rises — God takes us at our word ; He rises, into His own 
 invisible and inconceivable Majesty ; He goes forth upon the 
 ways which are not our ways, and retires into the thoughts 
 which are not our thoughts ; and we are left alone. And 
 presently we say in our vain hearts, “ There is no God.” 
 
 8. I w’ould desire, therefore, to receive God’s account of 
 
158 
 
 CCELI EN ARRANT. 
 
 His own creation as, under the ordinary limits of human 
 knowledge and imagination, it would be received by a simple- 
 minded man ; and finding that the “ heavens and the earth ” 
 are spoken of always as having something like equal relation 
 to each other (“ thus the heavens and the earth were finished, 
 and all the host of them”), I reject at once all idea of the 
 term “ Heavens ” being intended to signify the infinity of 
 space inhabited by countless sand, with which space though 
 we measured not the earth only, but the sun itself, with all 
 the solar system, no relation of equality or comparison could 
 be inferred. But I suppose the heavens to mean that part of 
 the creation which holds equal companionship with our globe ; 
 I understand the “rolling of those heavens together as a scroll ” 
 to be an equal and relative destruction with the “melting of 
 the elements in fervent heat ; ” * and I understand the making 
 the firmament to signify that, so far as man is concerned, 
 most magnificent ordinance of the clouds — the ordinance, that 
 as the great plain of waters was formed on the face of the 
 earth, so also a plain of waters should be stretched along the 
 height of air, and the face of the cloud answer the face of the 
 ocean ; and this upper and heavenly plain should be of waters, 
 as it were, glorified in their nature, no longer quenching the 
 
 * Compare also Job xxxvi. 29, “ The spreading of the clouds, and 
 the noise of His tabernacle;''' and xxxviii. 33, “ Knowest thou the 
 ordinances of heaven ? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the 
 earth ? canst thou lift up thj voice to the clouds ? ” 
 
 Observe that in the passage of Addison’s well-known hjmn — 
 
 “ The spacious firmament on high. 
 
 With all the blue, ethereal sky, 
 
 And spangled heavens, a shining frame, 
 
 Their great Original proclaim ” — 
 
 the writer has clearly the true distinctions in his mind ; he does not 
 use his words, as we too often accept them, in vain tautology. By the 
 spaciovs firmament he means the clouds, using the word “ spacious” 
 to mark the true meaning of the Hebrew term ; the blue ethereal sky is 
 the real air or ether, blue above the clouds ; the heavens are the starry 
 space, for which he uses this word, less accurately indeed than the 
 others, but as the only one available for his meaning. 
 
CCELI ENARRANT. 
 
 159 
 
 fire, but now bearing fire in their ow^n bosoms ; no longer 
 murmuring only when the winds raise them or rocks divide, 
 but answering each other with their own voices from pole to 
 pole ; no longer restrained by established shores, and guided 
 through unchanging channels, but going forth at their pleas- 
 ure like the armies of the angels, and choosing their encam[)- 
 ments upon the heights of the hills ; no longer hurried down- 
 ward for ever, moving but to fall, nor lost in the lightless 
 accumulation of the abyss, but covering the east and west 
 with the waving of their wings, and robing the gloom of the 
 farther infinite with a vesture of divers colors, of which the 
 threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries fiame. 
 
 9. This, I believe, is the ordinance of the firmament ; and 
 it seems to me that in the midst of the material nearness of 
 these heavens God means us to acknowledge His own imme- 
 diate presence as visiting, judging, and blessing us. “ The 
 earth shook, the heavens also dropped, at the presence of 
 God.” “He doth set His bow in the cloud,” and thus re- 
 news, in the sound of every drooping swathe of rain. His 
 promises of everlasting love. “ In them hath He set a taber- 
 nacle for the sun,” whose burning ball, which, without the 
 firmament, would be seen but as an intolerable and scorchinc’ 
 circle in the blackness of vacuity, is by that firmament sur- 
 rounded with gorgeous service, and tempered by mediatorial 
 ministries ; by the firmament of clouds the golden pavement 
 is spread for his chariot wheels at morning ; by the firmament 
 of clouds the temple is built for his presence to fill with light 
 at noon ; by the firmament of clouds the purple veil is closed 
 at evening round the sanctuary of his rest ; by the mists of the 
 firmament his implacable light is divided, and its separated 
 fierceness appeased into the soft blue that fills the depth of 
 distance with its bloom, and the flush with which the mouio 
 tains burn as they drink the overflomng of the dayspring. 
 And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, 
 through the shadows of the firmament, God would seem to 
 set forth the stooping of His own majesty to men, upon the 
 throne of the firmament. As the Creator of all the worlds, 
 and the inhabitor of eternity, we cannot behold Him ; but as 
 
160 
 
 G(ELI ENARRANT. 
 
 the Judge of the earth and the Preserver of men, those 
 heavens are indeed His dwelling-place. “ Swear not, neither 
 by heaven, for it is God’s throne ; nor by the earth, for it is 
 His footstool.” And all those passings to and fro of fruitful 
 shower and grateful shade, and all those visions of silver 
 palaces built about the horizon, and voices of moaning winds 
 and threatening thunders, and glories of colored robe and 
 cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance, 
 and distinctness, and dearness of the simple words, “ Our 
 Father, which art in heaven.” 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CLOUD-BALANCINGS. 
 
 Modern Painiersd^ Vol. K, Part VII., Chap. /. 
 
 1. We have seen tliat when the earth had to be prepared 
 for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of intermediate 
 'being was spread between him and its darkness, in which 
 were joined, in a subdued measure, the stability and insensi- 
 bility of the earth, and the passion and perishing of man- 
 kind. 
 
 But the heavens, also, had to be prepared for his habita- 
 tion. 
 
 Between their burning light— their deep vacuity, and man, 
 as between the earth’s gloom of iron substance, and man, a 
 veil had to be spread of intermediate being ; which should 
 aj^pease the unendurable glory to the level of human feeble- 
 ness, and sign the changeless motion of the heavens with a 
 semblance of human vicissitude. 
 
 Between the earth and man arose the leaf. Between the 
 heaven and man came the cloud. His life being partly as the 
 falling leaf, and partly as the flying vapor. 
 
 2. Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are ? 
 We had some talk about them long ago, and 25erhaps thought 
 their nature, though at that time not clear to us, would be 
 easily enough understandable when we put ourselves seriously 
 to make it out. Shall we begin with one or two easiest 
 questions ? 
 
 That mist wdiich lies in the morning so softly in the valley, 
 level and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if 
 through an inundation — why is it so heavy ? and why does it 
 lie so low, being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away 
 utterly into splendor of morning, when the sun has shone on 
 11 
 
162 
 
 CCELI ENABBANT, 
 
 it but a few moments more ? Those colossal pyramids, huge 
 and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the 
 beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks — why are 
 they so light — their bases high over our heads, high over the 
 heads of Alps ? why will these melt away, not as the sun 
 rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear, 
 while the valley vapor gains again upon the earth like a 
 shroud ? 
 
 Or that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of 
 pines ; nay, which does not steal by them, but haunts them, 
 wreathing yet round them, and yet — and yet, slowly ; now 
 falling in a fair waved line like a woman’s veil ; now fading, 
 now gone ; we look away for an instant, and look back, and it 
 is again there. What has it to do with that clump of pines, 
 that it broods by them and waves itself among their branches, 
 to and fro ? Has it hidden a cloudy treasure among the 
 moss at their roots, which it watches thus? Or has some 
 strong enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it 
 fast within those bars of bough ? And yonder filmy crescent, 
 bent like an archer’s bow above the snowy summit, the high- 
 est of all the hill — that white arch which never forms but 
 over the supreme crest — how is it stayed there, repelled ap- 
 parently from the snow — nowhere touching it, the clear sky 
 seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving it — 
 poised as a white bird hovers over its nest? 
 
 Or those war-clouds that gather on the horizon, dragon- 
 crested, tongued with fire ; how is their barbed strength 
 bridled? what bits are these they are champing wdth their va- 
 porous lips ; flinging off flakes of black foam ? Leagued levia- 
 thans of the Sea of Heaven, out of their nostrils goeth smoke, 
 and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning ; the sword 
 of him that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, 
 nor the habergeon. Where ride the captains of their armies ? 
 Where are set the measures of their march ? Fierce mur- 
 murers, answering each other from morning until evening — 
 what rebuke is this which has awed them into peace ? — ^what 
 hand has reined them back by the way by which they 
 cam© ? 
 
CCELT ENARRANT, 
 
 163 
 
 3. I know not if the reader will think at first that questions 
 
 like these are easily answered. So far from it, I rather be- 
 lieve that some of the mysteries of the clouds never will be 
 understood by us at all. “ Kiiowest thou the balancings of 
 the clouds ? ” Is the answer ever to be one of pride ? “ The 
 
 wondrous works of Him which is in knowledge ?” Is 
 
 our knowledge ever to be so ? 
 
 It is one of the most discouraging consequences of the 
 varied character of this work of mine, that I am wholly unable 
 to take note of the advance of modern science. What has 
 conclusively been discovered or observed about clouds I know 
 not ; but by the chance inquiry possible to me I find no book 
 which fairly states the difficulties of accounting for even the 
 ordinary aspects of the sky. I shall, therefore, be able in this 
 section to do little more than suggest inquiries to the reader, 
 putting the subject in a clear form for him. All men ac- 
 customed to investigation will confirm me in saying that it is 
 a great step when 'we are personally quite certain what we do 
 not know. 
 
 4. First, then, I believe we do not know what makes clouds 
 float. Clouds are water, in some fine form or another ; but 
 water is heavier than air, and the finest form you can give a 
 heavy thing will not make it float in a light tiling.'^ On it, 
 yes, as a boat ; but in it, no. Clouds are not boats, nor boat- 
 shaped, and they float in the air, not on the top of it. “ Nay, 
 but though unlike boats, may they not be like feathers ? If 
 out of quill substance there may be constructed eider-down, 
 and out of vegetable tissue, thistle-down, both buoyant enough 
 for a time, surely of water-tissue may be constructed also 
 water-down, which will be buoyant enough for all cloudy pur- 
 poses.” Not so. Throw out your eider plumage in a calm 
 day, and it will all come settling to the ground — slowly indeed. 
 
 * [Compare the old note to § 6 : but I bad not, when I wrote it, enough 
 reflected on the horrible buoyancy of smoke, nor did I know over what 
 spaces volcanic ashes were diffusible. Will any of my scientific friends 
 now state for me the approximate weight and bulk of a particle of dust 
 of any solid substance which would be buoyant in air of given density ?J 
 
C(ELI ENARRANT. 
 
 lOi 
 
 to aspect ; but practically so fast that all our finest clouds 
 would be here in a heap about our ears in an hour or two, if 
 they were only made of water feathers. “ But may they not 
 be quill feathers, and have air inside them ? May not all their 
 particles be minute little balloons?” 
 
 A balloon only floats when the air inside it is either specifi- 
 cally, or by heating, lighter than the air it floats in. If the 
 cloud-feathers had w^arm air inside their quills, a cloud would 
 be warmer than the air about it, which it is not (I believe). 
 And if the cloud-feathers had hydrogen inside their quills, a 
 cloud would be unwholesome for breathing, which it is not — 
 at least so it seems to me. 
 
 “ But may they not have nothing inside their quills ? ” 
 Then they would rise, as bubbles do through water, just as 
 certainly as, if they w^ere solid feathers, they would fall. All 
 our clouds would go up to the top of the air, and swim in 
 eddies of cloud-foam. 
 
 “ But is not that just w^hat they do ? ” No. They float at 
 different heights, and with definite forms, in the body of the 
 air itself. If they rose like foam, the sky on a cloudy day 
 would look like a very large flat glass of champagne seen from 
 below, with a stream of bubbles (or clouds) going up as fast 
 as they could to a flat foam-ceiling. 
 
 “But may they not be just so nicely mixed out of some- 
 thing and nothing, as to float where they are wanted ? ” 
 
 Yes : that is just what they not only may, but must be ; only 
 this way of mixing something and nothing is the very thing 
 I want to explain or have explained, and cannot do it, nor get 
 it done. 
 
 5. Except thus far. It is conceivable that minute hollow 
 spherical globules might be formed of water, in which the en- 
 closed vacuity just balanced the w^eight of the enclosing water, 
 and that the arched sphere formed by the watery film was 
 strong enough to prevent the pressure of the atmosphere from 
 breaking it in. Such a globule would float like a balloon at 
 the height in the atmosphere where the equipoise between the 
 vacuum it enclosed, and its own excess of weight above that 
 of the air, was exact. It would, probably, approach its com- 
 
VGiJLI ENARllANT. 
 
 165 
 
 panion globules by reciprocal attraction, and form aggrega- 
 tions which might be visible. 
 
 This is, I believe, the view usually taken by meteorologists. 
 T state it as a possibility, to be taken into account in examin- 
 ing the question — a possibility confirmed by the scriptural 
 words which I have taken for the title of this chapter. 
 
 6. Nevertheless, I state it as a possibility only, not seeing 
 how any known operation of physical law could explain the 
 formation of such molecules. This, however, is not the only 
 difficulty. Whatever shape the water is thrown into, it seems 
 at first improbable that it should lose its propert}^ of wetness. 
 Minute division of rain, as in “Scotch mist,” makes it capable 
 of floating farther, or floating up and down a little, just as 
 dust will float, though pebbles will not ; or gold-leaf, though 
 a sovereign will not ; but minutely divided rain wets as much 
 as any other kind, whereas a cloud, partially always, some- 
 
 * The buoyancy of solid bodies of a given specific gravity, in a given 
 fluid, depends, flrst on tlieir siise, then on their forms. 
 
 First, on their size ; that is to say, on the proportion of the magnitude 
 of the object (irrespective of tlie distribution of its particles) to the 
 magnitude of the particles of the air. 
 
 Thus, a grain of sand is buoyant in wind, but a large stone is not; 
 and pebbles and sand are buoyant in water in proportion to their small- 
 ness, fine dust taking long to sink, while a large stone sinks at once. 
 Thus, we see that water may be arranged in drops of any magnitude, 
 from the largest rain-drop, about the size of a large pea, to an atom so 
 small as not to be separatel}’’ visible, the smallest rain passing gradually 
 internist. Of these drops of different sizes (supposing the strength of 
 the wind the same), the largest fall fastest, the smaller drops are more 
 buoyant, and the small misty rain floats about like a cloud, as often up 
 as down, so that an umbrella is useless in it ; though in a heavy thunder- 
 storm, if there is no wind, one may stand gathered up under an um- 
 brella without a drop touching the feet. 
 
 Secondly, buoyancy depends on the amount of surface which a 
 given weight of the substance exposes to the resistance of the substance 
 it floats in. Thus, gold-leaf is in a high degree buoyant, while the 
 same quantity of gold in a compact grain would fall like a shot ; and a 
 feather is buoyant, though the same quantity of animal matter in a 
 compact form would be as heavy as a little stone. A slate blows far 
 from a house-top, while a brick falls vertically, or nearly so. 
 
IGG 
 
 C(ELI ENABRANT. 
 
 times entii’ely, loses its power of moistening. Some low 
 clouds look, when you are in them, as if they were made of 
 specks of dust, like short hair ; and these clouds are entirely 
 dry. And also many clouds will wet some substances, but 
 not others. So that we must grant further, if we are to be 
 happy in our theory, that the spherical molecules are held 
 together by an attraction which prevents their adhering to 
 any foreign body, or perhaps ceases only under some peculiar 
 electric conditions. 
 
 7. The question remains, even supposing their production 
 accounted for — What intermediate states of water may 
 exist between these spherical hollow molecules and pure 
 vapor ? 
 
 Has the reader ever considered the relations of commonest 
 forms of volatile substance? The invisible particles which 
 cause the scent of a rose-leaf, how minute, how multitudinous, 
 passing richly away into the air continually ! The visible 
 cloud of frankincense — why visible? Is it in consequence of 
 the greater quantity, or larger size, of the particles, and how 
 does the heat act in throwing them off in this quantity, or of 
 this size ? 
 
 Ask the same questions respecting water. It dries, that is, 
 becomes volatile, invisibly, at (any ?) temperature. Snow 
 dries, as water does. Under increase of heat, it volatilizes 
 faster, so as to become dimly visible in large mass, as a heat- 
 haze. It reaches boiling-point, then becomes entirely visible. 
 But compress it, so that no air shall get between the watery 
 particles — it is invisible again. At the first issuing from the 
 steam-pipe the steam is transparent ; but opaque, or visible, 
 as it diffuses itself. The water is indeed closer, because 
 cooler, in that diffusion ; but more air is between its particles. 
 Then this very question of visibility is an endless one, waver- 
 ing between form of substance and action of light. The 
 clearest (or least visible) stream becomes briglitl}^ opaque by 
 more minute division in its foam, and the clearest dew in 
 hoar-frost. Dust, unperceived in shade, becomes constantly 
 visible in sunbeam ; and watery vapor in the atmosphere, 
 which is itself opaque, when there is promise of fine weather. 
 
C(ELI ENARllANT. 167 
 
 becomes exquisitely transparent ; and (questionably) blue, 
 when it is going to rain. 
 
 8. Questionably blue ; for besides knowing very little about 
 water, we know what, except by courtesy, must, I think, be 
 called Nothing — about air. Is it the watery vapor, or the 
 air itself, which is blue? Are neither blue, but only white, 
 producing blue when seen over dark sj^aces? If either blue, 
 or white, why, when crimson is their commanded dress, are 
 the most distant clouds crimsonest ? Clouds close to us may 
 be blue, but far off, golden — a strange result, if the air is blue, 
 ilnd again, if blue, why are rays that come through large 
 spaces of it red ; and that Alp, or anything else that catches 
 far-away light, why colored red at dawn and sunset? No 
 one knows, I believe. It is true that many substances, as 
 opal, are blue, or green, by reflected light, yellow by trans- 
 mitted ; but air, if blue at all, is blue always by transmitted 
 light. I hear of a wonderful solution of nettles, or other 
 unlovely herb, which is green when shallow — red when deep. 
 Perhaps some day, as the motion of the heavenly bodies by 
 help of an apple, their light by help of a nettle, may be ex- 
 plained to mankind. 
 
 9. But further : these questions of volatility, and visibility, 
 and hue, are all complicated with those of shape. How is a 
 cloud outlined? Granted whatever you choose to ask con- 
 cerning its material, or its aspect, its loftiness, and luminous- 
 ness — how of its limitation? > What hews it into a heap, or 
 spins it into a web ? Cold is usually shapeless, I suppose, ex- 
 tending over large spaces equally, or with gradual diminution. 
 You cannot have, in the open air, angles, and wedges, and 
 coils, and cliffs of cold. Yet the vapor stops suddenly, sharp 
 and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself across the gates of heaven 
 in likeness of a brazen bar ; or braids itself in and out, and 
 across and across, like a tissue of tapestry ; or falls into ripples, 
 like sand ; or into waving shreds and tongues, as fire. On 
 what anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, ham- 
 mered, whirled, as the potter’s clay ? By what hands is the 
 incense of the sea built up into domes of marble ? 
 
 And, lastly, all these questions respecting substance, and 
 
168 
 
 C(ELI ENARRANT. 
 
 aspect, and shape, and line, and division, are involved with 
 others as inscrutable, concerning action. The curves in which 
 clouds move are unknown — nay, the very method of their 
 motion, or apparent motion, how far it is by change of place, 
 how far by appearance in one place and vanishing from 
 another. And these questions about movement lead partly 
 far away into high mathematics, where I cannot follow them, 
 and partly into theories concerning electricity and infinite 
 space, where I suppose at present no one can follow them. 
 
 What, then, is the use of asking the questions ? 
 
 For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the 
 reader may. I think he ought. He should not be less grate- 
 ful for summer rain, or see less beauty in the clouds of morn- 
 ing, because they come to prove him with hard questions ; to 
 which, perhaps, if we look close at the heavenly scroll,* we 
 may find also a syllable or two of answer illuminated here and 
 there. 
 
 * There is a beautiful passage in Sartor Resartus concerning this old 
 Hebrew scroll, in its deeper meanings, and the child’s watching it, 
 though long illegible for him, yet “with an eye to the gilding.” It 
 signifies in a word or two nearly all that is to be said about clouds. — -(Not 
 quite, J. R., 1884.) 
 
NOTES 
 
 ON SOME OF 
 
 THE PKIHOIPAL PICTIJEES 
 
 EXHIBITED IN THE ROOMS OF THE 
 
 ROYAL ACADEMY, 
 
 1875. 
 

 ■>• V - • • ••■' ■'• •■•:; 
 
 ^ V ■* ' ' • 
 
 
 
 '5i<\ t . -itti* .:/ ?rtT; irfxVr^.n 
 
 ^ r' 1 r 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■I 
 
 
 j?' 
 
 i 
 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 It is now just twenty years since I wrode the first number 
 of these notes ; and fifteen since they were discontinued. I 
 have no intention of renewing the series, unless occasionally, 
 should accident detain me in London during the spring. But 
 this year, for many reasons, it seemed to me imperatively 
 proper to say as much as is here said. 
 
 And that the temper of the saying may not, so far as I can 
 prevent it, be mistaken, I will venture to ask my reader to 
 hear, and trust that he will believe, thus much concerning 
 myself. Among various minor, but collectively sufficient, 
 reasons for the cessation of these notes, one of the chief was 
 the exclamation of a young artist, moving in good society — 
 
 authentically, I doubt not, reported to me — ‘‘D the 
 
 fellow, why doesn’t he back his friends ? ” The general 
 want in the English mind of any abstract conception of 
 justice, and the substitution for it of the idea of fidelity to a 
 part}", as the first virtue of public action, had never struck 
 me so vividly before ; and thenceforward it seemed to me use- 
 less, so far as artists were concerned, to continue criticism 
 which they would esteem dishonorable, unless it w'as false. 
 
 But Fortune has so sternly reversed her wheel during these 
 recent years, that I am more likely now to be accused of mal- 
 ice than of equity ; and I am therefore at the pains to beg 
 the honest reader to believe that, having perhaps as much 
 pleasure as other people, both in backing my friends and 
 fronting my enemies, I have never used, and shall never use, 
 my power of criticism to such end ; but that I write now, and 
 have always written, so far as I am able, v/hat may show that 
 
172 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 there is a fixed criterion of separation between right art and 
 wrong ; that no opinion, no time, and no circumstances can 
 ever in one jot change this relation of their Good and Evil ; 
 and that it would be pleasant for the British public to recog- 
 nize the one, and wise in them to eschew the other. 
 
 Herne Hill, May 23 , 1875 . 
 
NOTES, ETC. 
 
 Before looking at any single picture, let us understand the 
 scope and character of the Exhibition as a whole. The Royal 
 Academy of England, in its annual publication, is now noth- 
 ing more than a large colored Illustrated Times folded in 
 saloons : — the splendidest May Number of the Graphic, shall 
 we call it ? That is to say, it is a certain quantity of pleasant, 
 but imperfect, “illustration ” of passing events, mixed with as 
 much gossip of the past, and tattle of the future, as may be 
 probably agreeable to a populace supremely ignorant of the 
 one, and reckless of the other. 
 
 Sa^Dremely ignorant, I say — ignorant, that is, on the lofty 
 ground of their supremacy in useless knowledge. 
 
 For instance : the actual facts whicli Shakespeare knew 
 about* Rome were, in number and accuracy, compared to those 
 which M. Alma-Tadema knows, as the pictures of a child’s 
 first story-book, compared to Smith’s “ Dictionary of Antiqui- 
 ties.” 
 
 But when Shakespeare wrote, 
 
 “ The noble sister of Piiblicola, 
 
 The Moon of Rome ; chaste as the icicle 
 Tliat’s curdled by the frost from purest snow, 
 
 And hangs on Diau’s temple,” 
 
 he knew Rome herself, to the heart ; and M. Tadema, after 
 reading his Smith’s “ Dictionary ” through from A to Z, know^s 
 nothing of her but her shadow ; and that cast at sunset. 
 
 Yet observe, in saying that Academy work is now nothing- 
 more, virtually, than cheap colored woodcut, I do not mean 
 to depreciate the talent employed in it. Our public press is 
 
174 NOTES ON THE PUINGIPAL PICTURES 
 
 supported by an ingenuity and skill in rapid art unrivalled 
 at any period of history ; nor have I ever been so humbled, 
 or astonished, by the mightiest work of Tintoret, Turner, or 
 Velasquez, as I was one afternoon last year, in watching, in 
 the Dudley gallery, two ordinary workmen for a daily news- 
 paper, finishing their drawings on the blocks by gaslight, 
 against time. 
 
 Nay, not in skill only, but in pretty sentiment, our press 
 illustration, in its higher ranks, far surpasses — or indeed, in 
 that department finds no rivalship in— the schools of classical 
 art ; and it happens curiously that the only drawing of which 
 the memory remains with me as a possession, out of the old 
 water-color exhibition of this year — Mrs. Allingham’s 
 “ Young Customers ” — should be, not only by an accomplished 
 designer of woodcut, but itself the illustration of a popular 
 story. The drawing, with whatever temporary purpose exe- 
 cuted, is forever lovely ; a thing which I believe Gains- 
 borough would have given one of his own pictures for — old- 
 fashioned as red-tipped daisies are — and more precious than 
 rubies. 
 
 And I am conscious of, and deeply regret, the inevitable 
 warp wdiich my own lately exclusive training under the elder 
 schools gives to my estimate of this current art of th6 day ; 
 and submissively bear the blame due to my sullen refusal of 
 what good is oiYered me in the railroad station, because I can- 
 not find in it what I found in the Ducal Palace. And I may 
 be permitted to say this much, in the outset, in apology for 
 myself, that I determined on writing this number of Academy 
 notes, simply because I was so much delighted with Mr. 
 Leslie’s School — Mr. Leighton’s little Fatima, Mr. Hook’s 
 Hearts of Oak, and Mr. Couldery’s kittens — that I thought I 
 should be able to write an entirely good-humored, and there- 
 fore, in all likelihood, practically useful, sketch of the socially 
 pleasant qualities of modern English painting, which were 
 not enough acknowledged in my former essays. 
 
 As I set myself to the work, and examined more important 
 pictures, my humor changed, though much against my will. 
 Not more reluctantly the son of Beor found his utterances 
 
IN TUE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 175 
 
 becorae benedictory, than I mine — the reverse. But the need 
 of speaking, if not the service (for too often we can help 
 least where need is most), is assuredly greater than if I could 
 have spoken smooth things without ruffling anywhere the 
 calm of praise. 
 
 Popular or classic — temporary or eternal — all good art is 
 more or less didactic. My artist-adversaries rage at me for 
 saying so ; but the gayest of them cannot help being momen- 
 tarily grave ; nor the emptiest-headed occasionally instruc- 
 tive ; and whatever work any of them do, that is indeed 
 honorable to themselves, is also intellectually helpful, no less 
 than entertaining, to others. i\.nd it will be the surest way 
 of estimating the intrinsic value of the art of this year, if we 
 proceed to examine it in the several provinces which its 
 didactic functions occupy ; and collect the sum of its teach- 
 ing on the subjects — which will, I think, sufficiently embrace 
 its efforts in every kind — of Theology, History, Biography, 
 Natural History, Landscape, and as the end of all, Policy. 
 
 THEOLOGY. 
 
 o84. Dedicated to all the Churches. (G. F. Watts, E.A.) 
 
 Here, at least, is one picture meant to teach ; nor failing of 
 its purpose, if we read it rightly. Very beautiful, it might 
 have been ; and is, in no mean measure ; but as years pass 
 by, the artist concedes to himself, more and more, the privi- 
 lege which none but the feeble should seek, of substituting 
 the sublimity of mystery for that of absolute majesty of 
 form. The relation between this gray and soft cloud of vis- 
 ionary power, and the perfectly substantial, bright, and near 
 presence of the saints, angels, or Deities of early Christian 
 art, involves questions of too subtle interest to be followed 
 here ; but in the essential force of it, belongs to the inevi- 
 table expression, in each period, of the character of its own 
 faith. The Christ of the 13th century was vividly present to 
 its thoughts, and dominant over its acts, as a God manifest in 
 
170 NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 the flesh, well pleased in the people to whom He came ; while 
 ours is either forgotten ; or seen, by those who yet trust in 
 Him, only as a mourning and departing Ghost. 
 
 129. Ezekiel’s Vision. (P. F. Poole, RA.) 
 
 Though this design cannot for a moment be compared 
 with the one just noticed, in depth of feeling, there is yet, as 
 there has been always in Mr. Poole’s work, some acknowl- 
 edgment of a supernatural influence in physical phenomena, 
 which gives a nobler character to his storm-painting than can 
 belong to any merely literal study of the elements. But the 
 piece is chiefly interesting for its parallelism with that “dedi- 
 cated to all the churches,” in effacing the fearless realities of 
 the elder creed among the confused speculations of our 
 modern one. The beasts in Raphael’s vision of Ezekiel are 
 as solid as the cattle in Smithfi^ld ; while here, if traceable at 
 all in the drift of the storm-cloud (which, it is implied, was 
 all that the prophet really saw), their animal character can 
 only be accepted in polite compliance with the prophetic im- 
 pression, as the weasel by Polonius. And my most Polonian 
 courtesy fails in deciphering the second of the four — not- 
 li vin g — creature s. 
 
 218. Kachel and her Flock. (F. Goodall, R.A.) 
 
 This is one of the pictures which, with such others as Hol- 
 man Hunt’s “ Scapegoat,” Millais’ “ Dove Returning to the 
 Ark,” etc., the public owe primarily to the leading genius of 
 Dante Rossetti, the founder, and for some years the vital 
 force, of the pre-Raphaelite school. He was the first assertor 
 in painting, as I believe I was myself in art-literature (Gold- 
 smith and Moliere having given the first general statements 
 of it), of the great distinctive principle of that school, that 
 things should be painted as they probably did look and 
 happen, and not as, by rules of art developed under Raphael, 
 Correggio, and Michael Angelo, they might be supposed 
 gracefully, deliciously, or sublimely to have happened. 
 
 The adoption of this principle by good and great men, pro- 
 duces the grandest art possible in the world ; the adoption of 
 
m THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 
 
 177 
 
 it by vile and foolish men — very vile and foolish art ; yet not 
 so entirely nugatory as imitations of Raphael or Correggio 
 would be by persons of the same calibre : an intermediate and 
 large class of pictures have been produced by painters of aver- 
 age powers ; mostly of considerable value, but which fail 
 again into two classes, according to the belief of the artists in 
 the truth, and understanding of the dignity of the subjects 
 they endeavor to illustrate, or their opposite degree of incre- 
 dulity and materialistic vulgarism of interpretation. 
 
 The picture before us belongs to the higher class, but is not 
 a fine example of it. We cannot tell from it whether Mr. 
 Goodall believes Rachel to have wept over Ramah from her 
 throne in heaven ; but at least we gather from it some sugges- 
 tion of what she must have looked like, when she was no 
 more than a Syrian shepherdess. 
 
 That she was a very beautiful shepherdess, so that her lover 
 thought years of waiting but as days, for the love he bore to 
 her, Mr. Goodall has scarcely succeeded in representing. And 
 on the whole he would have measured his powers more rea- 
 sonabl}’’ in contenting himself with painting a Yorkshire 
 shepherdess instead of a Syrian one,'^ Like everybody except 
 myself — he has been in the East. If that is the appearance of 
 the new moon in the East, I am well enough content to guide, 
 and gild, the lunacies of my declining years by the light of 
 the old western one. 
 
 518. Julian the Apostate, presiding, etc. (E. Armytage, R.A.) 
 
 This, I presume, is a modern enlightened improvement on 
 the Disputa del Sacramento. The English Church is to be 
 congratulated on the education she gives her artists. Fum- 
 bling with sham Gothic penny tracts, and twopenny Script- 
 ure prints, among the embers of reverence and sacred life 
 that yet linger on from the soul of ancient days, she holds her 
 own, in outward appearance at least, among our simple coun» 
 
 * Compare, however, at once, 582, which is, on the whole, the most 
 honorably complete and scholastic life-size figure in the rooms, with 
 well-cast, and unaffectedly well-painted, drapery. 
 
 12 
 
178 NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 try villages ; and, in our more ignorant manufacturing cen- 
 tres, contentedly enamels the service of Mammon with the 
 praise of God. But in the capital of England — here, on her 
 Vatican hill above St. Peter’s church, and beside St. Paul’s — 
 this is the testimony she wins from art, as compared with the 
 councils of Fathers, and concourses of Saints, which poor dark- 
 minded Italy once loved to paint. Mr. Armytage, however, has 
 not completed his satire with subtlety ; he knows the higher 
 virtue of sectarians as little as Gibbon knew those of Julian,'^ 
 whose sincere apostasy was not the act of a soul which could 
 
 enjoy the agreeable spectacle” of vile dispute among any 
 men — least of all, among those whom he had once believed 
 messengers of Christ. 
 
 1293 — 1295. Terra-cottas, representing, etc. (S. Tin worth.) 
 
 Full of fire and zealous faculty, breaking its way through 
 all conventionalism to such truth as it can conceive ; able also 
 to conceive far more than can be rightly expressed on this 
 scale. And, after all the labors of past art on the Life of 
 Christ, here is an English workman fastening, with more de- 
 cision than I recollect in any of them, on the gist of the sin of 
 the Jews, and their rulers, in the choice of Barabbas, and 
 making the physical fact of contrast between the man released, 
 and the man condemned, clearly visible. We must receive it, 
 I suppose, as a flash of really prophetic intelligence on the 
 question of Universal Suffrage. 
 
 These bas-reliefs are the most earnest work in the Academy, 
 next to Mr. Boehm’s study of Carlyle. But how it happens 
 that after millions of money have been spent in the machinery 
 of art education at Kensington, an ornamental designer of so 
 high faculty as this one, should never in his life have found a 
 human being able to explain to him the first principles of re- 
 lief, or show him the difference between decorative foliage- 
 sculpture, and Norman hatchet-work — I must leave the Ken- 
 sington authorities to explain ; for it passes all my capacities 
 of conjecture, and all my hitherto experience of the costly 
 
 * See note on page OOO* 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 179 
 
 and colossal public institution of — Nothing—out of which, to 
 wise men, as here, can come nothing ; but to fools everywhere^ 
 — worse than nothing. Kensington has flattened its thousands 
 of weak students into machine pattern-papers : here, it had 
 a true man to deal with ; and for all he has learned of his 
 business, he might as well have lived in South Australia, 
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 26. The Sculpture Gallery. (L. Alma-Tadema.) 
 
 This, I suppose, we must assume to be the principal histori- 
 cal piece of the year ; a work showing artistic skill and classic 
 learning, both in high degree. But both parallel in their 
 method of selection. Tlie artistic skill has succeeded with all 
 its objects in the degree of their unimportance. The piece 
 of silver plate is painted best ; the griffin bas-relief it stands on, 
 second best ; the statue of the empress worse than the griffins, 
 and the living personages worse than the statue. I do not 
 know what featliers the fan with the frightful mask in the 
 handle, held by the nearest lady, is supposed to be made of ; 
 to a simple spectator they look like peacock’s, without the 
 eyes. And, indeed, the feathers, under which the motto “ I 
 serve” of French art seems to be written in these days, are, I 
 think, very literally, all feather and no eyes — the Raven’s 
 feather to wit, of Sycorax. The selection of the subject is 
 similarly — one might say, filamentous — of the extremity, in- 
 stead of the centre. The old French Republicans, reading of 
 Rome, chose such events to illustrate her histoiy, as the battle 
 of Romulus with the Sabines, the vow of the Horatii, or the 
 self-martyrdom of Lucretia. The modern Republican sees in 
 the Rome he studies so profoundly, only a central establish- 
 ment for the manufacture and sale of imitation-Greek articles 
 of virth. 
 
 The execution is dextrous, but more with mechanical steadh 
 ness of practice than innate fineness of nerve. It is impos- 
 sible, liowever, to say how much the personal nervous faculty 
 
180 mTES ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 of an artist of this calibre is paralyzed by his education in 
 schools which I could not characterize in my Oxford inaugural 
 lectures otherwise than as the “ schools of clay,” in which he is 
 never shown what Venetians or Florentines meant by paint- 
 ing,” and allowed to draw his flesh steadily and systematically 
 with shadows of charcoal, and lights of cream -soap, without 
 ever considering whether there would be any reflections in the 
 one, or any flush of life in the other. The head on the ex- 
 treme left is exceptionally good ; but who ever saw a woman’s 
 neck and hand blue-black under reflection from white drapery, 
 as they are in the nearer figure ? It is well worth while to go 
 straight from this picture to the two small studies by Mr. 
 Albert Moore, 356 and 357, which are consummately artistic 
 and scientific work : examine them closely, and with patience ; 
 the sofa and basket especially, in 357, with a lens of moderate 
 power ; and, by way of a lesson in composition, hide in this 
 picture the little hone 3 "Suckle ornament above the head, and 
 the riband hanging over the basket, and see what becomes of 
 everything ! Or try the effect of concealing the yellow flower 
 in the hair, in the “flower walk.” And for comparison with 
 the elementary method of M. Tadema, look at the blue reflec- 
 tion on the chin in this figure ; at the reflection of the warm 
 brick wall on its right arm ; and at the general modes of un- 
 affected relief by which the extended left arm in “ Pansies ” de- 
 taches itself from the background. And you ought after- 
 ward, if you have eye for color, never more to mistake a tinted 
 drawing for a painting. 
 
 233. The Festival. (E. J. Poynter, A.) 
 
 I wonder how long Mr. Poynter thinks a young lady could 
 stand barefoot on a round-runged ladder ; or that a sensible 
 Greek girl would take her sandals off to try, on an occasion 
 when she had festive arrangements to make with care. The 
 ladders themselves, here and in No. 236 (The Golden Age), 
 appear to me not so classical, or so rude, in type, as might have 
 been expected ; but to savor somewhat of the expeditious gas- 
 lighting. Of course Mr. Poynter’s object in No. 236 is to 
 show us, like Michael Angelo, the adaptability of limbs to 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 
 
 181 
 
 awkward positions. But he can only, by this anatomical sci- 
 ence, interest his surgical spectators ; while the Golden Age, 
 in this pinchbeck one, interests nobody. Not even the painter 
 — for had he looked at the best authorities for account of it, 
 he would have found that its people lived chiefly on corn and 
 strawberries, both growing wild ; and doubtless the loaded 
 fruit-branches drooped to their reach. Both these pictures 
 are merely studies of decorative composition, and have far too 
 much pains taken with them for their purpose. Decorative 
 work, however complete, should be easy. 
 
 401. Ready ! (P. Cockerell.) 
 
 I suppose this is meant for portrait, not history. At all 
 events, the painter has been misled in his endeavor, if he 
 made any, to render Swiss character, by Schiller’s absurd 
 lines. Schiller, of all men high in poetic fame whose works 
 are in anywise known to me, has the feeblest hold of facts 
 and the dullest imagination. “Still as a lamb ! ” Sucking, I 
 suppose ? They are so very quiet in that special occupation ; 
 and never think of such a thing as jumping, when they have 
 had enough, of course ? And I should like to hear a Swiss 
 (or English) boy, with any stuff in him, liken himself to a 
 lamb ! If there were any real event from which the legend 
 sprang, the boy’s saying would have been not in the smallest 
 degree pathetic : “ Never fear me, father ; I’ll stand like 
 grandmother’s donkey when she wants him to go” — or 
 something to such effect. 
 
 482. The Babylonian Marriage Market. (E. Long.) 
 
 A painting of great merit, and well deserving purchase by 
 the Anthropological Society. For the varieties of character 
 in the heads are rendered with extreme subtlety, while, as a 
 mere piece of painting, the work is remarkable, in the modern 
 school, for its absence of affectation ; there is no insolently 
 indulged indolence, nor vulgarly asserted dexterity — the paint- 
 ing is good throughout, and unobtrusively powerful. 
 
 It becomes a question of extreme interest with me, as I ex- 
 amine this remarkable picture, how far the intensely subtle 
 
182 N0TE8 ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 observation of physical character and expression whicli ren- 
 dered the painting of it possible, necessitates the isolation of 
 the artist’s thoaghts from subjects of intellectual interest, or 
 moral beauty. Certainly, the best expressioiial works of the 
 higher schools present nothing analogous to the anatomical 
 precision with which the painter has here gradated the 
 feature and expression of the twelve waiting girls, from great 
 physical beauty to absolute ugliness ; and from the serene 
 insolence and power of accomplished fleshly womanhood, to 
 the restless audacity, and crushed resignation, of its despised 
 states of personal inferiority, unconsoled by moral strength, 
 or family afi;ection. As a piece of anthropology, it is the nat- 
 ural and very wonderful product of a century occupied in 
 carnal and mechanical science. In the total paralysis of con- 
 ception — without attempt to disguise the palsy — as to the 
 existence of any higher element in a 'woman’s mind than 
 vanity and spite, or in a man’s than avarice and animal 
 passion, it is also a specific piece of the natural history of 
 our own century ; but only a partial one, either of it, or of 
 the Assyrian, who was once as the cedars in the garden of 
 God.” 
 
 The painter has in the first instance misread his story, or 
 been misled by his translation. This custom, called wise by 
 Herodotus, is so called only as practised in country districts 
 W’itli respect to the fortuneless girls of the lower laboring 
 population ; daughters of an Assyrian noble, however plain- 
 featured, would certainly not be exposed in the market to 
 receive downy from the dispute for their fairer sisters.^ But 
 there is matter of deeper interest in the custom, as it is com- 
 pared to our modern life. However little the English edu- 
 cated classes now read their Bibles, they cannot but, in the 
 present state of literary science, be aw^are that there is a book. 
 
 * The passage in Strabo wliicli gives some countenance to the idea of 
 universality in tlie practice, gives a somewliat different color to it by 
 the statement that over each of the three great Assyrian provinces a 
 “temperately wise” person was set to conduct the ordinances of 
 marriage. 
 
JiY THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 183 
 
 once asserted to have been written by St. John, in which a 
 spiritual Babylon is described as the mother of harlots and 
 abominations of the earth, and her ruin represented as lament- 
 able, especially to the merchants, who trafficked with her in 
 many beautiful and desirable articles, but above all in souls 
 of men.” 
 
 Also, the educated reader cannot but be aware that the ani- 
 mosity of Christian sects — which we have seen the subject of 
 anotlier important national-historical picture in this Academy 
 — has for the last three hundred years wasted much of their 
 energy in endeavors to find Scriptural reason for calling each 
 other Babylonians, and whatever else that term may be under- 
 stood to imply. 
 
 There is, however, no authority to be found in honestly 
 read Scripture for these well-meaning, but ignorant, incivili- 
 ties. Bead in their entirety, the books of the Bible represent 
 to us a literal and material deliverance of a visibly separated 
 people, from a literal bondage ; their establishment in a liter- 
 ally fruitful and peaceful laud, and their being led away out 
 of that land, in consequence of their refusal to obey the laws 
 of its Lord, into a literal captivity in a small, material Baby- 
 lon. The same Scriptures represent to us a spiritual deliver- 
 ance of an invisibly separated people, from spiritual bondage ; 
 their establishment in the spiritual land of Christian joy and 
 peace ; and their being led away out of this land into a spirit- 
 ual captivity in a great spiritual Babylon, the mother of 
 abominations, and in all active transactions especially delight- 
 ful to “ merchants ” — persons engaged, that is to say, in ob- 
 taining profits by exchange instead of labor. 
 
 And whatever was literally done, whether apparently wise 
 or not, in the minor fleshly Babylon, will, therefore, be found 
 spiritually fulfilled in the major ghostly one ; and, for in- 
 stance, as the most beautiful and marvellous maidens were 
 announced for literal sale b}^ auction in Assyria, are not also 
 the souls of our most beautiful and marvellous maidens an- 
 nounced annually for sale by auction in Paris and London, in 
 a spiritual manner, for the spiritual advantages of position in 
 society. 
 
184 
 
 XyOTEti ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 \ X ■ 
 
 BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 XJndeb this head I include Drama, Domestic Incident, and 
 Portrait : this last being, if good, the sum of what drama and 
 domestic chances have been wrought by, and befallen to, the 
 person portrayed. 
 
 Not to begin with too high matters, and collapse subse- 
 quently, suppose we first contemplate the pretty little scene, 
 
 408. Domestic Troubles. (J. Burr.) 
 
 The boy peeping in fearfully at the door, has evidently, 
 under the inspiration of modern scientific zeal, dissected the 
 bellows ; and whether they will ever help the pot to boil 
 again is doubtful to grandpapa. The figure of the younger 
 child, mute with awe and anxiety, yet not wholly guiltless of 
 his naughty brother’s curiosity, is very delightful. Avenging 
 Fate, at the chimney-piece, is too severe. 
 
 I have marked, close by it, two other pictures, 403, 405, 
 which interested me for reasons scarcely worth printing. The 
 cloister of Assisi has been carefully and literally studied, in 
 all but what is singular or beautiful in it ; namely, the flat- 
 tened dome over its cistern, and the central mossy well above. 
 But there is more conscientious treatment of the rest of the 
 building, and greater quietness of natural light than in most 
 picture backgrounds of these days. Ponte della Paglia, 405, 
 may be useful to travellers in at least clearly, if not quite ac- 
 curately, showing the decorative use of the angle sculpture of 
 the drunkenness of Noah on the Ducal Palace ; and the Bridge 
 of Sighs is better painted than usual. 
 
 242. A Merrie Jest. (H. S. Marks, A.) 
 
 Very characteristic of the painter’s special gift. The diffi- 
 culty of so subtle a rendering as this of the half-checked, yet 
 extreme mirth, of persons naturally humorous, can only be 
 judged of by considering how often aspects of laughter are 
 attempted in pictures, and how rarely we feel ourselves in- 
 
IN- THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 185 
 
 cliDed to join in the merriment. The piece of accessory and- 
 scape is very unaffected and good, and the painting, through- 
 out, here, as well as in the equally humorous, and useless, 
 picture of bygone days, 1G6, of good standard modern quality. 
 
 107. The Barber’s Prodigy. (J. B. Burgess.) 
 
 A close and careful studj^ of modern domestic drama, de- 
 serving notice, however, chiefly for its unaffected manner of 
 work, and moderately pleasant incident, as opposed to over- 
 labored pictures of what is naerelj^ "^igly, or meanly faultful, 
 141, 241 — wastes of attention, skill, and time. “Too Good 
 to be True,” 153, another clever bit of minor drama, is yet 
 scarcely good enough to be paused at ; “ Private and Confi- 
 dential,” 375, deserves a few moments more. 879 (A. Liiben) 
 is much surer and finer in touch than anything English that 
 I can find in this sort. The Diisseldorf Germans, and the 
 Neuchatel Swiss have been doing splendid domestic work 
 lately ; but, I suppose, are too proud to exhibit here. 
 
 75. Sophia Western. (W. P. Frith, R. A.) 
 
 The painter seems not to have understood, nor are the pub- 
 lic likely to understand, that Fielding means, in the passage 
 quoted, to say that Miss Western’s hands were white, soft, 
 translucent, and at the moment, snow-cold. In the picture 
 they cannot be shown to be cold — are certainly not white ; do 
 not look soft ; and scarcely show the light of the fire on them, 
 much less through them. But what is the use of painting 
 from Fielding at all ? Of all our classic authors, it is he who 
 demands the reader’s attention most strictly ; and what mod- 
 ern reader ever attends to anything ? 
 
 88. Loot : 1797. (A. C. Gore.) 
 
 An entirely fine picture of its class, representing an ordi- 
 nary fact of war as it must occur, without any forced senti- 
 ment or vulgar accent. Highly skilful throughout, keenly 
 seen, well painted, and deserving a better place than the slow 
 cart-horses and solid waterfalls on the line have left for it 
 
1S6 
 
 NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 89. War Time. (B. KWiere.) 
 
 Compare 626, at once ; the first is a true piece of feeling-^ 
 almost Wordsworthian ; the second, disgraceful to it, both in 
 the low pitch of its vulgar horror, and in its loss of power, by 
 retreat to picturesque tradition, instead of dealing, like the 
 other, wdth the facts of our own day. 
 
 If Mr. Riviere really feels as I think he feels, and means to 
 do good, he must not hope to do anything with people who 
 AYOLild endure the sight of a subject such as this. He may 
 judge what they are worth by a sentence I heard as I stood 
 before it. “ Last of the garrison — ha ! they’re all finished off, 
 you see — isn’t that well done ? ” At all events, if he means 
 to touch them, he must paint the cooking of a French pet- 
 poodle ; not the stabbing of a bloodhound. 
 
 214. The Crown of Love. (J. E. Millais.) 
 
 Much of the painter’s old power remains in this sketch (it 
 cannot be called, a painting) ; and it is of course the leading- 
 one of the year in dramatic sentiment. This, then, it appears, 
 is the best that English art can, at the moment, say in praise 
 of the virtue, and promise of the reward, of Love ; this, the 
 subject of sentimental contemplation likely to be most pleas- 
 ing to the present British public ; torture, namely, carried to 
 crisis of death, in the soul of one creature, and flesh of an- 
 other. The British public are w’^elcome to their feast ; but, as 
 purchasers, they ought to be warned that, compared with the 
 earlier dual pictures of the school (Huguenot, Claudio and 
 Isabella, April love, and the like), this composition balances 
 its excess of sentiment by defect of industry ; and that it is 
 not a precedent advantageous to them, in the arrangement of 
 pictures of lovers, that one should have a body without a face, 
 and the other a face without a body. 
 
 47. Hearts of Oak. (J. C. Hook, R.A.) 
 
 Beautiful, but incomplete ; the painter wants more heart of 
 oak himself. If he had let all his other canvases alone, and 
 finished this, the year’s work would have been a treasure for all 
 the centuries ; while now, it is only “ the Hook of the season.’’ 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 187 
 
 It looks right and harmonious in its subdued sunshine. But 
 it isn’t. Why should mussel-shells cast a shadow, but boats 
 and hats none ? Why should toy-carts and small stones have 
 light and dark sides, and tall rocks none ? I fancy all the 
 pictures this year must have been painted in the sunless east 
 wind ; and only a bit of sunshine put in here and there out of the 
 painter’s head, where he thought it would do nobody any harm. 
 
 112. A November Morning, etc. (H. T. Wells, RA.) 
 
 Fishermen’s hearts being of oak, what are huntsmen’s hearts 
 made of ? 
 
 They will have to ascertain, and prove, soon ; there being 
 question nowadays, among the lower orders, whether they 
 have got any, to speak of. 
 
 A pleasant aristocratic picture — creditable to Mr. Wells, and 
 the nobility. Not a Vandyck, neither. 
 
 430. Sunday Afternoon. (E. Collinson.) 
 
 This picture, though of no eminent power in any respect, is 
 extremely delightful to myself ; and ought, I think, to be so 
 to most unsophisticated persons, who care for English rural 
 life ; representing, as it does, a pleasant and virtuous phase of 
 such life, whether on Sunday or Saturday afternoon. 
 
 Why, by the way, must we accept it for Sunday ? Have 
 our nice old women no rest on any other day ? Do they never 
 put on a clean muslin kerchief on any other day ? Do they 
 never read their Bible (of course, it would be improper to sup- 
 pose any other book readable by them) on any other day ? 
 Whatever day it be — here, at all events, are peace, light, clean- 
 liness, and content. 
 
 Luxury even, of a kind ; the air coming in at that door must 
 be delicious ; and the leaves, outside of it, look like a bit of 
 the kitchen-garden side of Paradise. They please me all the 
 better because, since scientific people were good enough to tell 
 us that leaves were made green by “ green-leaf,” I haven’t seen 
 a leaf painted green, by anybody. But this peep through the 
 door is like old times, when we were neither plagued with 
 soot, nor science. 
 
188 N0TE8 ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 Note, for a little piece of technical study in composition, 
 that the painter would not have been able to venture on so 
 pure color outside of the door, had he not painted the door 
 green as well, only of a modified tint, and so led the subdued 
 color forward into the red interior, taken up again by the 
 shadows of the plants in the window. The management of 
 the luminous shadow throughout is singularly skilful — all the 
 more so because it attracts so little attention. This is true 
 chiaroscuro ; not spread treacle or splashed mud, speckled with 
 white spots — as a Rembrandt amateur thinks. 
 
 Mr. Pettie, for instance, a man of real feeling and great 
 dramatic powder, is ruining himself by these shallow notions of 
 chiaroscuro. If he had not been mimicking Rembrandt, as 
 well as the “costume of the sixteenth century,” in 318, he 
 never would have thought of representing Scott’s entirely 
 heroic and tender-hearted Harry of Perth (223), merely by the 
 muscular back and legs of him (the legs, by the way, were 
 slightly bandy — if one holds to accuracy in anatomical re- 
 spects) ; nor vulgarized the real pathos and most subtle expres- 
 sion of his Jacobites (1217) by the slovenly dark background, 
 corresponding, virtually, to the slouched hat of a theatrical 
 conspirator. I have been examining the painting of the chief 
 Jacobite’s face very closely. It is nearly as good as a piece of 
 old William Hunt ; but Hunt never loaded his paint, except 
 in sticks, and moss, and such like. Now there’s a wrinkle 
 quite essential to the expression, under the Jacobite’s ej^e, got 
 by a projecting ridge of paint, instead of a proper dark line. 
 Rembrandt’s bad bricklayer’s work, with all the mortar stick- 
 ing out at the edges, may be pardonable in a Dutchman sure 
 of his colors ; but it is alwaj^s licentious ; and in these days, 
 when the first object of manufacture is to produce articles that 
 won’t last, if the mortar cracks, where are we ? 
 
 To return to the question of chiaroscuro. The present 
 Academicians — most of whom I have had anxious talk of, 
 with their fathers or friends, when they were promising boys 
 — have since been, with the best part of their minds, amusing 
 themselves in London drawing-rooms, or Eastern deserts, in- 
 stead of learning their business ; with the necessary result 
 
m THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 189 
 
 that they have, as a body, qualified themselves rather to be 
 Masters of Ceremonies than of Studies ; and guides rather of 
 Caravans than Schools ; and have not got an inkling of any 
 principle of their art to bless themselves — or other people, 
 witl). So that they have not only filled their large railroad 
 station and stalls (attached refreshment-room completing the 
 nature of the thing) with a mass of heterogeneous pictures, 
 of which at least two-thirds are beneath the level of accept- 
 ance in any well-established dealer’s shop ; * but they have 
 encouraged, by favor of position, quite the worst abuses of 
 the cheap art of the day ; of w^hich these tricks of rubbing 
 half the canvas over with black or brown, that the rest may 
 come out handsomer, or that the spectator may be properl}^, 
 but at the same time economically, prepared for its melan- 
 choly or sublime tenor, are among the least creditable either 
 to our English wits or honesty. The portrait. No. 437, for 
 instance, is a very respectable piece of painting, and would 
 have taken its place well in the year’s show of work, if the 
 inkstand had not been as evanescent as the vision of Ezekiel, 
 and the library shelves so lost in the gloom of art, as to sug- 
 gest, symbolically, what our bishops at home seem so much 
 afraid of — indistinctness in colonial divinity. And the two 
 highly moral pictures, 101 and 335, which are meant to 
 enforce on the public mind the touching theories that, for 
 the laboring poor, grass is not green, nor geese white ; and 
 that on the pastoral poor, the snow falls dirty ; might have 
 delivered their solemn message just as convincingly from a 
 more elevated stage of the wall-pulpit, without leaving on the 
 minds of any profane spectator like myself, the impression of 
 their having been executed by a converted crossing-sweeper, 
 with liis broom, after it was worn stumpy. 
 
 If the reader is interested in the abstract qualities of art, 
 he will find it useful at once to compare with these more or 
 less feeble or parsimonious performances, two pictures — 
 
 * I permit myself to name, for instance, not as worse than others, but 
 as peculiarly disagreeable to myself, because I love monks, herons, and 
 sea — 450, 291, and 837. 
 
190 N0TE8 ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 which, if not high in attainment, are at least, the one strong, 
 and the other generous. 184. “ Peasantry of Esthonia going 
 to Market ” (G. Bochman) is masterly work, by a man prac- 
 tised in his business ; but who has been taught it in a bad 
 school. It is a true artistic abstraction of gray and angular 
 natural facts ; it indeed omits too much — for even in Es- 
 thonia there must be grass somewhere, or what could the 
 horses eat ? — and it omits the best things and keeps the 
 worst ; but it is done with method, skill, and a conscientious 
 notion that to be gray and angular is to be right. And it 
 deserves a place in an Academy exhibition. 
 
 On the other hand, 263, “ Getting Better ” (C. Calthrop), is 
 an intensely laborious, honest, and intentionally difficult 
 study of chiaroscuro in two lights, on varied color ; and in 
 all other respects it is well meant, and generousl}^ according 
 to the painter’s power, completed. I won’t say more of it, 
 because at the height it hangs I can see no more ; nor must 
 the reader suppose that what I ham said implies anything 
 beyond what is stated. All that I certify is, that as a study 
 of chiaroscuro it deserves close attention, much praise, and a 
 better place than it at present occupies. 
 
 336. The Mayor of Newcastle. (W. W. Ouless.) 
 
 An agreeable and vigorous portrait, highly creditable to 
 the painter, and honorable to its subject and its possessors. 
 Mr. Ouless has adopted from Mr. Millais v/hat was deserving 
 of imitation ; and used the skill he has learned to better 
 ends. All his portraits here are vigorous and interesting. 
 
 221. John Stuart Blackie. (J. Archer.) 
 
 An entirely well-meant, and I should conjecture successful, 
 portrait of a man much deserving portraiture. The back- 
 ground has true meaning, and is satisfactorily complete ; very 
 notable, in that character, among the portrait backgrounds of 
 the year. The whole is right and good. 
 
 718. The Countess of Pembroke. (E. Clifford.) 
 
 Mr. Clifford evidently means well, and is studying in the 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 101 
 
 elder schools ; and painting persons who will permit him to 
 do his best in his own way. 
 
 There is much of interesting in his work, but he has yet 
 to pass through the Valley of Humiliation before he can reach 
 the Celestial Mountains. He must become perfectly simple 
 before he can be sublime ; above all, he must not hope to be 
 great by effort. This portrait is over-labored ; and, toward 
 the finishing, he has not well seen what he was doing, and 
 has not rightly balanced his front light against that of the 
 sky. But his drawings always deserve careful notice. 
 
 317. Miss M. Stuart Wortley. (A. Stuart Wortley.) 
 
 The lightest and most dignified female portrait here — as 
 Lady Coleridge’s drawing of Mr. Newman, 1069, is the most 
 subtle among those of the members of learned professions 
 (though Mr. Laurence’s two beautiful drawings, 1054, 1062, 
 only fall short of it by exhibiting too frankly the xiractiscd 
 skill of their execution). 1052 is also excellent ; and, on the 
 whole — thinking over these, and otlier more irregular and 
 skirmishing, but always well-meant, volunteer work, sprinkled 
 about the rooms — I think the amateurs had better have an 
 Academy of their own next year, in which indulgently, when 
 they had room to spare, they might admit the promising 
 effort of an artist. 
 
 I have scarcely been able to glance round at the portrait 
 sculpture ; and am always iniquitously influenced, in judg- 
 ing of marble, by my humor for praise or dispraise of the 
 model, rather than artist. Guarding m^^self, as well as I 
 may, from such faultful bias, I yet venture to name 1342 as 
 an exemplar}" piece of chiselling ; carefully and tenderly 
 composed in every touch. If the hair on the forehead were 
 completely finished, this would be a nearly perfect bust. I 
 cannot understand why the sculptor should have completed 
 the little tress that falls on the cheek so carefully ; and yet left 
 so many unmodified contours in the more important masses. 
 
 1301. Thomas Carlyle. (J. E. Boehm.) 
 
 For this noble piece of portraiture I cannot trust myself to 
 
192 NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 express my personal gratitude ; nor does either the time I can 
 give to these notes, or their limited intention, permit me — if 
 even otherwise I could think it permissible — to speak at all 
 of the high and harmonious measure in which it seems to me 
 to express the mind and features of my dear Master. 
 
 This only it is within the compass of my present purpose 
 to affirm — that here is a piece of vital and essential sculpture ; 
 the result of sincere skill spent carefully on an object worthy 
 its care : motive and method alike right ; no pains spared ; 
 and none wasted. And any spectator of sensitiveness will 
 find that, broadly speaking, all the sculpture round seems 
 dead and heavy in comparison, after he has looked long at 
 this. 
 
 There must always be, indeed, some difference in the im- 
 mediate effect on our minds betw'een the picturesque treat- 
 ment proper in portrait sculpture, and that belonging, by its 
 grace of reserve, to classical design. But it is generally a 
 note of weakness in an Englishman when he thinks he can 
 conceive like a Greek ; so that the plurality of modern 
 Hellenic Academy sculpture consists merely of imperfect 
 anatomical models peeped at through bath-towels ; and is in 
 the essence of it quite as dull as it appears to be. Let us go 
 back to less dignified work. 
 
 196. School Eevisited. (G. D. Leslie, A.) 
 
 I came upon this picture early, in my first walk through 
 the rooms, and was so delighted with it that it made me lihe 
 everything else I saw, that morning ; it is altogether ex- 
 quisite in rendering some of the sweet qualities of English 
 girlhood ; and, on the whole, the most easy and graceful 
 composition in the rooms. I had written first, “masterly” 
 composition ; but no composition is quite masterly which 
 modifies or subdues any of the natural facts so as to force 
 certain relations between them. Mr. Leslie at present sub- 
 dues all greens, refuses all but local darks, and scarcely per- 
 mits himself, even in flesh, color enough for life. Young 
 ladies at a happy country boarding-school, like this, 'would 
 be as bright as by the seaside ; and there is no reason why a 
 
m THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 193 
 
 knov/ledge-gatherer, well cared for, should be less rosy than 
 a samphire-gatherer. 
 
 Eich color may be in good taste, as well as the poorest ; 
 and the quaintness, politeness, and grace of Leslie might yet 
 glow with the strength and freshness of Hook. It ma^^ per- 
 haps be more difficult than I suppose to get the delicate lines 
 and gradations on which the expression of these girls mainly 
 depends in deeper color. But, at all events, the whole 
 should be more in harmony, and more consistently precious. 
 English girls are, perhaps, not all of them, St. Dorothys ; but 
 at least they are good enough to deserve to have their rose- 
 leaves ])ainted about them thoroughly. 
 
 The little tiling on the extreme left, with the hoop, is as 
 pleasant a shadow of nature as can be conceived in this kind : 
 and I have no words to say how pretty she is. 
 
 But Mr. Leslie is in the very crisis of his artist life. His 
 earlier pictures were finer in color — and color is the soul of 
 painting. If he could resolve to paint thoroughly, and give 
 the colors of Nature as they are, he might be a really great 
 painter, and almost hold, to Bonifazio, the position that Bey- 
 iiolds held to Titian. But if he subdues his color for the 
 sake of black ribands, white dresses, or faintly idealized faces, 
 he will become merely an Academic leaf of the “ Magazin des 
 Modes.” 
 
 For the present, however, this picture, and the clay portrait 
 of Carlyle, are, as far as my review reaches, the only two 
 works of essential value in the Exhibition of this year — that 
 is to say, the only works of quietly capable art, representing 
 what deserved representation. 
 
 English girls, by an English painter. Whether you call 
 them Madonnas, or saints — or what not — it is the law of art- 
 life ; your own people, as they live, are the only ones you can 
 understand. Only living Venice, done by Venetian — living 
 Greece by Greek — living Scotland, perhaps, which has much 
 loved Germany, by living Germany, which has much rever- 
 enced Scotland : such expansion of law may be granted ; nay, 
 the strangeness of a foreign country, making an artist’s sight 
 of it shrewd and selective, may produce a sweet secondary 
 
19i N0TE8 ON THE FRINGiP^L PICTURES 
 
 form of beautiful art ; your Spanish Lewis — your French 
 Front — your Italian Wilson — and their like — second-rate 
 nevertheless, always. Not Lewis, but only Velasquez, can 
 paint a perfect Spaniard ; not Wilson, nor Turner, but only 
 Carpaccio, can paint an Italian landscape ; and, too fatally, 
 the effort is destructive to the painters, beyond all resistance ; 
 and Lewis loses his animal power among the arabesques of 
 Cairo ; Turner, his Yorkshire honesty at Borne ; and Holman 
 Hunt — painting the Light of the World in an English or- 
 chard — paints the gaslight of Bond Street in the Holy Land. 
 
 English maids, I repeat, by an English painter : that is all 
 that an English Academy can produce of loveliest. There’s 
 another beautiful little one, by Mr. Leighton, with a purple 
 drapery thrown over her, that she may be called Fatima (215, 
 and 315), who would have been quite infinitely daintier in a 
 print frock, and called Patty. And I fear there are no more, 
 to speak of, by artists,* this year ; the two vivid sketches, 
 222, 262, being virtually put out of court by their coarse 
 wo]*k. (Look close at the painting of the neck, in the one, 
 and of the left hand, in the other.) Of English men, there is 
 the Mayor, and the Chemist ; a vigorous squire or two, and 
 the group of grand old soldiers at Greenwich — a most notable, 
 true, jDathetic study ; but scarcely artistic enough to be reck- 
 oned as of much more value than a good illustrative woodcut. 
 Mr. Wyatts’ portraits are all conscientious and subtle, and of 
 great present interest, yet not realistic enough to last. Exclu- 
 sively I return to my Carlyle and the school-girls, as, the one, 
 sure to abide against the beating of the time stream ; and 
 the other, possibly floating on it, discernible as a flower in 
 foam. 
 
 * But see note on 317, p. 191. 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 195 
 
 NATUEAL HISTORY. 
 
 There ought to be a separate room in our Academy for the 
 exhibition of the magnificent work in scientific drawing and 
 engraving, done, at present, almost without public notice, for 
 the illustrations of great European works on Palaeontology, 
 Zoology, and Botany. The feeling, on the pairt of our artists, 
 that an idle landscape sketch, or a clever caricature, may be 
 admitted into their rooms as “artistic and that work which 
 the entire energy of early life must be given to learn, and of 
 late life to execute — is to be excluded, merely because it is 
 thoroughly true and useful — is I hope likely to yield, some 
 day, to the scientific enthusiasm which has prevailed often 
 wliere it should have been resisted, and may surely therefore 
 conquer, in time, where it has honorable claims. 
 
 There is nothing of the kind, however, to be seen here, 
 hitherto ; but I may direct attention under this head, rather 
 than that of landscape, to the exquisite skill of delineation 
 with which Mr. Cooke has finished the group of palm-trees in 
 his wonderful study of Sunset at Denderah. (443.) The 
 sacrifice of color in shadow for the sake of brilliancy in light, 
 essentially a principle of Holland as opposed to Venice, is in 
 great degree redeemed in this picture by the extreme care 
 with which the relations of light are observed on the terms 
 conceded : but surely, from so low sunset, the eastern slopes 
 of the mountains on the left could not have been reached by 
 so many rays ? 
 
 To this division of our subject also must be referred Mr. 
 Brett’s “Spires and Steeples of the Channel Islands” (497), 
 but with less praise, for since the days when I first endeav- 
 ored to direct the attention of a careless public to his con- 
 scientious painting of the Sbonebreaker and Woodcutter, he 
 has gained nothing — rather, I fear, lost, in subtlety of execu- 
 tion, and necessitates the decline of his future power by per- 
 sistently covering too large canvas. There is no occasion that 
 a geological study should also be a geological map ; and even 
 
190 NOTES ON THE PUINCIFAL PIOTUPES 
 
 his earlier picture, which I am honored in possessing, of the 
 Val d’Aosta, would have been more precious to me if it had 
 been only of half the Val d’Aosta. 
 
 The extreme distance here, however, beyond the promon- 
 tory, is without any question the best bit of sea and atmos- 
 phere in the rooms. The paint on the water surface in the 
 bay is too loaded ; but laid with extreme science in alterna- 
 tions of color. 
 
 At a still lower level, though deserving some position in 
 the Natural History class for its essential, though rude, and 
 apparently motiveless, veracity, must be placed “ The Fringe 
 of the Moor.” (74.) 
 
 But why one should paint the fringe of the moor, rather 
 than the breadth of it, merely for the privilege of carrying an 
 ugly wooden fence all across the foreground, I must leave 
 modern sentimentalists and naturalists to explain. Vestiges 
 of the painter’s former power of seeing true color remain in 
 the iridescent distance, but now only disgrace the gentle hill- 
 sides with their coarseness of harlequinade ; and the daubed 
 sky — daubed without patience even to give unity of direction 
 to the bristle marks — seems to have been wrought in obtrusive 
 directness of insult to every master, principle, and feeling 
 reverenced, or experienced, in the schools of noble art, from 
 its nativity to this hour. 
 
 And, closing the equivocal group of works in which Natu- 
 ralism prevails unjustly over art, I am obliged to rank Mr. 
 Leighton’s interesting study of man in his Oriental function 
 of scarecrow (symmetrically antithetic to his British one of 
 game-preserver) 398. It is, I do not doubt, anatomically cor- 
 rect ; and, with the addition of the corn, the poppies, and 
 the moon, becomes semi-artistic ; so that I feel much com- 
 punction in depressing it into the Natural History class ; and 
 the more, because it partly forfeits its claim even to such 
 position, by obscuring in twilight its really valuable delinea- 
 tion of the body, and disturbing our minds, in the process of 
 scientific investigation, by sensational effects of afterglow, and 
 lunar effulgence, which are disadvantageous, not to the scien- 
 tific observer only, but to less learned spectators ; for when 
 
/iY THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 197 
 
 simple arid superstitions persons like myself, greatly suscep- 
 tible to the inhuence of low stage lamps and pink side-lights, 
 first catch sight of the striding figure from the other side of 
 tlie room, and take it, perhaps, for the angel with his right 
 foot on the sea and his left foot on the earth, swearing there 
 shall be Time no longer ; or for Achilles alighting from one 
 of his lance-cast-long leaps on the shore of Scamander ; and 
 find, on near approach, that all this grand straddling, and 
 turning down of the gas, mean, practically, only a lad shying 
 stones at sparrows, we are but too likely to pass on petulantly, 
 without taking note of what is really interesting in this 
 Eastern custom and skill — skill which I would recommend with 
 all my heart to the imitation of the British game-preserver 
 aforesaid, when the glorious end of Preservation is to be ac- 
 complished in Battue. Good slinging would involve more 
 healthy and graceful muscular action than even the finest 
 shooting ; and miglit, if "we fully followed the Eastern example, 
 be most usefully practised in other periods of the year, and 
 districts of England, than those now consecrated to the sports 
 of our aristocracy. I cannot imagine a more edifying spectacle 
 than a British landlord in the middle of his farmer’s cornfieldj 
 occupied in this entirely patriotic method of Protection. 
 
 The remainder of the pictures which I have to notice as be- 
 longing to the domain of Natural History, are of indubitable, 
 though unpretending, merit : they represent indeed pure 
 Zoology in its highest function of Animal Biography, which 
 scientific persons will one day find requires much more learned 
 investigation of its laws than the Thanatography which is at 
 present their exclusive occupation and entertainment. 
 
 414. A Fascinating Tail. (H. H. Couldery.) 
 
 Quite the most skilful piece of minute and Dureresque paint- 
 ing in the exhibition — (it cannot be rightly seen without a 
 lens) ; and in its sympathy with kitten nature, down to the 
 most appalling depths thereof, and its tact and sensitiveness 
 to the finest gradations of kittenly meditation and motion, — 
 unsurpassable. It seems hard to require of a painter who has 
 toiled so much, that, for this very reason, he should toil the 
 
198 NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 more. Bat “ Tbe Little Epicure ” (1G9) cannot be considered 
 a picture till the cabbage leaves are as perfect as the fish. 
 
 1234. The First Taste. (S. Carter.) 
 
 Altogether enjoyable to me ; and I am prepared to maintain 
 (as a true lover of dogs, young and old), against all my heroic 
 and tragically-minded friends, that this picture is exemplary 
 in its choice of a moment of supreme puppy felicity, as prop- 
 erest time for puppy portraiture. And I thankfully — and with 
 some shame for my generally too great distrust of modern 
 sentiment — acknowledge, before it, that there is a real ele- 
 ment of fine benevolence toward animals, in us, advanced 
 quite infinitely, and into another world of feeling, from the 
 days of Snyders and Eubens. “ The Little Wanderers ” (1173), 
 by this same painter, are a most pathetic and touching group 
 of children in the wood. You may see, if you will take your 
 opera-glass to it, that the robin is even promising to cover 
 them with leaves, if indeed things are to end, as seems too 
 probable. And compare, by the way, the still more meek and 
 tender human destitution, “ To be Left till Called for,” 83, 
 which I am ashamed of myself for forgetting, as one of the 
 pretty things that first encouraged me to write these notes. 
 “ Nobody’s Log” may console us with his more cynical view 
 of his position in the wide world ; and finally, Miss Acland’s 
 Platonic puppy (737) shows us how events of the most unex- 
 pected, and even astounding, character may be regarded, by 
 a dog of sense, with entire moral tranquillity, and consequently 
 with undisturbed powers of reflection and penetration. 
 
 How strange that I cannot add to my too short list of ani- 
 mal studies — any, however unimportant, of Birds ! (I do not 
 count as deserving notice at all, dramatic effects of vulture, 
 raven, etc.) Not a nest — not a plume ! English society now 
 caring only for kingfishers’ skins on its hat, and plovers’ eggs 
 on its plate. 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 
 
 199 
 
 LANDSCAPE. 
 
 The distinction between Natural Historic painting of scen- 
 ery and true Landscape, is that the one represents objects as 
 a Government Surveyor does, for the sake of a good account 
 of the things themselves, without emotion, or definite purpose 
 of expression. Landscape painting shows the relation be- 
 tween nature and man ; and, in fine work, a particular tone 
 of thought in the painter’s mind respecting what he repre- 
 sents. 
 
 I endeavored, thirty years ago, in “ Modern Painters,” to 
 explain this difference briefl}^, by saying that, in Natural His- 
 tory painting, the artist was only the spectator’s horse ; but 
 in Landscape painting, his friend. 
 
 The worst of such friendliness, however, is that a conceited 
 painter may at last leave Nature out of the question altogether, 
 and talk of himself only ; and then there is nothing for it but 
 to go back to the Government Surveyor. Mr. Brett, in his 
 coast scene above noticed, gives us things, without thoughts ; 
 and the fuliginous moralists above noticed, thoughts — such 
 as they are— -without things : by all means let us rather have 
 the geographical synopsis. 
 
 415. Hoppers on the Koad. (W. Linnell.) 
 
 Tliis is a landscape, however ; and, if it were more lightly 
 painted, we might be very happy with it. Mr. Linnell cares 
 no more than his father for brush-dexterity ; but he does no 
 worse now, in that part of the business, than everyone else. 
 And what a relief it is, for any wholesome human sight, after 
 sickening itself among the blank horrors of dirt, ditch-water, 
 and malaria, whicli the imitators of the French schools have 
 begrimed our various exhibition walls witli, to find once more 
 a bit of blue in the sk}^ and a glow of brown in the coppice, 
 and to see that Hoppers in Kent can enjoy their scarlet and 
 purple — like empresses and emperors ! 
 
2:0 NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 1199. Summer Days for Me. (A. W. Hunt.) 
 
 I am at some pause in expressing my pleasure in the realiza- 
 tion of this beautiful scene, because I have personal interest 
 in it, my own favorite summer walk being through this very 
 field. As, however, I was far away at Assisi when the artist 
 painted it, and had nothing whatever to do with either the 
 choice or treatment of his subject, it is not indecorous for me 
 to praise a work in which I am able so securely to attest a 
 fidelity of portraiture, happily persisted in without losing the 
 grace of imagination. 
 
 It is the only picture of the year which I saw in the studio ; 
 and that by chance ; for it is one of my fixed laws not to look 
 at pictures before they take their fair trial in the Academy. 
 But I ventured to find fault with the sky. The sky w^as 
 courteously changed to please me ; but I am encroaching 
 enough to want it changed more. “ Summer days are” not 
 ‘‘ for me ” unless the sky is blue in them, and especially unless 
 it looks — what simple mortals too often make it in realitj% — a 
 great way off, I want this sky to look bluer at the top, and 
 farther awa}^ at the bottom. The brook on the right is one 
 of the very few pieces of stream which, this year, have been 
 studied for their beauty, not their rage. 
 
 256. Wise Saws. (J. C. Hook, E.A.) 
 
 I suspect that many, even of the painter’s admirers, pass 
 this pretty sketch without noticing the humor with which he 
 has expressed the gradations of feminine curiosity, scientific 
 attention, and conscientious sense of responsibility, in the 
 faces of the troop of cows who approach to investigate the 
 nature of the noisy phenomenon upon the palings. It is a 
 charming summer sketch, but scarcely worth sending to the 
 Academy ; and time was wasted by the good painter in carry- 
 ing so far, what he felt his skill would be misapplied in 
 carrying farther. 
 
 I am sure that Mr. Hook cannot lately have been reading 
 his Kichard II. ; but, whether the line quoted for his motto 
 chanced idly to occur to his memory, or was suggested to him 
 by some acquaintance, he will, I trust, find a more decorous, 
 
IN TUB ROYAL ACADEMY, 
 
 201 
 
 as he easily may a more amusing, motto for his pretty cattle 
 piece, before it becomes known in the picture market as the 
 parody of one of the most pathetic utterances in all Shake- 
 spearian tragedy. 
 
 123. On the River Mole. (Birket Foster.) 
 
 In doubt whether the spectator, without assistance, would 
 see all the metaphysical distinctions between the cows in Mr. 
 Hook’s landscape, I need a more keen-sighted spectator’s 
 assistance to tell me, in Mr. Foster’s, whether those animals 
 on the opposite bank of the Mole are cows at all. If so, the 
 trunks of the trees in the hedge beyond are about twenty 
 yards in girth. What do our good water-color paintei-s mean 
 by wasting their time in things like this (and I could name 
 one or two who have done worse), for the sake of getting 
 their names into the Academy catalogue ? 
 
 69, 81. The Horse-dealer. Crossing the Moor, 
 
 I have not looked long enough at these to justify me in 
 saying more of them than that they should not be here on the 
 line. That much I mud say ; and emphatically, 
 
 265. (I venture to supply a title, the painter seeming to 
 have been at a loss.) A Wild Rose, remarkable in being left 
 on its stalk, demonstrates to the poet Campbell that there has 
 been a garden in this locality. 
 
 Little thought I, when I wrote the first line of ‘‘ Modern 
 Painters,” that a day would come when I should have to say 
 of a modern picture what I must say of this. When I began 
 my book, Wilkie was yet living ; and though spoiled by his 
 Spanish ambition, the master’s hand was yet unpalsied, nor 
 had lost its skill of practice in its pride. Turner was in his 
 main color-strength, and the dark room of the Academy had, 
 every year, its four or five painted windows, bright as the 
 jewel casements of Aladdin’s palace, and soft as a kingfisher’s 
 wings. Mulready was at the crowning summit of his laborious 
 skill ; and the “ Burchell and Sophia in the Hay field,” and 
 the ‘'Choosing of the Wedding Dress,” remain in my mind as 
 
202 N0TE8 ON THE PBINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 staDclards of English effort in rivalship with the best masters 
 of Holland. Constable’s clumsy hand was honest, and his 
 flickering sunshine fair. Stanfield, sea-bred, knew what a ship 
 was, and loved it ; knew what rocks and waves were, and 
 wrought out their strength and sway with steadiest will. 
 David Roberts, though utterly destitute of imagination, and 
 incapable of color, was at least a practised draughtsman in 
 his own field of architectural decoration ; loved his Burgos or 
 Seville cathedral fronts as a woman loves lace ; and drew the 
 details of Egyptian hieroglyph with dutiful patience, not to 
 show his own skill, but to keep witness of the antiquity he 
 had the wisdom to reverence ; while, not a hundred yards 
 from the Academy portico, in the room of the old water- 
 color, Lewis was doing work which surpassed, in execution, 
 everything extant since Carpaccio ; and Copley-Fielding, Rob- 
 son, Cox, and Prout were everyone of them, according to 
 their strength, doing true things with loving minds. 
 
 The like of these last-named men, in simplicity and tender^ 
 ness of natural feeling, expressing itself with disciplined 
 (though often narrow) skill, does not, so far as I can see, now 
 exist in the ranks of art-laborers ; and even of men doing 
 their absolute best according to their knowledge, it would be 
 difficult to find many among the most renowned exhibitors of 
 London and Paris ; while here, full on the line, with highest 
 Academic name, and hailed by explosive applause from the 
 
 whole nation, here is I cannot use strength of words 
 
 enough to tell you what it is, unless you will first ascertain 
 for yourselves what it is not. 
 
 Get what good you can of it, or anything else in the rooms 
 to-day ; but to-morrow, or when next you mean to come to the 
 Academy, go first for half an hour into the National Gallery, 
 and look closely and thoroughly at the painting of the soldier’s 
 helmet, and crimson plume in John Bellini’s Peter Martyr ; 
 at the horse-bridle in the large, nameless Venetian picture of 
 the Madonna and kneeling Knight ; at the herbage in tbe fore- 
 ground of Mantegna’s Madonna ; and at Titian’s columbines 
 and vine in the Bacchus and Ariadne. All these are examples 
 of true painter’s work in minor detail ; unsurpassable, but not, 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 
 
 203 
 
 by patience and modesty, inimitable. There was once a day 
 wlien the painter of this (soi-disant) landscape promised to do 
 work as good. If, coming straight from that to this, you like 
 this best, be properly thankful for the blessings of modern 
 science and art, and for all the good guidance of Kensington 
 and Messrs. Agnew. But if you think that the four-petalled 
 rose, the sprinkle of hips looking like ill-drawn heather, the 
 sundial looking like an ill-drawn fountain, the dirty birch-tree, 
 and the rest — whatever it is meant for — of the inarticulate 
 brown scrabble, are not likely to efface in the eyes of future 
 generations the fame of Venice and Etruria, you have always 
 the heroic consolation given you in the exclamation of the 
 Spectator — “If we must choose between a Titian and a Lan- 
 cashire cotton mill — give us the cotton mill.” 
 
 Literally, here you have your cotton mill employed in its 
 own Si^ecial Art-produce. Here you have, what was once the 
 bone and sinew of a great painter, ground and carded down 
 into black-podded broom-twigs. That is what has come to 
 pass upon him ; that, his finding on his “ r uinous walk ” over 
 the diabolic Tom Tidler’s ground of Manchester and Salford. 
 Threshed under the mammon flail into threads and dust, and 
 shodd}^-fodder for fools ; making manifest yet, with what rag- 
 ged remnant of painter’s life is in him, the results of mechani- 
 cal English labor on English land. Not here the garden of 
 the sluggard, green with frank weeds ; not here the garden of 
 the Deserted Village, overgrown with ungathered balm ; not 
 here the noble secrecy of a virgin country, where the falcon 
 floats and the wild goat plays ; but here the withering pleas- 
 ance of a fallen race, who have sold their hearths for money, 
 and their glory for a morsel of bread. 
 
 231. The Quarries of Holmeground. (J. S. Kaven.) 
 
 The painter has real feeling of the sublimity of hill forms, 
 and has made the most of his Langdale pikes. But it is very 
 wonderful that in all this Academy, so far as I have yet seen, 
 there is not a single patient study of a mossy rock. Now the 
 beauty of foreground stone is to be mossy, as the beauty of a 
 beast is to be furry ; and a quarried rock is to a natural one 
 
204 NOTES ON THE PFJNCTPAL PIGTUUES 
 
 what a skinned leopard is to a live one. Even if, as a simple 
 painter, and no huntsman, one liked one’s leopard or tiger 
 better dead than alive, at least let us have him dead in his 
 integrity ; or — if so much as that cannot be, — for pictorial 
 purpose it is better to have, as in No. 697, the skin without 
 the tiger, than, as here, the tiger without the skin. (No. 697, 
 by the w^ay, should have been named in the Natural History 
 class, for a good study as far as it reaches, and there may be 
 more substantial drawing in it than I can see at the height 
 where it is hung.) 
 
 Another sorrowful character in the mountain-painting of 
 this year, is the almost total absence of any attempt to ren- 
 der calm and full sunshine. 564 and 368 are, I think, the 
 only exceptions, though scarcely worth noticing except as 
 such ; unless the latter, for the extreme and singular beauty 
 of the natural scene it represents. The “Mountain Twilight,” 
 759, W. C. Eddington, is evidently a pure and careful study 
 of evening air among noble hills. What an incomparabl}’’ rid- 
 iculous mob this London mob is ! — to let some square leagues 
 of room lie about its metropolis in waste brick-field, and oc- 
 cupy immeasurable space of wall with advertisements of pills 
 and pictures of newly-opened shops ; and lift a lovely little 
 drawing like this simply — out of its way. 
 
 237. Richmond Hill. (Vicat Cole, A.) 
 
 The passages on the left, under the trees, of distant and 
 subdued light, in their well-studied perfection, are about the 
 most masterly things in landscape work in this exhibition ; 
 but has the painter never in his life seen the view from Rich- 
 mond Hill on a clear day ? Such a thing is still possible ; 
 and when it happens, is the time to paint that distance, or at 
 least (for the passages on the left imply mist), when the in- 
 distinctness of it may be in golden mist, not gas fume. The 
 last line quoted from Thomson seems to have been written 
 prophetically, to describe the England of our own day. But 
 Thomson was never thinking of real smoko when he wrote it. 
 He was as far from imagining that English landscape would 
 ever be stifled in floating filth, as that the seasons should 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 205 
 
 stop rolling, or April not know itself from November. He 
 means merely the warm mist of an extreme horizon ; and has 
 at least given us something to look at before we come to it. 
 What has Mr. Vicat Cole done with all those hills, and dales, 
 and woods, and lawns, and spires, which he leads us to ex- 
 pect ? 
 
 I think I never saw a large picture so much injured by a 
 little fault, as this is by the white wake of the farthest boat on 
 the river. As a fact, it is impossible ; as a white line, it cuts 
 all to pieces. 
 
 651. The Head of a Highland Glen. (F. C. Newcome.) 
 
 The best study of torrent, including distant and near water, 
 that I find in the rooms : 1075 has been most carefully and 
 admirably studied from nature by Mr. Raven : only what is 
 the use of trying to draw water with charcoal ? and what 
 makes nearly all the painters this year choose to paint their 
 streams in a rage, and foul with fiood, instead of in their beauty, 
 and constant beneficence ? Our manufacturers have still left, 
 in some parts of England and Scotland, streams of what may 
 be advertised in the bills of Natural Scenery as “ real water ; ” 
 and I myself know several so free from pollution that one can 
 sit near them wdth perfect safety, even when they are not in 
 flood. 
 
 The rest of this mountain scene by Mr. Newcome is also 
 carefully studied, and very right and good. 
 
 756. The Llugwy at Capel Curig. (I. J. Cuimock.) 
 
 I find this to be the most attentive and refined landscape of 
 all here ; too subdued in its tone for my own pleasure, but 
 skilful and affectionate in a high degree ; and one of the few 
 exceptions to my general statement above made ; for here is 
 a calm stream patiently studied. The distant woods and hills 
 are all very tender and beautiful. 
 
 636 is also a singularly careful and unassumingly true draw- 
 ing ; — but are the town and rail not disquieted enough, — that 
 we should get no rest in a village ? 
 
206 
 
 NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES 
 
 POLICY. 
 
 We finally inquire what our British artists have to say to us 
 on the subject of good Government, and its necessary results ; 
 — what triumph they express in the British Constitution and 
 its present achievements. 
 
 In old times, all gTeat artistic nations were pictorially talka- 
 tive, chiefiy, next to religion, on the subject of Government. 
 Venice, Florence, and Siena did little else than expound, in 
 figures and mythic types, the nature of civic dignity, states- 
 manly duty, and senatorial or soldierly honor ; and record, 
 year by year, tlie events conducive to their fame. 
 
 I have not exhaustively overlooked the Academy ; but, ex- 
 cept Miss Thomson’s study of a battle fought just “ sixty 
 years since,” — I find no English record of any important mili- 
 tary or naval achievement ; and the only exhibition of the 
 mode in which Britannia, at present rules the waves, is Mr. 
 Cooke’s ‘‘ Devastation ” being reviewed ; somewhat sable and 
 lugubrious as a national spectacle, dubious as a national 
 triumph, and to myself, neither in color nor sentiment enjoy- 
 able, as the pictures of Victorys and Temeraires one used to 
 see in days of simpler warfare. And of political achievement 
 there seems still less consciousness or regard in the British 
 artist ; so that future generations will ask in vain for any aid 
 to their imagination of the introduction of Dr. Kenealy to the 
 Speaker, or any other recent triumph of the British Consti- 
 tution. 
 
 The verdict of existing British Art on existing British 
 Policy is, therefore, if I understand it rightly, that we have 
 none ; but, in the battle of life, have arrived at declaration 
 of an universal Sauve qui pent ; — or explicitly, to all men. Do 
 as you like, and get what you can. Something other than this 
 may however be gathered, it seems to me, from the two records 
 given us of the war, — so unwise, and yet so loyal, — of sixty 
 years ago. 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 
 
 207 
 
 618. La Charge des Cuirassiers Fran 9 ais a Waterloo. (Phi- 
 lippoteau.) 
 
 This carefully studied and most skilful battle piece is but 
 too likely to be overlooked in the confused rush to Miss Thom- 
 son’s more attractive composition. And of all in the Academy, 
 this is the picture which an Englishman, of right feeling, would 
 least wish to overlook. I remember no so impartial and 
 faithful representation of an historical battle. I know no war- 
 painting by the artists of any great race, however modest, in 
 which the object has not hitherto been definitely — self-lauda- 
 tion. But here is a piece of true war-history, of which it is 
 not possible to say, by observance of any traceable bias, 
 whether a Frenchman or Englishman painted it. Such a 
 picture is more honorable to France than the taking of the 
 Malakoff. 
 
 I never approached a picture with more iniquitous prejudice 
 against it, than I did Miss Thomson’s ; partly because I have 
 always said that no woman could paint ; and secondly, because 
 I thought what the public made such a fuss about, mud be 
 good for nothing. 
 
 But it is Amazon’s work, this ; no doubt of it, and the first 
 fine pre-Eaphaelite * picture of battle we have had; — profoundly 
 interesting ; and showing all manner of illustrative and realis- 
 tic faculty. Of course, all that need be said of it, on this side, 
 must have been said twenty times over in the journals ; and it 
 remains only for me to make my tardy genuflection, on the 
 trampled corn, before this Pallas of Pall Mall ; — and to mur- 
 mur my poor words of warning to her, that she remember, in 
 her day of triumph, how it came to pass that Atlanta was 
 stayed and Camilla slain. 
 
 Camilla-like the work is—chiefly in its refinement, a quality 
 
 * Miss Thomson may perhaps not in the least know herself for a sister 
 of the school. But the entire power of her picture, as of her own mind, 
 depends first on her resolution to paint things as they really are, or 
 were; and not as they might he poetically fancied to he. See above, 
 the note on 218, p. 176. 
 
208 NOTES ON THE PBINGIPxXL PICTURES 
 
 I bad not in the least expected, for the cleverest women 
 almost always show their weakness in endeavors to be 
 dashing. But actually, here, what I suppose few people would 
 think of looking at, the sky, is the most tenderly j^ainted, and 
 with the truest outlines of cloud, of all in the exhibition ; — and 
 the terrific piece of gallant wrath and ruin on the extreme 
 right, where the cuirassier is catching round the neck of his 
 horse as he falls, and the convulsed fallen horse just seen 
 through the smoke below — is wrought, through all the truth 
 of its frantic passion, with gradations of color and shade 
 which I have not seen the like of since Turner’s death. 
 
 I place these two paintings under the head of “Policy,” be- 
 cause it seems to me that, especially before the Quatrebras, 
 one might wisely consider with IMr. Carlyle, and with one’s self, 
 what was the “ net upshot ” and meaning of our modern form 
 of the industry of war. Why should these wild and well- 
 meaning young Irish lads have been brought, at great expense, 
 all the way to Four Arms, merely to knock equally wild and 
 well-meaning young French lads out of their saddles into 
 their graves ; and take delight in doing so ? And why should 
 the English and French squires at the head of their regiments, 
 have, practically, no other object in life than deceiving these 
 poor boys, and an infinite mob besides of such others, to their 
 destruction ? 
 
 Think of it. Suppose this picture, as well as the one I was 
 so happy in praising of Mr. Collinson’s, had been called — as it 
 also, quite properly, might have been — “ Sunday Afternoon” 
 (only dating “June 18th, 1815”). Suppose the two had been 
 hung side by side. And, to complete our materials for medi- 
 tation, suppose Mr. Nicol’s “The Sabbath Day” (1159) — 
 which I observed the Daily Telegraph called an exquisitely 
 comic picture, but which I imagine Mr. Nicol meant for a se- 
 rious one — representing the conscientious Scottish mountain- 
 matron setting out for the place where she may receive her 
 cake of spiritual oatmeal, baken on the coals of Presbyterian 
 zeal ; suppose, I say, this ideal of Scottish Sabbath occu- 
 pation placed beside M. Philippoteau’s admirable painting of 
 the Highland regiment at evening missionary service, in that 
 
IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 
 
 209 
 
 sweet and fruitful foreign land ; while Miss Thomson enables 
 us also, thus meditating in our fields at eventide, to consider, 
 if not the Lilies, at least the Poppies of them ; and to under- 
 stand how in this manner of friction of ears of corn — by his 
 bent knees instead of his fingers — the modern Christian shows 
 that the Sabbatli was made for man, and not man for the Sab- 
 bath? 
 
 “ Well — and if this were so done, — should we not feel that 
 the peace of the cottage, and the honor of the mountain-side, 
 were guarded and won for them by that mighty Evening Ser- 
 vice, with the thunder of its funeral march rolled deep among 
 the purple clouds ? ” 
 
 No ! my soldier friends ; no ; do not think it. They were, 
 and are, guarded and won by silent virtues of the hearth and 
 the rock, whicli must endure until the time vdien the prayer 
 we pray in our every Sabbath Litany, to be delivered from 
 battle, murder, and sudden death — shall have been offered 
 with sincere hearts, fervently ; and so found its way at last 
 to the audience of Heaven. 
 
 NOTE TO PICTURE 518. 
 
 “ The rarity and grandeur of his character being that he was a Greek 
 in ideas and a Roman in action ; who really did, and abstained, strictly 
 to ideal, in a time when everybody else was sadly fallen from his ideal. 
 
 '■‘In 353 he is made Caesar (Constantius having no sons, and he 
 being last of his race); and from that to Constantius’ death in 361 he 
 has to fight the Franks and Alemaniii. During the last few years of 
 this time I find he lived mostly at Paris — that he fortified the ancient 
 Lutetia (ITle de la Cite), built the Thermae Juliani, the remains of which, 
 (Thermes de Julien) are still visible in the Rue de la Harpe, between 
 Palais de Cluny and Ecole de Mcdecine. Also, in a scarcity of corn 
 from inroads of the Germans, he got a great supply of corn from Eng- 
 land (calculated at 120,000 quarters once) — and fed people all along 
 
 the Rhine from Bingen to Cologne. He says (Epist. ii. ) he was a Christian 
 up to his twentieth year, 351 ; and he said nothing about his change (in 
 public) till 361. Then he felt himself the successor of M. Aurelius, and 
 seems to have gone to work in his determined, clear-sighted way. But 
 the Pagans seem to have been surprised at his faith as much as the 
 Christians at his apostasy. ” — Rev. R. St. J. Tyrwuitt. 
 
 14 
 

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NOTES BY MR. RUSKIN 
 
 ON 
 
 SAMUEL FLOUT 
 
 AND 
 
 WILLIAM HUNT, 
 
 ILLUSTHATED BY 
 
 A LOAN COLLECTION OF DEAWINGS 
 
 EXHIBITED AT 
 
 THE FINE ART SOCIETY'S GALLERIES, 
 
 148 NEW BOND STREET, 
 1879 ** 80 . 
 
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NOTE. 
 
 I HAVE to thank the kind friends who have contributed 
 drawings. I regret that very many of them have had to be 
 returned, simply because I had already to my hand examples 
 which sufficiently illustrated the lessons I wished to teach in 
 putting together these notes. 
 
 J. Ruskin. 
 
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PREFACE. 
 
 It has been only in compliance with the often and earnestly 
 urged request of my friend Mr. Marcus Huish, that I have 
 thrown the following notes together, on the works of two 
 artists belonging to a time wdth which nearly all associations 
 are now ended in the mind of general society ; and of which 
 my own memories, it seemed to me, could give little pleasure 
 (even if I succeeded in rendering them intelligible) to a public 
 indulged with far more curious arts, and eager for otherwise 
 poignant interests than those which seemed admirable, — • 
 though not pretending to greatness, and were felt to be delight- 
 ful, — though not provoking enthusiasm, in the quiet and 
 little diverted lives of the English middle classes, “ sixtj^ years 
 since.” 
 
 It is especially to be remembered that drawings of this sim- 
 ple character were made for the same middle classes, exclu- 
 sively : and even for the second order of the middle classes, 
 more accurately expressed by the term bourgeoisie.” The 
 great people always bought Canaletto, not Prout, and Van 
 Huysum, not Hunt. There was indeed no quality in the 
 bright little water-colors, which could look other than pert 
 in ghostly corridors, and petty in halls of state ; but they 
 gave an unquestionable tone of liberal-mindedness to a subur- 
 ban villa, and w'ere the cheerfullest possible decorations for a 
 moderate-sized breakfast parlor, opening on a nicely mown 
 lawn. Their liveliness even rose, on occasion, to the charity 
 of beautifjdng the narrow chambers of those whom business 
 or fixed habit still retained in the obscurity of London itself ; 
 and I remember with peculiar respect the pride of a benevo- 
 lent physician, who never would exchange his neighborhood 
 
216 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 to the poor of St. Giles’s for the lucrative lustre of a West 
 End Square, in wreathing his tiny little front drawing-room 
 with Hunt’s loveliest apple-blossom, and taking the patients 
 for whom he had prescribed fresh air, the next instant on a 
 little visit to the country. 
 
 Nor was this adaptation to the tastes and circumstances of 
 the London citizen, a constrained or obsequious compliance 
 on the part of the kindly artists. They were themselves, in 
 mind, as in habits of life, completely a part of the character- 
 istic metropolitan population whom an occasional visit to the 
 Continent always thrilled with surprise on finding themselves 
 again among persons who familiarly spoke French ; and whose 
 summer holidays, though more customaiy, amused them nev- 
 ertheless with the adventure, and beguiled them with the pas- 
 toral charm, of an uninterrupted picnic. Mr. Prout lived at 
 Brixton, just at the rural extremity of Cold Harbor Lane, 
 where the spire of Brixton church, the principal architectural 
 ornament of the neighborhood, could not but greatly exalt, 
 by comparison, the impressions received from that of Stras- 
 burg Cathedral, or the Hotel de Ville of Bruxelles ; and Mr. 
 Hunt, though often in the spring and summer luxuriating in 
 country lodgings, was only properly at home in the Hamp- 
 stead road,"*" and never painted a cluster of nuts without some 
 expression, visible enough by the manner of their presenta- 
 tion, of the pleasure it was to him to see them in the shell, 
 instead of in a bag at the greengrocer’s. 
 
 The lightly rippled level of this civic life lay, as will be 
 easily imagined, far beneath the distractions, while it main- 
 tained itself meekly, yet severely, independent of the advan- 
 tages held out by the social system of what is most reverently 
 called “ Town.” Neither the disposition, the health, nor the 
 means of either artist admitted of their spending their even- 
 ings, in general, elsewhere than by their own firesides ; nor 
 could a spring levee of English peeresses and foreign ambas- 
 sadors be invited by the modest painter whose only studio 
 was his little back-parlor, commanding a partial view of the 
 
 See his own inscription, with London in capitals, under No, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 2ir 
 
 scullery steps and the water-buti The fluctuations of moral 
 and msthetic sentiment in the public mind were of small 
 moment to the humble colorist, who depended only on the 
 consistency of its views on the subject of early strawberries ; 
 and the thrilling subjects presented by the events or politics 
 of the day were equally indifferent to the designer who in- 
 vited interest to nothing later than the architecture of the 
 15th century. Even the treasures of scientific instruction, 
 and marvels of physical discovery, were without material in- 
 fluence on the tranquillity of the tw^o native painters’ unedu- 
 cated skill. Prout drew every lovely street in Europe with- 
 out troubling himself to learn a single rule of perspective ; 
 while Hunt painted mossy banks for five-and-twenty years 
 without ever caring to know a Sphagnum from a Polypody, 
 and embossed or embowered his birds’ eggs to a perfection, 
 which Greek connoisseurs would have assured us the mother 
 had unsuspectingly sate on — without enlarging his range of 
 ornithological experience beyond the rarities of tomtit and 
 hedge-sparrow. 
 
 This uncomplaining resignation of patronage, and unblush- 
 ing blindness to instruction, were allied, in both painters, 
 with a steady consistency in technical practice, which, from 
 the first, and to the last, precluded both from all hope of pro- 
 motion to the honors, as it withheld them from the peril of 
 entanglement in the rivalries, connected with the system 
 of exhibition in the Poyal Academy. Mr. Prout’s method of 
 Avork was entirely founded on the quite elementary qualities 
 of Avhite paper and black Cumberland lead ; and expressly 
 terminated Avithin the narroAv range of prismatic effects pro- 
 ducible by a brown or blue outline, with a Avash of ochre or 
 cob:dt. Mr. Hunt’s early draAvings depended for their pecul- 
 iar charm on the most open and simple management of trans- 
 parent color ; and his later ones, for their highest attain- 
 ments, on the flexibility of a pigment which yielded to the 
 slightest touch and softest motion of a hand always more sen- 
 sitive than firm. The skill which unceasing practice, Avithin 
 limits thus modestly unrelaxed, and with facilities of instru- 
 ment thus openly confessed, enabled each draughtsman in his 
 
218 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 special path to attain, was exerted with a vividness of instinct 
 somewhat resembling that of animals, only in the slightest 
 degree conscious of praiseworthiness, but animated by a 
 healthy complacency, as little anxious for external sympathy 
 as the self-content of a bee in the translucent symmetry of its 
 cell, or of a chaffinch in the silvery tracery of her nest — and 
 uniting, through the course of their uneventful and active 
 lives, the frankness of the bird with the industry of the in- 
 sect. 
 
 In all these points of view the drawings to which I venture, 
 not without hesitation, to call the passing attention of the 
 public, can claim regard only as examples of genius both nar- 
 rowed and depressed ; yet healthy enough to become more 
 elastic under depression ; and scintillant enough to be made 
 more vivid by contraction. But there are other respects in 
 which these seemingly unimportant works challenge graver 
 study ; and illustrate phases of our own national mind — I 
 might perhaps say, even of national civilization — which coin- 
 cide wuth many curious changes in social feelings ; and may 
 lead to results not easily calculable in social happiness. 
 
 If the reader has any familiarity with the galleries of paint- 
 ing in the great cities of Europe, he cannot but retain a 
 clear, though somewhat monotonously calm, impression of the 
 character of those polished flower-pieces, or still-life pieces, 
 which occupy subordinate corners in their smaller rooms ; 
 and invite to moments of repose, or frivolity, the attention 
 and imagination which have been wearied in admiring the at- 
 titudes of heroism, and sympathizing with the sentiments of 
 piety. Recalling to his memory the brightest examples of 
 these which his experience can supply, he will find that all 
 the older ones agree — if flower-pieces — in a certain courtli- 
 ness and formality of arrangement, implying that the highest 
 honors which flowers can attain are in being wreathed into 
 grace of garlands, or assembled in variegation of bouquets, 
 for the decoration of beauty, or flattery of noblesse. If fruit 
 or still-life pieces, they agree no less distinctly in directness 
 of reference to the supreme hour when the destiny of digni- | 
 fied fruit is to be accomplished in a royal dessert ; and the | 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 210 
 
 furred and feathered life of hill and forest may bear witness 
 to the Wisdom of Providence by its extinction for the kitchen 
 dresser. 
 
 Irrespectively of these ornamental virtues, and culinary 
 utilities, the painter never seems to perceive any conditions 
 of beauty in the things themselves, wdiich would make them 
 worth regard for their own sake: nor, even in these appointed 
 functions, are they ever supposed to be worth j^ainting, un- 
 less the pleasures they procure be distinguished as those of 
 the most exalted society. No artists of the old school would 
 ever think of constructing a subject out of the herbs of a cot- 
 tage garden, or viands of a rural feast. Whatever interest 
 was then taken in the life of the lower orders involved always 
 some reference to their rudenesses or vices ; and rarely exhib- 
 its itself in any other expression than that of contempt for 
 their employments, and reproach to their recreation. 
 
 In all such particulars the feelings shown in the w^orks of 
 Hunt, and of the school with which he was associated, direct- 
 ly reverse those of the preceding age. So far from being 
 garlanded into any polite symmetry, his primroses fresh from 
 the bank, and hawthorns white from the hedge, confess at 
 once their artless origin in tlie village lane— have evidently 
 been gathered only at the choice, and thrown dowm at the 
 caprice, of the farmer’s children, and cheerfully disclaim all 
 hope of ever contributing to the splendors or felicities of the 
 great. The bloom with which he bedews the grape, the 
 frosted gold with wdiich he frets the pine, are spent chiefly 
 to show what a visible grace there is in the fruits of the earth, 
 which we may sometimes feel that it is rude to touch, and 
 swinish to taste ; and the tenderness of hand and thought 
 that soothe the rose-gray breast of the fallen dove, and weave 
 the conch of moss for its quiet wings, propose no congratula- 
 lation to the spectator on the future flavor of the bird in a 
 pie. 
 
 It is a matter of extreme difficulty, but of no less interest, 
 to distinguish, in this order of painting, ^vhat part of it has 
 its origin in a plebeian — not to say vulgar — simplicit}% wdiich 
 education would have invested with a severer charm ; and 
 
220 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 what part is grounded on a real sense of natural beauty, more 
 pure and tender than could be discerned amid the luxury of 
 courts, or stooped to by the pride of nobles. 
 
 For an especial instance, the drawing of the interior, No, 
 174, may be taken as a final example of the confidence which 
 the painter felt in his power of giving some kind of interest 
 to the most homely objects, and rendering the transitions of 
 ordinary light and shade impressive, though he had nothing 
 more sacred to illuminate than a lettuce, and nothing more 
 terrible to hide than a reaping-hook. The dim light from 
 the flint-glass window, and the general disposition and scale 
 of the objects it falls on, remind me sometimes, however un- 
 reasonably, of the little oratory into which the deeply-worn 
 steps ascend from the Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick. But 
 I know perfectly well, and partly acknowledge the rightness of 
 his judgment, though I cannot analyze it, that Hunt would no 
 more have painted that knightly interior instead of this, Muth 
 helmets lying about instead of saucepans, and glowing herald- 
 ries staying the light instead of that sea-green lattice, than 
 he would have gone for a walk round his farm in a court 
 dress. 
 
 “ Plebeian- — not to say vulgar ” — choice ; but I fear that 
 even “vulgar,” with full emphasis, must be said sometimes 
 in the end. Not that a pipkin of cream in Devonshire is to 
 be thought of less reverently than a vase of oil or canister of 
 bread in Attica ; but that the English dairy-maid in her way 
 can hold her own with the Attic Canephora, and the peasant 
 children of all countries where leaves are green and waters 
 clear, possess a grace of their own no less divine than that of 
 branch and wave. And it is to bo sorrowfully confessed that 
 the good old peach and apple painter was curiously insensible 
 to this brighter human beauty, and though he could scarcely 
 pass a cottage door around his Berkshire home without seeing 
 groups of which Correggio would have made Cupids, and 
 Luini cherubs, turned away from them all, to watch the rough 
 plough-boy at his dinner, or enliven a study of his parlor- 
 maid at her glass (158), with the elegance of a red and green 
 pincushion. 
 
' PREFACE. 
 
 221 
 
 And yet, for all this, the subtle sense of beauty above re- 
 ferred to was always in his mind, and may be proved, and 
 partly illustrated, by notice of two very minute, but very 
 constant, differences between his groups of still life and 
 those of the Dutch painters. In every flower-piece of 
 pretension, by the masters of that old school, two accessory 
 points of decoration are never absent. The first of these is 
 the dew-drop, or rain-drop — it may be two or three drops, of 
 either size, on one of the smoothest petals of the central 
 flower. This is always, and quite openly, done to show how 
 well the painter can do it — not in the least with any enjoy- 
 ment of wetness in the flower. The Dutchman never got a 
 wet flower to paint from. He had his exquisite and exem- 
 plary poppy or tulip brought in from the market as he had 
 occasion, and put on its dew-drops for it as a lady’s dressing- 
 maid puts on her diamonds, merely for state. But Hunt saw 
 the flowers in his little garden really bright in the baptismal 
 dawn, or drenched with the rain of noontide, and knew that 
 no mortal could paint any real likeness of that heaven-shed 
 light — and never once attempted it ; you will find nothing 
 in any of his pictures merely put on that you may try to 
 wipe it off. 
 
 But there was a further tour -cl enforce demanded of the 
 Dutch workman, without which all his happiest preceding 
 achievements would have been unacknowledged. Not only a 
 dew-drop, but, in some depth of bell, or cranny of leaf, a 
 bee, or a fly, was needful for the complete satisfaction of the 
 connoisseur. In the articulation of the fly’s legs, or neurog- 
 raphy of the bee’s wings, the Genius of painting was sup- 
 posed to signify her accepted disciples ; and their w^ork went 
 forth to the European world, thenceforward, without ques- 
 tion, as worthy of its age and country. But, without recog- 
 nizing in myself, or desiring to encourage in my scholars, 
 any unreasonable dislike or dread of the lower orders of 
 living ereatures, I trust that the reader will feel with me that 
 none of Mr. Hunt’s peaches or plums would be made daintier 
 by the detection on them of even the most cunningly latent 
 wasp, or cautiously rampant caterpillar ; and will accept, 
 
222 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 •without so much opposition as it met with forty years ago, 
 my then first promulgated, but steadily since repeated asser- 
 tion, that the “ modern painter ” had in these matters less 
 vanity than the ancient one, and better taste. 
 
 Another interesting evidence of Hunt’s feeling for beauty 
 is to be found in the unequal distribution of his pains to 
 different parts of his subject. This is indeed, one of the 
 peculiar characteristics of our modern manner, and in the 
 abstract, not a laudable one. All the old masters, without 
 exception, complete their pictures from corner to corner with 
 a strictly driven level of deliberation ; and whether it be a 
 fold of drapery, a blade of grass, or a wreath of cloud, on 
 which they are subordinately occupied, the pencil moves 
 at the same tranquil pace, and the qualities of the object are 
 rendered with the same fixed attention. In this habitual 
 virtue, the dull and the brilliant, the weak and the mighty, 
 concur without exception ; holding it for their first point of 
 honor to be thorough craftsmen ; and to carry on the so- 
 licitude of their skill throughout the piece, as an armorer 
 would hammer a corslet, or a housewife knit a stocking, 
 leaving no edge unternpered, and no thread unfastened. 
 Modern petulance and incompetence lead, on the contrary, 
 to the flaunting of dexterity in one place, and the pretence 
 of ease in another — complete some portions of the subject 
 with hypocritical affection, and abandon others in ostenta- 
 tious contempt. In some few cases, the manner arises from 
 a true eagerness of imagination, or kindly and natural desire 
 for sympathy in particular likings ; but in the plurality of 
 instances, the habit allies itself with mistaken principles of 
 art, and protects impatience and w^ant of skill under the 
 shield of philosophy. 
 
 Few' modern pieces of oil-painting are more accomplished 
 or deliberate than those of Meissonier : and in the example 
 placed on the table in the centre of the room, his subject w'as 
 one wdiich he certainly would not have treated, consciously, 
 with prosaic indignity of manner, or injurious economy of 
 toil. Yet the inequality of workmanship has depressed what 
 might have been a most sublime picture almost to the level of 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 223 
 
 a scenic effect. The dress of the Emperor and housings of 
 his steed are wrought with the masters utmost care : but the 
 landscape is nearly unintelligible, and the ground a mere 
 conventional diaper of feeble green and gray. 
 
 It is difficult to describe the height to which the picture 
 would have risen above its present power, if a ruined French 
 village had been represented with Flemish precision amidst 
 the autumnal twilight of the woods ; and the ground over 
 which the wearied horse bears his dreaming rider, made 
 lovely with its native wild-flowers. 
 
 In all such instances, the hold which a true sense of beauty 
 has over the painter’s mind may be at once ascertained by 
 observing the nature of the objects to which his pains have 
 been devoted. No master with a fine instinct for color would 
 spend his time with deliberate preference on the straps and 
 buckles of modern horse-furniture, rather than on the sur- 
 rounding landscape or foreground flowers, though in a subject 
 like this he would have felt it right to finish both, to the 
 spectator’s content, if not to his amazement. And among the 
 numerous rustic scenes by Hunt which adorn these walls, 
 though all are painted with force and spirit, none are recom- 
 mended to our curiosity by an elaborate finish given to 
 ungraceful objects. His final powers are only employed on 
 motives like the dead doves in Nos. 139 and 145, accompanied 
 by incidents more or less beautiful and seemlj^ 
 
 I must even further guard my last sentence, by the admis- 
 sion that the means by which his utmost intentions of finish are 
 accomplished, can never, in the most accurate sense, be termed 
 “elaborate.” When the thing to be represented is minute, 
 the touches which express it are necessarily minute also ; 
 they cannot be bold on the edge of a nutshell, nor free 
 within the sphere of a bird’s nest ; but they are always frank 
 and clear, to a degree which may seem not only imperfect, 
 but even harsh or offensive, to eyes trained in more tender or 
 more formal schools. This broken execution by detached 
 and sharply defined touches became indeed, in process of 
 years, a manner in which the painter somewliat too visibly 
 indulged, or prided himself ; but it had its origin and author- 
 
224 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 ity in the care with which he followed the varieties of color 
 in the shadow, no less than in the lights, of even the smallest 
 objects. It is easy to obtain smoothness and unity of grada- 
 tion when working with a single tint, but if all accidents of 
 local color and all differences of hue between direct and re- 
 flected light are to be rendered with absolute purity, some 
 breaking of the texture becomes inevitable. In many cases, 
 also, of the most desirable colors, no pigments mixed on the 
 palette, but only interlaced touches of pure tints on the pa- 
 per, will attain the required effect. The indefinable primrose 
 color, for instance, of the glazed porringer in the foreground 
 of No. 174 could not possibly have been given with a mixed 
 tint. The breaking of gray through gold by which it has 
 been reached is one of the prettiest pieces of work to be seen 
 in these rooms ; it exhibits the utmost skill of the artist, and 
 is an adequate justification of his usual manner. 
 
 Among the earliest statements of principles of art made in 
 the “ Stones of Venice,” one of those chiefly fortunate in obtain- 
 ing credit with my readers was the course of argument urg- 
 ing frankness in the confession of the special means by which 
 an}^ artistic result has been obtained, and of the limitations 
 which these appointed instruments, and the laws proper to 
 the use of them, set to its scope. Thus the threads in tapes- 
 liy, the tesserge in mosaic, the joints of the stones in masonry, 
 and the movements of the pencil in painting, are shown with- 
 out hesitation by the greatest masters in those arts, and often 
 enforced and accented by the most ingenious ; while endeavors 
 to conceal them — as to make needlework look like pencilling, 
 or efface, in painting, the rugged freedom or joyful lightness 
 of its handiwork into the deceptive image of a natural surface, 
 are, without any exception, signs of declining intelligence, 
 and benumbed or misguided feelings. 
 
 I therefore esteem Hunt’s work all the more exemplary in 
 acknowledging without disguise the restrictions imposed on 
 the use of water-color as a medium for vigorously realistic 
 effects : and I have placed pieces of it in my Oxford school as 
 standards of imitative (as distinguished from decorative) 
 color, in the rightness and usefulness of which I have every 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 225 
 
 day more confirmed trust. I am aware of no other pieces of 
 art, in modern days, at once so sincere and so accomplished : 
 only let it be noted that I use the term “ sincere ”in this case, 
 not as imputing culpable fallacy to pictures of more imagin- 
 ative power, but only as implying the unbiassed directness of 
 aim at the realization of very simple facts, which is often 
 impossible to the passions, or inconsistent with the plans, of 
 greater designers. 
 
 In more cautiously guarded terms of praise, and with far 
 less general proposal of their peculiar qualities for imitation, 
 I have }xt, both in my earlier books, and in recent lectures at 
 Oxford, spoken of the pencil sketches of Prout with a rever- 
 ence and enthusiasm which it is my chief personal object in 
 the present^ exhibition to justify, or at least to explain ; so 
 that future readers may not be offended, as I have known 
 some former ones to be, by expressions which seemed to them 
 incompatible with the general tenor of my teaching. 
 
 It is quite true that my feelings toward this painter are 
 much founded on, or at least colored by, early associations ; 
 but I have never found the memories of my childhood beguile 
 me into any undue admiration of the architecture in Billiter 
 Street or Brunswick Square ; and I believe the characters 
 which first delighted me in the drawings of this — in his path 
 unrivalled — artist, deserve the best attention and illustration 
 of which in my advanced years I am capable. 
 
 The little drawing, No. 95, bought, I believe, by my grand- 
 father, hung in the corner of our little dining parlor at Herne 
 Hill as early as I can remember ; and had a most fateful and 
 continual power over my childish mind. Men are made what 
 they finally become, only by the external accidents which are 
 in harmony with their inner nature. I was not made a stu- 
 dent of Gothic merely because this little drawing of Front’s 
 was the first I knew ; but the hereditary love of antiquity, 
 and thirst for country life, which were as natural to me as a 
 little jackdaw’s taste for steeples, or dabchick’s for reeds, 
 were directed and tempered in a very definite way by the 
 qualities of this single and simple drawing. 
 
 In the first place, it taught me generally to like ruggedness ; 
 
 15 
 
226 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 and the conditions of joint in moulding, and fitting of stones 
 in walls which were most weather-worn, and like the gray 
 dykes of a Cumberland hill-side. This predilection — passion, 
 I might more truly call it — holds me yet so strongly, that I 
 can never quite justly conceive the satisfaction of the original 
 builders, even of the most delicate edifice, in seeing its come- 
 ly stones .well set together. Giotto’s tower, and the subtly 
 Cyclopean walls of early Yerona, have indeed chastised the 
 prejudice out of me, so far as regards work in marble enriched 
 with mosaic and pure sculpture ; but I had almost rather see 
 Furness or Fountains Abbey strewed in grass-grown heaps 
 by their brooksides, than in the first glow and close setting 
 of their fresh-hewn sandstone. "Whatever is rationally justi- 
 fiable in this feeling, so far as it is dependent on just rever- 
 ence for the signs of antiquity, and may therefore be trusted 
 to, as existing generally in the minds of persons of thought- 
 ful temperament, was enough explained, long ago, in the pas- 
 sages of the “Seven Lamps of Architecture,” which, the book 
 not being now generally accessible, I reprint in Appendix I. ; 
 but openness of joints and roughness of masonry are not 
 exclusively signs of age or decay in buildings : and I did not at 
 that time enough insist on the propriety, and even the grace, 
 of such forms of literal “ rustication ” * as are compelled 
 by coarseness of materials, and plainness of builders, when 
 proper regard is had to economy, and just honor rendered to 
 provincial custom and local handicraft. These are now so 
 little considered that the chief difficulties I have had in the 
 minute architectural efforts possible at Brantwood have been 
 to persuade my Coniston builder into satisfaction with Conis- 
 ton slate ; and retention of Coniston manners in dressing — or 
 rather, leaving undressed — its primitively fractured edges. If 
 I ever left him alone for a day, some corner stone was sure to 
 be sent for from Bath or Portland, and the ledges I had left 
 
 * All the forms of massive foundation, of which the aspect, in build- 
 ings of pretension, has been described by this word, took their origin 
 from the palaces in Florence, whose foundations were laid with nn- 
 chiselled blocks of the gray gritstone of Fesole, and looked like a piece 
 of its crags. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 227 
 
 to invite stonecrop and swallows, trimmed away in the ad- 
 vanced style of the railway station at Carnforth. 
 
 There is more, however, to be noted in this little old-fash- 
 ioned painting, than mere delight in weedy eaves and mortar- 
 less walls. Pre-eminently its repose in such placid subjects of 
 thought as the cottage, and its neighboring wood, contain for 
 an easily-pleased observer, without the least recommendation 
 of them by graceful incident, or plausible story. If we can be 
 content with sunshine on our old brown roof, and the sober 
 green of a commonplace English wood, protected by a still 
 more commonplace tarred paling, and allowing the fancy there- 
 fore not to expatiate even so far as the hope of a walk in it — it 
 is well ; — and if not, — poor Prouthas no more to offer us, and 
 V\^ill not even concede the hope that one of those diagouall}'- 
 dressed children may be the least pretty, or provoke us, by the 
 gleam of a ribbon, or quaintness of a toy, into asking so much 
 as what the itinerant pedler has in his basket. 
 
 I was waiting for a train the other day at Dover, and in an 
 old-fashioned print-shop on the hill up to the Priory station, 
 saw a piece of as old-fashioned picture-making, elaborately en- 
 graved, and of curious interest to me, at the moment, with 
 reference to my present essa3^ It belonged to the dull British 
 school wdiich was founded on conscientious following of the 
 miniature methods and crowded incidents of Dutch painting ; 
 and always dutifully proposed to give the spectator as much 
 entertainment as could be collected into the given space of can- 
 vas. There was an ideal village street to begin with, the first 
 cottage gable at the corner having more painting (and very 
 good and pretty painting) spent on the mere thatch of it, than 
 there is in the entire Prout drawing under our notice. Be- 
 yond the laborious gable came some delicately-branched trees ; 
 and then the village street, in and out, half-a-mile long, witli 
 shops, and signs, and what not ; and then the orthodox church- 
 steeple, and then more trees, and then a sky with rolling white 
 clouds after Wouvermaus ; — but all this, though the collected 
 quantity of it would have made half-a-dozen country villages, 
 if well pulled out, was only the beginning of the subject. 
 Gable, street, church, rookery, and sky, were all, in the paint- 
 
228 
 
 PEE FA CE. 
 
 er’s mind, too thin and spare entertainment. So out of the 
 gable-window looked a frightened old woman — out of the cot- 
 tage-door rushed an angry old man ; over the garden palings 
 tumbled two evil-minded boys, — after the evil-minded boys 
 rushed an indignantly-minded dog ; and in the centre of the 
 foreground, cynosure of the composition, were, a couple of 
 fighting-cocks, — one fallen, the other crowing for conquest ; — 
 highly finished, both, from wattle to spur. And the absolute 
 pictorial value of the whole, — church and sky — village and 
 startled inhabitants — vagabond boys — vindictive dog — and 
 victorious bird (the title of the picture being “ The Moment of 
 Victory ”) — the intrinsic value of the whole, I say, being — not 
 the twentieth part of a Hunt’s five-minute sketch of one cock’s 
 feather. 
 
 And yet it w^as all prettil}" painted, — as I said ; and possessed 
 every conceivable quality that can be taught in a school, or 
 bought for money : and the artist who did it had probably in 
 private life, a fair average quantity of sense and feeling, but 
 had left both out of his picture, in order to imitate what he 
 had been taught was fine, and produce what he expected would 
 pay. 
 
 Take another instance, more curious, and nearer to matters 
 in hand. The little photograpli. No. 117, was made in 1858 
 (by my own setting of the camera), in the court-yard of one of 
 the prettiest yet remaining fragments of 15th century domes- 
 tic buildings in Abbeville. The natural vine-leaves consent in 
 grace and glow with the life of the old wood carving ; and 
 though the modern white porcelain image ill replaces the re- 
 volution-deposed Madonna, and only pedestals of saints, and 
 canopies, are left on the propping beams of the gateway ; and 
 though the cask, and cooper’s tools, and gardener’s spade and 
 ladder are little in accord with what was once stately in the 
 gate, and graceful in the winding stair, — the declining shadows 
 of the past mingle with the hardship of the present day in no 
 unkindly sadness ; and the little angle of courtyard, if tenderly 
 painted in the depression of its fate, has enough still to occupy 
 as much of our best thought as may be modestly claimed for 
 his picture by any master not of the highest order. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 229 
 
 But these motives of wise and gentle feeling would not ap- 
 peal to the public mind in competitive exhibition. Such ef- 
 forts as are made by our own landscapists to keep record of 
 any fast vanishing scenes of the kind, are scarcely with good- 
 will accepted even in our minor art galleries : and leave to share 
 in tlie lustre of the Parisian “ Salon de 1873 ” could only be 
 hoped for by the author of the composition from which the 
 photograph, No. 118, is taken, on condition of his giving 
 pungency to the feeble savor of architectural study by a con- 
 diment of love, assassination, and despair. 
 
 It will not, I trust, be supposed that in anything I have said, 
 or may presently further say, I have the smallest intention of 
 diminishing the praise of nobly dramatic or pathetic pictures. 
 The best years of my life have been spent in the endeavor to 
 illustrate the neglected greatest of these, in Venice, Milan, and 
 Home : while my last and most deliberate writings have lost 
 much of their influence with the public by disagreeably insist- 
 ing that the duty of a great painter was rather to improve 
 them, than amuse. But it remains always a sure elementary 
 principle that interest in the story of pictures does not in the 
 least signify a relative interest in the art of painting, or in the 
 continual beauty and calm virtue of nature : and that the 
 ■wholesomest manner in which the intelligence of young people 
 can be developed (I may say, even, the intelligence of modest 
 old people cultivated), in matters of this kind, is by induc- 
 ing them accurately to understand what painting is as mere 
 painting, and music as mere music, before they are ]ed into 
 further question of the uses of either, in policy, morals, or 
 religion. 
 
 And I cannot but recollect with feelings of considerable re- 
 freshment, in these days of the deep, the lofty, and the mys- 
 terious, what a simple company of connoisseurs we were, who 
 crowded into happy meeting, on the first Mondays in Mays of 
 long ago, in the bright large room of the old Water-color 
 Society ; and discussed, with holiday gayety, the unimposing 
 merits of the favorites, from whose pencils w^e knew precisely 
 what to expect, and by whom w’e were never either disap- 
 pointed or surprised. Copley Fielding used to paint fishing- 
 
230 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 bofits for ns, m a fresh breeze, “ Off Dover,” Off Ramsgate,” 
 
 Off the Needles,” — off everywhere on the .south coast where 
 anybody had been last autumn ; but we were always kept pleas- 
 antly ill sight of land, and never saw so much as a gun fired in 
 distress. Mr. Robson would occasionally paint a Bard, on a 
 lieathery crag* in Wales ; or — it might be — a Lady of the Lake 
 on a similar piece of Scottish foreground, — “ Benvenue in the 
 distance.” A little fighting', in the time of Charles the First, 
 was permitted to Mr. Cattermole ; and Mr. Cristall would some- 
 times invite virtuous sympathy to attend the meeting of two 
 lovers at a Wishing gate or a Holy well. But the furthest 
 flights even of these poetical members of the Society were 
 seldom beyond the confines of the British Islands ; the vague 
 dominions of the air, and vasty ones of the deep, were held to 
 be practically unvoyageable by our un-Dsedal pinions, and on 
 the safe level of our native soil, the sturdy statistics of Mr. Do 
 Wint, and blunt pastorals of Mr. Cox, restrained within the 
 limits of probability and sobriety, alike the fancy of the idle, 
 and the ambition of the vain. 
 
 It became, however, by common and tacit consent, Mr. 
 Front’s privilege, and it remained his privilege exclusively, to' 
 introduce foreign elements of romance and amazement into 
 this — perhaps slightly fenny — atmosphere, of English common 
 sense. In contrast with our Midland locks and barges, his 
 “ On the Grand Canal, Venice,” was an Arabian enchantment ; 
 among the mildly elegiac country churchyards of Llangollen 
 or Stoke Pogis, his “ Sepulchral Monuments at Verona ” were 
 Shakespearian tragedy ; and to us who had just come into the 
 room out of Finsbury or Mincing Lane, his “ Street in Nurem- 
 burg ” was a German fairy tale. But we none of us recognized, 
 then (and I know not how far any of us recognize 3’et), that 
 these feelings of ours were dependent on the mediation of a 
 genius as earnest as it was humble, doing work not in its es- 
 sence romantic at all ; but, on the contrary, the only quite use- 
 ful, faithful, and evermore serviceable work that the Society— 
 by hand of any of its members — had ever done, or could ever, 
 in that phase of its existence, do : containing, moreover, a 
 statement of certain social facts only to be gathered, and image 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 231 
 
 of certain pathetic beauties only to be seen, at that particular 
 moment in the history of (what we are pleased to call) civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 “ As earnest,” I repeat, — ‘ ‘ as it was humble.” The drawings 
 actually shown on the Exhibition walls gave no sufficient clue 
 to Prout’s real character, and no intimation whatever of his 
 pauseless industry. He differed, in these unguessed methods 
 of toil, wholly from the other members of the Society. De 
 Wint’s morning and afternoon sketches from nature, with a 
 few solidifying touches, were at once ready for their frames. 
 Fielding’s misty downs and dancing seas were softened into 
 their distances of azure, and swept into their hollows of foam, 
 at his ease, in his study, with conventional ability, and 
 lightly burdened memoiy. Hunt’s models lay on the little 
 table at his side all day ; or stood as long as he liked by the 
 barn-door, for a penny. But Prout’s had to be far sought, and 
 with difficulty detailed and secured : the figures gliding on the 
 causeway or mingling in the market-place, stayed not his leis- 
 ure ; and his drawings prepared for the Water-color room 
 were usually no more than mechanical abstracts, made abso- 
 lutel}" for support of his household, from the really vivid 
 sketches which, with the whole instinct and joy of his nature, 
 he made all through the cities of ancient Christendom, with- 
 out an instant of flagging energy, and without a thought of 
 money payment. They became to him afterward a precious 
 librai\y, of which he never parted with a single volume as long 
 as he lived. But it was the necessary consequence of the devo- 
 tion of his main strength to the obtaining of these studies, that 
 at his death they remained a principal part of the provision 
 left for his family, and were therefore necessarily scattered. 
 I cannot conceive any object more directly tending to the 
 best interests of our students, both in art and history, than 
 the reassembling a chosen series of them for the nation, as 
 opportunity may be given. 
 
 Let me, however, before entering on any special notice of 
 those which Mr. Huish has been able at this time (and, I my- 
 self, by the good help of the painter’s son, Mr. Gillespie Prout), 
 to obtain for exhibition, state in all clearness the terms under 
 
232 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 wliicli they should be judged, and may be enjoyed. For just 
 as we ought not to match a wood-block of Bewick’s against a 
 fresco by Correggio, Ave must not compare a pencil outline of 
 Front’s with any such ideals of finished street effect as Flem- 
 ish painting once produced. Front is not a colorist, nor, in 
 any extended or complete sense of the word, a painter. He 
 is essentially a draughtsman with the lead-pencil, as Durer 
 Avas essentially a draughtsman with the burin, and Bewick on 
 the AA^ood-block. And the chief art-virtue of the pieces here 
 exhibited is the intellectual abstraction which represents 
 many features of things with few lines. 
 
 Take the little vieAV in Amiens, No. 7, shoAving the west 
 front of the cathedral in the distance. That front is enriched 
 with complex ranks of arcade and pinnacle, which it Avould 
 take days to outline perfectly, and which, seen at the distance 
 assumed in this draAving, gather into a mystery which no 
 fineness of hand could imitatively follow. But all this has 
 been abstracted into a few steady lines, Avith an intelligence 
 of choice and precision of notation which build the cathedral 
 as if it stood there, and in such accurate likeness that it could 
 be recognized at a glance from every other mass of Gothic in 
 Europe. 
 
 That draAving dependent on abstraction of this kind, in 
 which forms are expressed rather as a mineralogist AAWild 
 draAV a crystal than with any investing mystery of shade or 
 effect, cannot be carried beyond the point assigned, nor con- 
 vey any sense of extreme beauty or majesty, when these really 
 exist in its subject, must be conceded at once, and in fall. 
 But there is a great deal of scenery in this Europe of ours, 
 not lovely ; and a great deal of habitation in this Europe 
 of ours not sublime, yet both extremely worthy of being 
 recorded in a briefly crystalline manner. And with scenes 
 only, and dwellings only, of this ruder nature, Frout is con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Take for instance the general facts respecting the valley of 
 the Somme, collected in this little sketch of Amiens. That 
 river, and the Oise, Avith other neighboring minor streams, 
 flow through a chalk district intersected by very ancient val- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 233 
 
 le^^s, filled mostly with peat up to sea-level, but carrying off 
 a large portion of the rainfall over the whole surface of the 
 upper plains, which, open and arable, retain scarcely any mois- 
 ture in morasses, pools, or deep grass. The rivers, therefore, 
 though with little fall, run always fast and brimful, divided 
 into many serviceable branches and runlets ; while the older 
 villages and cities on their banks are built of timber and brick, 
 or in the poorer cottages, timber and clay ; but their churches 
 of an adhesive and durable chalk rock, yielding itself with the 
 utmost ease to dexterities of deep incision, and relieving, at 
 first with lace-like whiteness, and always with a pleasant pearly 
 gray, the shadows so obtained. No sensual arts or wealthy 
 insolences have ever defiled or distorted the quiet temper of 
 the northern French race, and in this busy little water-street, 
 of Amiens (you see that Prout has carefully indicated its rapid 
 current — a navigable and baptismal brook, past step and door 
 — water that one can float with and wash with, not a viscous 
 vomit of black poison, like an English river) you have clearly' 
 pictured to you a state of peasant life assembled in the fellow- 
 ship of a city, yet with as little pride as if still in the glades of 
 Arden, and united chiefly for the sake of mere neighborliness ; 
 and the sense of benediction and guardianship in the every- 
 where visible pinnacles of the temple built by their Fathers, 
 nor yet forsaken by their Fathers’ God. 
 
 All this can be enough told in a few rightly laid pencil 
 lines, and more, it is needless to tell of so lowly provincial 
 life. 
 
 Needless, at least, for the general public. For the closer 
 student of architecture, finer drawing may be needed ; but 
 even for such keener requirement Prout will not, for a time, 
 fail us. 
 
 Five-and-twenty miles down the Somme lies the little 
 ramparted town of Abbeville ; rampart only of the Grand Mo- 
 narque’s time, but the walls of might long ago, in the days of 
 Crecy ; and few French provincial bourgs had then more 
 numerous or beautiful monasteries, hospitals, chapels, and 
 churches. Of the central St. Wulfran, never completed, there 
 remain only the colossal nave, the ruined transept walls, and 
 
234 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the lordly towers and porches of the west front. The drawing 
 No. 5, quite one of the best examples of Prout’s central time 
 in the room, most faithfully represents this western pile of 
 tracery and fretwork, with the filial richness of the timber 
 houses that once stood round it. 
 
 None of the beautiful ones here seen are now left ; and one 
 day, perhaps, even France herself will be grateful to the wan- 
 dering Londoner, who drew them as they once were, and 
 copied, without quite understanding, every sign and word on 
 them. 
 
 And as one of the few remaining true records of fifteenth- 
 century France — such as her vestiges remained after all the 
 wreck of revolution and recoil of war had passed over them, 
 this pencil drawing, slight as it seems, may well take rank be- 
 side any pen-sketch by Holbein in Augsburg, or Gentil Bellini 
 in Venice. As a piece of composition and general treatment, 
 it might be reasoned on for days ; for the cunning choices of 
 omission, the delicate little dexterities of adjustment — the 
 accents without vulgarity, and reticences without affectation — 
 the exactly enough everywhere, to secure an impression of 
 reality, and the instant pause at the moment when another 
 touch would have been tiresome — are, in the soberest truth, 
 more wonderful than most of the disciplined comjDositions of 
 the greater masters, for no scruple checks them for an instant 
 in changing or introducing what they chose ; but Prout gives 
 literal, and all but servile, portrait, only managing somehow 
 to get the chequers of woodwork to carry down the richness of 
 the towers into the houses ; then to get the broad white wall 
 of the nearer houses to contrast with both, and then sets the 
 transept turret to peep over the roof just enough to etherialize 
 its practicality, and the black figure to come in front of it to 
 give lustre to its whiteness ; and so on throughout, down to 
 the last and minutest touches : — the incomprehensiblest class- 
 ical sonata is not more artificial — the sparklingest painted 
 window not more vivid, and the sharpest photograph not half 
 so natural. 
 
 In sequence of this drawing, I may point out seven 
 others of like value, equally estimable and unreplaceable, 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 235 
 
 • both in matters of Art, and — I use the word, as will be seen 
 presently, in its full force — of History, namely 
 
 No. 9, Evkeux. 
 
 No. 10. Strasburg. 
 
 No. 19. Antwerp. 
 
 No. 47. Domo d’Ossola. 
 
 No. 48, Como. 
 
 No. 65. Bologna. 
 
 No. 71. The Coliseum. 
 
 I choose these eight drawings (counting the Abbeville), four 
 belonging to North France and Germany, four to Italy, of 
 which the Northern ones do indeed utterly represent the 
 spirit of the architecture chosen ; but the Southern subjects 
 are much more restricted in expression, for Front was quite 
 unable to draw the buildings of the highest Italian school : 
 yet he has given the vital look of Italy in his day more truly 
 than any other landscapist, be he who he may ; and not ex- 
 cepting even Turner, for his ideal is always distinctly Tur- 
 nerian, and not the mere blunt and sorrowful fact. 
 
 You might perhaps, and very easily, think at first that 
 these Front subjects were as much “ Froutized ” (Copley 
 Fielding first used that word to me) as Turner’s were Turner- 
 ized. They are not so, by any manner of means, or rather, 
 they are so by manner and means only, not by sight or 
 heart. Turner saw things as Shelley or Keats did ; and with 
 perfectly comprehensive power, gave all that such eyes can 
 summon, to gild, or veil, the fatalities of material truth. But 
 Front saw only what all the world sees, what is substantially 
 and demonstrably there ; and drew that reality, in his much 
 arrested and humble manner indeed, but with perfectly apos- 
 tolic faithfulness. He reflected the scene like some rough 
 old Etruscan mirror — ^jagged, broken, blurred, if you will, 
 but It, the thing itself still ; while Turner gives it, and him- 
 self too, and ever so much of fairyland besides. His Flor- 
 ence or Nemi compels me to think, as a scholar, or (for so 
 much of one as may be in me) a poet; but Prout’s harbor of 
 
236 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 old Como is utterly and positively the very harbor I landed • 
 in when I was a boy of fourteen, after a day’s rowiug from 
 Cadenabbia, and it makes me yoang again, and hot, and 
 happy, to look at it. And that Bologna ! Well, the tower 
 does lean a little too far over, certainly ; but what blessed- 
 ness to be actually there, and to think we shall be in Venice 
 to-morrow ! 
 
 But note that the first condition of all these really great 
 drawings (as indeed for all kinds of other good), is unaffected- 
 ness. If ever Prout strains a nerve, or begins to think what 
 other people will say or feel ; — nay, if he ever allows his own 
 real faculty of chiaroscuro to pronounce itself consciously, he 
 falls into fourth- and fifth-rate work directly ; and the entire 
 force of him can be found only where it has been called into 
 cheerful exertion by subjects moderately, yet throughout de- 
 lightful to him ; which present no difficulties to be conquered, 
 no discords to be reconciled, and have just enough of clarion 
 in them to rouse him to his paces, without provoking him to 
 prance or capriole. 
 
 I should thus rank the drawing of Como (48) as quite of 
 the first class, and in the front rank of that class. Unat- 
 tractive at first, its interest will increase every moment that 
 you stay by it, and every little piece of it is a separate pic- 
 ture, all the better in itself for its subjection to the whole. 
 
 You may at first think the glassless windows too black. 
 But nothing can be too black for an open window in a sunny 
 Italian wall, at so short a distance. You may think the hills 
 too light, but nothing can be too light for olive hills in mid- 
 day summer. “ They would have come dark against the 
 sky ? ” Yes, certainly ; but we don’t pretend to draw Italian 
 skies — only the ruined port of Como, which is verily here be- 
 fore us — (alas ! at Como no more, having long since been filled 
 up, levelled, and gravelled, and made an “ esplanade ” for 
 modern Italy to spit over in its idle afternoons). But take 
 the lens to the old group of houses ; — they will become as in- 
 teresting as a missal illumination if you only look carefully 
 enough to see how Prout varied those twenty-seven black 
 holes, so that literally not one of them shall be like another. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 237 
 
 The grand old Comasque builder of tbe twelfth century 
 arches below (the whole school of Loinbardic masonry being 
 originally Comasque) varied them to his hand enough in 
 height and width — but he invents a nevv^ tiny picture in chiar- 
 oscuro to put under every arch, and then knits all together 
 with the central boats ; — literally knits, for you see the mast 
 of one of them catches up the cross-stick — stitch we might 
 call it — that the clothes hung on between the balconies ; and 
 then the little figures on the left catch up the pillars like 
 meshes in basket-work, and then the white awning of the 
 boat on the left repeats the mass of wall, taking the stiflhess 
 out of it, while the reflections of arches, with the other fig- 
 ures, and the near black freights, carry all the best of it, 
 broken and rippling, to the bitter shore. 
 
 But the drawing of the Coliseum at Rome, No. 71, has still 
 higher claim to our consideration ; in it Vv^ere reserved, and 
 in all points, rarer powers of expressing magnitude and soli- 
 tude. It is so majestic in manner that it would quite have 
 borne being set beside the photograph of Turnei-’s drawing 
 at Farnley ; had it been fair to match mere outline against a 
 finished composition. For Prout was, and he remains, the 
 only one of our artists who entirely shared Turner’s sense of 
 magnitude, as the sign of past human effort, or of natural 
 force ; and I must be so far tedious as to explain this meta- 
 physical point at some length. Of all forms of artistic sus- 
 ceptibility, reverent perception of true * magnitude is the 
 rarest. No general conclusion has become more clear to 
 my experience than this — strange as it ma}^ seem at first 
 statement, that a painter’s mind, typically, recognizes no 
 charm in physical vastness : and will, if it must choose be- 
 tween two evils, by preference work on a reduced, rather 
 than an enlarged, scale; and for subject, paint miniature 
 rather than mass. Human form is always given by the great 
 
 * Reckless accumulation of false magnitude — as by John Martin, is 
 merely a vulgar weakness of brain, allied to nightmare ; so also the 
 colossal works of decadent states in sculpture and architecture, which 
 are always insolent ; not reverent 
 
238 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 masters either of the natural size, or somewhat less (unless 
 under fixed conditions of distance which require perspective 
 enlargement), — and no sort or shadow of pleasure is ever taken 
 by the strongest designers in bulk of matter. Veronese never 
 paints shafts of pillars more than two feet in diameter, or 
 thereabouts, and only from fifteen to twenty feet in height. 
 Titian’s beech-trunks in the Peter Martyr were not a foot 
 across at the thickest, while his mountains are merely blue 
 spaces of graceful shape, and are never accurately enough 
 drawn to give even a suggestion of scale. And in the entire 
 range of Venetian marine painting there is not one large 
 wave. 
 
 Among our own recent landscape painters, while occasion- 
 ally great feeling is shown for space, or mystery, there is 
 none for essential magnitude. Stanfield was just as happy 
 in drawing the East cliff at Hastings as the Rock of Ischia ; 
 and painted the little sandy jut of crag far better than the 
 coned volcano. Fielding asked for no more stupendous sum- 
 mits than those of Saddleback or Wrynose — and never at- 
 tempted the grandeur even of Yorkshire scars, finding their 
 articulated geology troublesome. Sometimes David Roberts 
 made a praiseworthy effort to explain the size of a pillar at 
 Thebes, or a tower -in the Alhambra ; but only in cases where 
 the character of largeness had been forced upon his attention, 
 as the quality to be observed by himself, and recommended 
 to the observation of others. He never felt, or would have 
 tried to make anyone else feel — the weight of an ordinary 
 boulder stone, or the hollow of an old chestnut stem, or the 
 height of a gathering thunder-cloud. In the real apprehen- 
 sion of measurable magnitude, magnitude in things clearly 
 seen — stones, trees, clouds, or towers — Turner and Prout 
 stand — they two — absolutely side by side — otherwise com- 
 panionless. 
 
 Measurable magnitude, observe : — and therefore wonderful. 
 If you can’t see the difference between the domes of the Na- 
 tional Gallery and of St. Paul’s : — much more if you can’t see 
 the difference between Shanklin Chine and the Via Mala (and 
 most people can’t !) — you will never care either for Turner or 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 239 
 
 Prout ; — nor can you care rightly for them unless you have an 
 intellectual pleasure in construction, and know and feel that it 
 is more difficult to build a tower securely four hundred feet 
 high, than forty — and that the pillar of cloud above the crater 
 of Etna, standing two thousand feet forth from the lips of it, 
 means a natural force greater than the puff of a railway boiler. 
 The quiet and calm feeling of reverence for this kind of power, 
 and the accurate habit of rendering it (see notes on the 
 Sketches of Strasburg, No. 10, and Drachenfels, No. 28) — 
 are always connected, so far as I have observed, with some 
 13arallel justice in the estimate of spiritual order and power 
 in human life and its laws ; — nor is there any faculty of my 
 own mind — among those to which I owe whatever useful 
 results it may have reached — of which I am so gratefully 
 conscious. 
 
 There is one farther point — and if my preface has hitherto 
 been too garrulous, it must be grave in notice of this at the 
 close, — in which Turner, Bewick, Hunt, and Prout, all four 
 agree — that they can draw the poor, but not the rich. They 
 acknowledge with affection, whether for principal or accessory 
 subjects of their art, the British farmer, the British sailox’,* the 
 British marketwoman, and the British workman. They agree 
 unanimously in ignoring the British gentleman. Let the 
 British gentleman lay it to heart, and ask himself why. 
 
 The general answer is long, and manifold. But, with re- 
 spect to the separate work of Prout, there is a very precious 
 
 * Including, of course, the British soldier ; but for Turner, a ship of the 
 line was pictoriallj better material than a field battery ; else he would 
 just as gladly have painted Albuera as Trafalgar. I am intensely anx- 
 ious, by the way, to find out where a small picture of his greatest time 
 may now be dwelling, ~a stranded English frigate engaging the batteries 
 on the French coast at sunset (she got off at the flood-tide in the morn- 
 ing) ; I want to get it, if possible, for the St. George’s Museum at Sheffield. 
 For the rest, I think the British gentleman may partly see his way to 
 the answer of the above question if he will faithfully consider with him- 
 self how it comes to pass that, always fearless in the field, he is cow- 
 ardly in the House, — and always generous in the field,— is yet meanly 
 cunning, and — too often— malignant, in the House. 
 
240 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 piece of instruction in it, respecting national prosperity and 
 policy, which naay be gathered with a few glances. 
 
 You see how all his best pieces depend on figures either 
 crowded in market-places, or pausing (lounging, it may be) 
 in quiet streets — you will not find in the entire series of 
 subjects here assembled from his hand — a single figure in 
 a hurry ! He ignores, you see — not only the British Gentle- 
 man ; — but every necessary condition, nowadays, of British 
 Business ! 
 
 Look again, and see if you can find a single figure exerting 
 all its strength. A couple of men rolling a single cask, per- 
 haps ; here and there a woman with rather a large bundle on 
 her head — any more athletic display than these, you seek in 
 vain. 
 
 He ignores even the British Boat-race — and British muscu- 
 lar divinity, and British Muscular Art. 
 
 His figures are all as quiet as the Cathedral of Chartres ! 
 “ Because he could not make them move ” — think you ? Nay, 
 not so. Some of them — (that figure on the sands in the Calais, 
 for instance), you can scarcely think are standing still — but 
 they all move quietly. The real reason is that he understood 
 — and we do not — the meaning of the word — “quiet.” 
 
 He understood it, personally, and for himself : practically 
 and for others. Take this one fact — of his quiet dealings with 
 men, and think over it. In his early days he had established 
 a useful and steady connection with the country dealers, — that 
 is to say, with the leading printsellers in the county town a 
 and principal watering-places. He supplied them with ]Dretty 
 drawings of understood size and price, which were nearly al- 
 ways in tranquil demand by the better class of customers. 
 The understood size was about 10 inches by 14 or 15, and the 
 fixed price, six guineas. The dealer charged from seven to 
 ten, according to the pleasantness of the drawing. I bought 
 the “Venice,” for instance, No. 55, from Mr. Hewitt, of Leam- 
 ington, for eight guineas. 
 
 The modern fashionable interest in — what we suppose to be 
 art — had just begun to show itself a few years before Front’s 
 death ; and he was frequently advised to raise his prices. But 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 241 
 
 he never raised them a shilling to his old customers.* They 
 were supplied with all the drawings they wanted, at six guineas 
 each, to the end. A very peaceful method of dealing, and 
 under the true ancient laws ordained by Athena of the Agora, 
 and St. James of the Kialto. 
 
 Athena, observe, of the Agora, or Market Place. And St. 
 James of the Deep Stream, or Market River. The Angels of 
 Honest Sale and Honest Porterage ; such honest porterage 
 being the true grandeur of the Grand Canal, and of all other 
 canals, rivers, sounds, and seas that ever moved in wavering 
 morris under the night. And the eternally electric light of 
 the embankment of that Kialto stream was shed upon it by 
 the Cross — know you that for certain, you dwellers by high- 
 embanked and steamer-burdened Thames, 
 
 And learn from your poor wandering painter this lesson — 
 for sum of the best he had to give you (it is the Alpha of the 
 Laws of true human life) — that no city is prosperous in the 
 sight of heaven, unless the peasant sells in its market — adding 
 this lesson of Gentile Bellini’s for the Omega, that no city is 
 ever righteous in the Sight of Heaven, unless the noble walks 
 in its street. 
 
 * Nor greatly to his new ones. The drawings made for tlie Water- 
 color room were nsnally more elaborate, and, justly, a little higher in 
 price ; but my father bought the Lisieux, No. 13, off its walls, for eigh- 
 teen guineas. 
 
 16 
 
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CATALOGUE. 
 
 I.-PKOUT. 
 
 The reader will find, ending this pamphlet, a continuous 
 index to the whole collection of drawings, with references to the 
 pages in which special notice has been taken of them. So that 
 in this descriptive text, I allow myself to pause in explanatory, 
 or wander in discursive, statement, just as may seem to me 
 most helpful to the student, or most likely to interest the 
 general visitor. 
 
 I begin with the series of pencil drawings by Prout, which 
 were my principal object in promoting this exhibition. Of 
 these I have chosen seventy, all of high quality, and arranged 
 so as to illustrate the outgoing course of an old-fashioned 
 Continental tour, beginning at Calais, and ending at Kome. 
 Following the order of these with attention, an intellectual 
 observer may learn many things — not to his hurt. 
 
 Their dates, it will be noticed, are never given by the artist 
 himself — except in the day ; never the year — nor is there any- 
 thing in the progress of^Prout’s skill, or in his changes of 
 manner, the account of which need detain us long. From 
 earliest boyhood to the day of his death, he drew firmly, and 
 never scrabbled or blurred. Not a single line or dot is 
 ever laid without positive intention,^ and the care needful to 
 fulfil that intention. This is already a consummate virtue. 
 But the magnificent certainty and ease, united, which it en- 
 abled him to obtain, are only seen to the full in drawings of 
 
 * See tlie exception proving the rule, in a single line, in No. 12, there 
 noted. 
 
244 
 
 NOTES ON PBOUT. 
 
 his middle time. Not in decrepitude, but in mistaken effort, 
 for which, to my sorrow, I was partly myself answerable, he 
 endeavored in later journeys to make his sketches more 
 accurate in detail of tracery and sculpture ; and they lost in 
 feeling what they gained in technical exactness and elabora- 
 tion. Of these later drawings only three are included in this 
 series, 4, 8, and 17 ; their peculiar character will, however, be 
 at once discernible. 
 
 His incipient work was distinguished by two specialties — 
 the use of a gray washed tint with the pencil, a practice en- 
 tirely abandoned in his great time (though he will always 
 make notes of color frankly) ; and the insisting on minor 
 pieces of broken texture, in small stones, bricks, grass, or any 
 little picturesque incidents, with loss of largeness and repose. 
 The little study of the apse of Worms Cathedral (32), a most 
 careful early drawing, shows these faults characteristicall}’' ; 
 the Prague (23) is as definite an example of his great central 
 manner, and even Turner’s outline is not more faultless, 
 though more complete. For the rest. Turner himself shared 
 in the earlier weakness of more sharply dotted and sprinkled 
 black touches, and practised, cotemporaneously, the wash of 
 gray tint with the pencil. The chief use of the method to 
 the young student is in its compelling him to divide his 
 masses clearly ; and I used it much myself in early sketches, 
 such as that of the Aventine, No. 104a, for mere cleanliness 
 and comfort in security of shadow — rather than the always 
 rubbing and vanishing blacklead. But it is an entirely re- 
 stricted method, and must be abandoyed in all advanced study, 
 and the pencil used alone both for shade and line, until the 
 finer gradations of shadow are understood. T/ien color may 
 be used with the pencil for notation, and every power at once 
 is in the workman’s hands. The two first studies in our 
 series are perfect instances of this conclusive method.* 
 
 There were more reasons, and better ones, than the students 
 
 * For further notes on tlie methods of shape proper to the great 
 masters, the reader may consult the third and fourth numbers of my 
 Laws of Fesole. 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 245 
 
 of to-day would suppose, for his not adopting it oftener. The 
 subjects in Cornwall and Derbyshire, by which his mind was 
 first formed, were most of them wholly discouraging in color, 
 if not gloomy or offensive. Gray blocks of whinstone, black 
 timbers, and broken walls of clay, needed no iridescent illus- 
 tration ; the heath and stonecrop were beyond his skill ; and, 
 had he painted them with the staunchest efforts, would not 
 have been translatable into the coarse lithographs for Acker- 
 man n’s drawing-books, the publication of which was at that 
 time a principal source of income to him. His richer Conti- 
 nental subjects of later times were often quite as independent 
 of color, and in nearly every case taken under circumstances 
 rendering its imitation impossible. He might be permitted 
 by indulgent police to stop a thoroughfare for an hour or two 
 witli a crowd of admirers, but by no means to settle himself 
 in a comfortable tent upon the pavement for a couple of 
 months, or set up a gypsy encampment of pots and easel in the 
 middle of the market-place. Also, his constitution, as delicate 
 as it was sanguine, admitted indeed of his sitting without 
 harm for half an hour in a shady lane, or basking for part of 
 the forenoon in a sunny piazza, but would have broken down 
 at once under the continuous strain necessary to paint a pict- 
 ure in the open air. And under these conditions the wonder 
 is onl}^ how he did so much that was attentive and true, and 
 that even his most conventional water-colors are so refined in 
 light and shade that even the slightest become almost majestic 
 when engraved. 
 
 1. Calais. 
 
 Sketch on the spot, of the best time and highest 
 quality— -the clouds put in as they stood — the brig as she 
 lay — the figures where they measure the space of sand, 
 and give the look of busy desolateness, which poor Calais 
 — crown jewel of England — had fallen to in our day — 
 Front’s and mine. You see the size of the steam-packet 
 of the period ; you may trust Prout’s measure of its mag- 
 nitude, as aforesaid. So also cf belfry, lighthouse, and 
 church — very dear all to the old painter, as to me. I 
 
246 
 
 NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 gave my own drawing of the lighthouse and belfry, No. 
 104, to the author of Rob and his Friends^ who per- 
 haps lend it me for comparison.* My drawing of the 
 church spire is lost to me, but somewhere about in the 
 world, I hope, and perhaps may be yet got hold of, and 
 kept with this drawing, for memory of old Calais, and il- 
 lustration of what was meant by the opening passage of 
 the fourth volume of “Modern Painters.” (Appendix II.) 
 
 Take the lens f to the gate of the tower (above the 
 steamer) and see how, in such a little bit, the architecture 
 is truly told. Compare Hogarth’s Gate of Calais. 
 
 2. Calais Old Pier. 
 
 Turner’s great subject. But Turner’s being earlier 
 taken, while the English packet was still only a fast-sail- 
 ing cutter — (steam unthought of !) A perfect gem of 
 masterful studj% and quiet feeling of the facts of eternal 
 sea and shore. 
 
 The solemnly rendered m^^stery of the deep and far 
 sea ; the sway of the great waves entering over the bar at 
 the harbor’s mouth ; the ebbing away of the sand at the 
 angle of the pier ; the heaping of it in hills against its 
 nearer side, I and the way in which all is made huge, 
 bleak, and Avild by the deeper tone of the dark sail and 
 figure, are all efforts of the highest art faculty, which we 
 cannot too much honor and thank. 
 
 3. Studies of French and Netherland Figures and Dili- 
 
 gences. 
 
 Exemplary in the manner of abstract, and perfect in 
 figure drawing, for his purposes. They are poor persons. 
 
 * It was exhibited last year, but if it comes from Scotland, will be 
 shown again for proof of Prout’s fidelity in distant form. 
 
 f For proper study of any good work in painting and drawing, the 
 student should always have in his hand a magnifying glass of moderate 
 power, from two to three inches in diameter. 
 
 t Compare the sentence respecting this same place, Appendix II., 
 “ surfy sand, and hillocked shore.” 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 247 
 
 you see — all of them. Not quite equal to Miss Kate 
 Greenaway’s in grace, nor to Mrs. Allingham’s in face 
 (they, therefore, you observe, have mostly their backs to 
 us). But both Miss Kate and Mrs. Allingham might do 
 better duty to their day, and better honor to their art, 
 if they would paint, as verily, some of these poor country 
 people in far-away places, rather than the high-bred pret- 
 tinesses or fond imaginations, which are the best they 
 have given us yet for antidote to the misery of London. 
 
 4. Abbeville. Church of St. Wulfran. 
 
 Seen from the west, over old houses (since destroyed). 
 Of the artist’s best time and manner. See Preface, page 
 233. 
 
 5. Abbeville. Church of St. Wulfran — the northwestern 
 
 TOWER, with old HOUSES. 
 
 Elaborate. Of the late time, but not in the highest 
 degree good. The chiaroscuro of the pinnacles evident- 
 ly caught on the spot, but not carried through the draw- 
 ing rightly, and the whole much mannered. Precious, 
 however, for all that. 
 
 6. Photograph of the Porches of St, Wulfran, Abbeville. 
 
 7. Amiens. 
 
 One of the best of the best time. See Preface, page 
 232, and compare the extract from “Modern Painters,” 
 given in Appendix III. 
 
 8. Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in St. Jaques, Dieppe. 
 
 One of the best studies of the last period. See further 
 notes on it under the number 17. 
 
 9. Evreux. 
 
 Perfect sketch of the best time, and most notable for 
 the exquisite grace of proportion in its wooden belfry. 
 No architect, however accurate in his measurements — no 
 artist, however sensitive in his admiration — ever gave the 
 
248 
 
 NOTES ON PROTJT, 
 
 proportion and grace of Gothic spires and towers with 
 the loving fidelity that Prout did. This is much to say ; 
 and therefore I say it again deliberately : there are no 
 existing true records of the real effect of Gothic towers 
 and spires — except only Front’s. And now I must be 
 tedious a while, and explain what I mean in saying this — 
 being much — and show it to be true. Observe first — 
 everything in grace of form depends on truth of scale. 
 You don’t show how graceful a thing is, till you show 
 how large it is ; for all grace means ultimately the use of 
 strength in the right way, moral and physical, against a 
 given force. A swan, no bigger than a butterfl}'-, would 
 not be graceful — its grace is in its proportion to the 
 waves and power over them. A butterfly as large as a 
 swan would not be graceful — its beauty is in being so 
 small that the winds play with it, but do not vex it. A 
 hollow traceried spire fifteen feet high would be effem- 
 inate and frivolous, for it would be stronger solid — a hol- 
 low traceried spire five hundred feet high, is beautiful ; 
 for it is safer so, and the burden of the builder’s toil 
 spared. All wisdom — economy — beauty, and holiness, 
 are one ; harmonious throughout — in all iffaces, times, 
 and things : understand any one of their orders, and do 
 it — it will lead you to another — to all others, in time. 
 
 Now, therefore, think why this spire of Evreux is 
 graceful. If it were only silver filigree over a salt-cellar, 
 it would still be pretty (for it is beautifully varied and 
 arranged). But not “ graceful ” (or full of grace). The 
 reason is that it is built, not with silver, but with aspen 
 logs, and because there has been brought a strange refine- 
 ment and melody, as of chiming in tune, and virtue of 
 uprightness — and precision of pointedness, into the aspen 
 logs, which nobody could ever have believed it w'as in a 
 log to receive. And it is graceful also, because it is evi- 
 dently playful and bright in temper. There are no labor- 
 ing logs visible — no propping, or thrusting, or bearing 
 logs — no mass of enduring and afflicted timber — only im- 
 aginative timber, aspiring just high enough for praise, 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 249 
 
 not for ambition. Twice as high as it ever could have 
 stood in a tree — by honor of men done to it ; but not so 
 high as to strain its strength, and make it weak among 
 the winds, or perilous to the people. 
 
 10. Strasburg — The Cathedral Spire. 
 
 I have put this drawing — quite one of the noblest in all 
 tlie series — out of its geographical place, and beside the 
 Evreux, that you may compare the qualities of grace in 
 wooden and stone buildings ; and follow out our begun 
 reasoning further. 
 
 Examine first bow the height is told. Conscientiously, 
 to begin with. He had not room enough on his paper 
 (perhaps), and put the top at the side rather than blunt 
 or diminish the least bit. I say “ perhaps,” because, v/ith 
 most people, that w'ould have been the way of it ; but my 
 own private opinion is, that he never meant to have room 
 on his paper for it — that he felt instinctively that it was 
 grander to have it going up nobody knew where— only 
 that he could not draw it so for the public, and must 
 have the top handy to put on afterward. 
 
 Conscientiously, first, the height is told ; next, artfully. 
 He chooses his place just where you can see the principal 
 porch at the end of the street — takes care, by every arti- 
 fice of perspective and a little exaggeration of aerial tone, 
 to make you feel how far off it is ; then carries it up into 
 the clearer air. Of course, if you don’t notice the distant 
 porch, or are not in the habit of measuring the size of one 
 part of a thing by another, you will not feel it here — but 
 neither would you have felt it there, at Strasburg itself. 
 
 Next for composition. If you ever read my last year’s 
 notes on Turner, you must remember how often I had to 
 dwell on his ^vay of conquering any objectionable charac- 
 ter in his main subject by putting more of the same char- 
 acter in something else, where it was not objectionable. 
 Now it happens to be one of the chief faults of Strasburg 
 Spire (and it has many, for all the reputation of it), to be 
 far too much constituted of meagre upright lines (see the 
 
250 
 
 NOTES ON PBOUT, 
 
 angle staircases, and process of their receding at the top, 
 and the vertical shafts across the window at its base). 
 Prout instantly felt, as he drew the tower, that, left to 
 itself it would be too ironlike and stiff. He does not dis- 
 guise this character in the least, but conquers it utterly by 
 insisting with all his might on the flutings of the pilasters 
 of the near well. “How ill drawn these ! ” 3^ou say. Yes, 
 but he hates these in themselves, and does not care how 
 badly he draws them, so only that by their ugly help he 
 can save the Cathedral. Which they completely do ; tak- 
 ing all the stiffness out of it, and leaving it majestic. 
 Next — he uses contrast to foil its beauty, as he has used 
 repetition to mask its faults. In the Abbeville, No. 4, he 
 had a beautiful bit of rustic white wall to set off his towers 
 with. Here, in Strasburg, half modernized, alas ! even in 
 his time, he finds nothing better than the great ugly white 
 house behind the lamp. In old times, remember, a series 
 of gables like that of the last house would have gone all 
 down the street. (Compare the effect in Antwerp, No. 
 19, all contemporary. ) Prout will not do any “restora- 
 tion ” — he knows better ; but he could easily have dis- 
 guised this white house with cast shadows across the 
 street and some blinds and carpets at the windows. *But 
 the white, vulgar mass shall not be so hidden, and the 
 richness of all the old work shall gain fulness out of the 
 modern emptiness, and modesty out of the modern im- 
 pudence. 
 
 Pre-eminently the gain is to the dear old gabled house 
 on the right, which is the real subject of the drawing, 
 being a true Strasburg dwelling-house of the great times. 
 But before speaking more of this, I must ask you to look 
 at the next subject. 
 
 12. Lisieux, Old Street in. 
 
 This, though it contains so much work, is a hurried and 
 fatigued drawing — fatigued itself in a sense, as having 
 more touches put on it than were good for it ; and the 
 sign of fatigue in the master, or perhaps rather of passing 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 251 
 
 illness, for he seems never to have been tired in the or- 
 dinary way. The unusually confused and inarticulate 
 figures, the more or less wriggled and ill-drawn draperies, 
 and the unfinished foundation of the house on the right, 
 where actually there is a line crossing another unin- 
 tentionally ! are all most singular with him ; and I fancy 
 he must have come on this subject at the end of a sickly- 
 minded day, and yet felt that he must do all he could 
 for it, and then broken down. 
 
 He has resolved to do it justice, at least in the draw- 
 ing No. , one of the best in the room ; but there are 
 characters in the subject itself which, without his quite 
 knowing wh}’-, cramped him, and kept several of his finer 
 powers from coming into play. 
 
 Note first, essentially, he is a draughtsman of stone, 
 not wood, and a tree-trunk is always wholly beyond his 
 faculty ; so that, when everything is wooden, as here, 
 he has to translate his stony manner for it all through, 
 and is as if speaking a foreign language. In the finished 
 drawing, one scarcely knows whether the near doorway 
 is stone or wood. 
 
 And there was one character, I repeat, in this subject 
 that specially strained this weak part of him. When a 
 wooden house is in properly wooden style — he can always 
 do it, as at Abbeville and Strasburg. But this street 
 at Lisieux is a wooden street in stone style. I feel even 
 tempted to write fine scientific modern English about it, 
 and say it is objectively lignologic and subjectively petro- 
 logic. The crossing beams of the wall-courses, and king- 
 posts of the gables in dormer windows are indeed 
 properly expressive of timber structure ; but all the 
 sculpture is imitative of the forms developed in the stone 
 traceries of the same period — seen perfectly in the 
 elaborate drawing. No. 8. 
 
 Those traceries were themselves reciprocally cor- 
 rupted, as we shall see presently, by the woodwork 
 practised all round them ; but both the Burgundian and 
 Norman later Gothic was corrupted by its own luxurious 
 
252 
 
 NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 laziness, before it took any infection from the forest. In- 
 stead of building a real pointed arch — they merely put 
 a cross lintel with a nick in it * {a), then softened the 
 nick-edges and ran a line of moulding round it (6), and 
 
 a b c 
 
 then ran up a flourish above to show what a clever thing 
 they had done (c) — and there you are. But there is 
 much more curious interest in this form of wooden im- 
 itative architecture than any mere matter of structural 
 propriety. 
 
 Please compare the Lisieux houses in No. 11, with the 
 house on the right at Strasburg in No. 10. You see 
 there are no pinnacles nor crockets imitated there. All 
 is sternly square — upright timber and cross timber — 
 cut into what ornamental current mouldings the work- 
 man knew. 
 
 And yet you see the Cathedral at the side is eminent- 
 ly gabled and pinnacular ! Kun your eye from the 
 square window of the second story of the house (third 
 from ground), along to the cathedral gabled traceiy. 
 Could any two st^des be more adverse ? While on the 
 contrar}^ the Lisieux street is merely a “changing the 
 willow wreaths to stone ” — in imitation of the chapel of 
 St. Jaques ? It is true, the Lisieux street is contempo- 
 rary with St. Jaques, and the Strasburg house a century 
 or so later than the Cathedral ; but that is not the reason 
 of the opposition. Had they been either pure French 
 
 * Without the nick, mind you, it would have been a grand 
 building — pure Greek or pui-e Tuscan, and capable of boundless 
 good. It is the Nicolaitane nick that’s the devil. 
 
NOTES ON FROUT. 
 
 253 
 
 or pure German, the two would have declined together 
 and have died together. But in France of the fifteenth 
 century, church, noblesse, and people, were one body, and 
 the people in Lisieux loved and delighted in their clergy 
 and nobles, as the Venetians did — 
 
 “ Pontifices, clerus, populus, dux mente sereuus.” 
 
 But Strasbourg is on the edge— nay, on the Pole — of all 
 divisions. Virtuall}^ from west to east, between Dijon 
 and Berne ; virtually, from north to south, between Co- 
 logne and Basle ; virtually, if you have eyes the Diet of 
 Worms is in it ; the Council of Constance is in it ; the 
 Battle of Sempach is there, and the rout of Granson. 
 
 That is a Swdss cottage^ with all ecclesiastical and feudal 
 powers flaming up into the sky n't the side of it, and the 
 iron lances and lines of them are as lace round the “ Com- 
 merce de Jean Diehl.” “ Commerce,” a grand word, which 
 w'e suppose ourselves here to understand, an entirely vile 
 one, if misunderstood. Human commerce, a business for 
 men and angels ; but inhuman, for apes and spectres. 
 We must look at a few more street-scenes in order to find 
 out which sort Jean Diehl’s belongs to. 
 
 14, Bayeux. 
 
 A small sketch, but first-rate, and with half a mile of 
 street in it. Pure and plain woodwork this, with prop 
 and buttress of stumpy stone — healthy all, and sound ; 
 note especially the strong look of foundation, as opposed 
 to the modern style of house-front in most commercial 
 quarters — five stories of brick wall standing on the edge 
 of a pane of plate-glass. 
 
 15. Toues. 
 
 The saints presiding over an old- clothes shop, appar- 
 ently — but it may be the fashionable drapers of the 
 quarter. I merely give it as an example of the developed 
 form of bracket, the end of the cross timber becoming 
 
254 
 
 NOTES ON PBOUT. 
 
 a niche, and the prop, a saint — not without meaning. 
 Much more strength than is really wanted allowed in the 
 backing, so that these corrugated saints do not by their 
 recessed niches really weaken the structure. Compare 
 photograph, No. 117. 
 
 16. Rouen. The Butter-tower. 
 
 Built with the octroi on butter — not a right way-— be 
 it spoken, in passing. All taxes on food of any sort, or 
 drink of any sort, are w^ong, W’hether to build a pious 
 tower, or support an impious government. 
 
 A tired sketch — the house on the left, one of the most 
 beautiful in France, hurried and ill done. 
 
 17. Rouen. Staircase in St. Maclou. 
 
 Almost unique in the elaboration of the texture in mar- 
 ble pillar, and effect of distant light, showing what he was 
 capable of in this kind ; compare St. Jaques, No. 8, \vhere 
 he gets flickering sunlight through painted glass. There, 
 the effect is pathetic and expressive ; but both texture and 
 effect of light were mistakes, in St. Maclou ; it does not 
 in the least matter to the staircase whether the pillar is 
 smooth, or the window bright. In earlier times he Avould 
 have merely indicated the forms of both, and given his 
 time to gather groups of figures following the circular 
 sweep of the staircase. 
 
 18. Ghent. 
 
 Having run south now as far as I care, we will turn 
 back, please, to go through the Netherlands into Germany. 
 Pretty nearly all the Netherlands are in this and the fol- 
 lowing drawing. Boats, beside houses ; the boats heavily 
 practical : the houses heavily fanciful ; but both accurate 
 and perfect in their W’ay ; work of a great, though fen- 
 witted, people. The Ghent scene is the very cream of 
 Prout — all that he could best do in his happiest times — 
 his Cornish and Hastings boat-study standing him in 
 thorough stead here, though it will fail him at Venice, as 
 we shali sadly see. 
 
NOTES ON PROUT, 
 
 255 
 
 19. Antwerp. 
 
 Altogether magnificent : the noble street-scene, requir- 
 ing no effort to exalt, no artifice to conceal a single fea- 
 ture in it. Pure fact — the stately houses and the simple 
 market, and the divine tower. You would like adver- 
 tisements all along the house-fronts, instead, wouldn’t 
 you? and notices of sale — at a ruinous sacrifice — in the 
 shop-windows, wouldn’t you? and a tramway up the 
 street, and a railway under it, and a gasometer at the end 
 of it, instead of a cathedral — now, wouldn’t you ? 
 
 21. Brunswick. 
 
 Dainty still ; a most lovely drawing. I didn’t find any- 
 thing so good in the town myself, but was not there until 
 1859, when, I suppose, all the best of it had been knocked 
 down. The Stadthaus (see lithograph. No. 93) is unique 
 in the support of its traceries on light transverse arches, 
 but this innovation, like nearly all German specialities in 
 Gothic, is grotesque, and affected without being ingenious. 
 
 22. Dresden. 
 
 An exquisite drawing ; and most curious in the entire 
 conquest and calming down of Front’s usual broken 
 touch into Renaissance smoothness. It is the best exist- 
 ing representation of the old town, and readers of Fried- 
 rich may care to know what it was like. 
 
 23. Prague.— -Entrance over the Bridge, 
 
 A drawing already noticed, of the highest quality. 
 The lithograph, No. 91, of the other side of the tower on 
 the right, enables us to walk back the other way ; it 
 quite one of the best drawings in the book. 
 
 24. Prague. — The Stadthaus. 
 
 Both lovely, and essentially Proutesque, as a drawing. 
 Architecturally, one of the prettiest possible examples of 
 fourteenth century Gothic. The town was all, more or 
 less, like that, once — the houses beyond have, I suppose, 
 been built even since the siege. 
 
256 
 
 NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 25. Bamberg. 
 
 I include this drawing in our series, first for its lovely 
 crowd of figures ; and secondly, to show that Prout never 
 attempts to make anything picturesque that naturally 
 isn’t. Domo d’Ossola and Bologna (47 and 64) are pic- 
 turesque — in the drawings, because they are so in reality 
 — and heavy Bamberg remains as dull as it pleases to be. 
 This strict honesty of Prout’s has never been rightl}^ un- 
 derstood, because he didn’t often draw dull things, and 
 gleaned the picturesque ones out of every hole and cor- 
 ner ; so that everybody used to think it was he who had 
 made them picturesque. But, as aforesaid, he is really 
 as true as a mirror. 
 
 26. Nuremberg, Church of St. , at. 
 
 Of the best time, and certainly the fullest exj^res- 
 sion ever given of the character of the church. But the 
 composition puzzled him, the house corner on left com- 
 ing in too abruptly, and the sketch falls short of his best 
 qualities ; he gets fatigued with the richness in excess 
 over so large a mass, and feels that nothing of foreground 
 will carry it out in harmony. 
 
 28. The Drachenfels. 
 
 When I said that Turner and Prout stood by themselves 
 in power of rendering magnitude, I don’t mean on the 
 same level, of course, but in perfect sympathy ; and Tur- 
 ner himself would have looked with more than admiration 
 — with real respect — at this quiet little study. I have never 
 seen any other picture or drawing which gave so intensely 
 the main truths of the breadth and prolonged distances 
 of the great river, and the scale and standing of tbe rock, 
 as compared with the buildings and woods at its" feet. 
 
 The “ standing ” of the rock, I say especially ; for it is in 
 great part by the perfect sculpture and build of its but- • 
 tresses — (the “ articulation ” w'hich, I have just said, Field- | 
 ing shunned as too troublesome) that the effect, or rather 
 information, of magnitude is given. i 
 
NOTES ON PEOUT. 
 
 257 
 
 And next to this rock drawing, the clear houses and 
 trees, and exquisite little boat — examined well — complete 
 the story of mountain power by their intense realit 3 \ 
 Take the lens to them — there is no true enjoyment to be 
 had without attention, either from pictures, or the truth 
 itself. 
 
 23. Islands on the Ehine. 
 
 First, the power of the Dragon rock — then of the 
 noble river. It seems to have been an especially interest- 
 ing scene this, to good painters. Oue of the most elab- 
 orate pieces of drawing ever executed by Turner was 
 from this spot. 
 
 30. The Pfalz. 
 
 Hurried a little, and too black in distance — but I in- 
 clude it in the series for a most interesting bit of compo- 
 sition in it. The building, from this point of view, had 
 a disagreeable look of a church-tower surrounded by 
 pepper-boxes. He brings it into a mass, and makes a 
 fortress of it, by the shadow on the mountain to the 
 right of the tower, almost as dark as a bit of roof. 
 
 32. WOKMS. 
 
 An early drawing — the only one included in this series 
 — is to be compared with the careful w^ater-color. No. 31. 
 
 35. Ulm. 
 
 A beautiful drawing of one of the most interesting 
 street fountains in Germany. It is given in this sketch, 
 as usual, with entire care and feeling of its proportion. 
 The water-color drawing, No. 36, shows the little intei- 
 est he took in copying for the Exhibition, knowing that 
 the British mind w^as not to be impressed by proportion, 
 and only cared for getting things into their frames. 
 The lithograph, No. 90, is, on the contrary, one of his 
 most careful works, and quite true to the place, when I 
 saw it in 1835. I suppose it is all pulled down, and 
 17 
 
258 
 
 NOTES ON PBOUT. 
 
 made an “ esplanade ” of by this time. (See “ Seven 
 Lamps/’ p. 182, in Appendix I.) 
 
 37 and 33. Swiss and German Costumes. 
 
 I never can understand how these groups are ever de- 
 signed or caught, and how they are built up, one by 
 one. No painter who can do it ever tells us how. 
 
 39. Chillon. 
 
 The only drawing I ever saw which gave the real rela- 
 tion of the castle to the size of the mountain behind it. 
 
 40. The Dungeon of Chillon. 
 
 I must leave the reader now to make what he may of ' 
 this and the following drawings as far as 47 : all of ^ 
 them, to people who know the old look of the places, i 
 will be interesting ; but I have no time to enlarge on , i 
 them. 
 
 41. Montreux. I 
 
 i 
 
 42. Waterfall under the Dent du Midi, in the Rhone Valley. 
 
 43. Village of Martigny. 
 
 46. Brieg. 
 
 j 
 
 47. Domo d’Ossola. | 
 
 One of the most exemplary in the room, for intense . ' 
 fidelity to the place, and lovely composition of living j 
 groups. Note the value of the upright figure in the 
 balcony on the left, in breaking up and enriching the 
 mass, and joining it with the rest. 
 
 48. Como. 
 
 Enough dwelt on in the preface. 
 
 49. The Monument of Can Signorio della Scala, at Verona. 
 
 Note that the low sarcophagus on the left, of much 
 finer time than the richer tomb, has on its side a has- 
 
NOTES ON PROUT, 
 
 259 
 
 relief representiDg the Madonna enthroned between two 
 angels, a third angel presents to her the dead knight’s 
 soul, kneeling. 
 
 50. The largo drawing of the subject. No. 50, has lost all 
 these particulars. Was it all Prout’s fault, shall we say ? 
 Was there anyone, in his time, of English travellers, who 
 would have thanked him for a madonna and a dead old 
 Scaliger, done ever so clearly ? 
 
 5G. Venice. Ducal Palace from the West. 
 
 57. Venice. Ducal Palace from the East. 
 
 58. St. Michael’s Mount, Normandy. 
 
 I have put No. 58 in this eccentric manner, after the 
 Ducal Palace, that the reader may feel, for good and all, 
 Prout’s intense appreciation of local character — his gayety 
 with the gay, and his strength with the strong. Cornish- 
 bred, his own heart is indeed in the rocks, and towers, 
 and sands of the fraternal Norman shore — and it fails 
 him in Venice, where the conditions alike of her mas- 
 quing and her majesty were utterly strange to him. 
 Still, the sense of light, and motion, and splendor above 
 the Riva dei Schiavoni ; and of gloom, and iron-fastness, 
 and poverty, midst the silent sands of Avranches, are ren- 
 dered by the mirror of him, as if you had but turned its 
 face from sun to shade. 
 
 The St. Michael’s is an entirely grand drawing. The 
 St. Raphael’s — for that is indeed the other name of the 
 Ducal Palace ^ — on this side, has many faults ; but is 
 yet, out and out, the best Ducal Palace that has as yet 
 been done. It is not an architectural drawing — does not 
 
 * The angel Michael is the angle statue on the southwest (seen in 
 No. 56), with the inscription, “ With my sword I guard the good, and 
 cleanse the evil.” The angel Raphael holds in his hands the nations’ 
 prayer to him, “Raphael, the dreadful (“ reverende ”), make thou the 
 deep quiet, we beseech thee.” 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 in the least pretend to be. No one had ever drawn the trace- 
 ries of the Dacal Palace till I did myself. Canaletto, in 
 his way, is just as false as Prout — Turner no better. Not 
 one of them painted anything but their general impres- 
 sions ; and not a soul in England knew that there was a 
 system in Venetian architecture at all, until I made the 
 measured (to half and quarter inches) elevation of it (No. 
 105), and gave the analysis of its tracery mouldings and 
 their development, from those of the Franciscans at the 
 Frari (“ Stones of Venice,” vol. ii.). This study of Prout’s, 
 then, I repeat, does not pretend to architectural accu- 
 racy ; and it has even one very considerable fault. Prout’s 
 mind had been so formed among buildings solid at the 
 base, and aerial at the top, that he not only could not 
 enjoy, he could not even see^ the national audacity of 
 the great builder of the Ducal Palace, in supporting its 
 wall on, virtually, two rows of marble piles ; and, at the 
 further end, just where the shafts at the angle let the 
 winds blow through them as frankly as the timbers of 
 Calais pier,* he blackens them all up inside, as if the 
 backing wall were solid and the arches were onl}' niches. 
 
 * The real and marvellous structure of the angle is admirably 
 shown in the photograph, No. lOG^f, though the quantity of light 
 penetrating the shafts is a little exaggerated in effect by uniting 
 with the light sides oi: the shafts. Taking the lens to the photo- 
 graph, you will see this line is destroyed by the modern gas-lamj) 
 stuck across the Italian sculpture, and you may admire at leisure 
 the other improvements made by the art of the nineteenth century 
 on the effect of the piazzetta The combination of the fore and 
 mizzenmasts of the huge steamer whose hull, with its boat, blocks 
 out the whole lagoon ; and of the upright gas-lamp, with the 
 pillar of St. Mark— the introduction of the steamer s painted 
 funnel to form a foundation for the tower of San Giorgio— the 
 bathing establishment anchored beyond the pillars, just where 
 the Bucentaur used to lie close to the quay to receive the Doge ; 
 and, finally, the bills pasted on the sheds at the base of St. 
 Mark's column, advising us of improving wmrks of a liberal tone, 
 such as the “ Storia della Natura,” and the “ Misteri della In- 
 quisizione di Spagna.” In this same Loggia of Sansovino’s, against 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 261 
 
 For all that, there never was anything so true to the 
 general splendor and life of the palace done before, nor 
 ever will be again/* *'' 
 
 There are two points — technical both and spiritual 
 Potli — which the reader must note in this drawing. 
 
 The first, how thankfid Front is for the clusters of 
 doves along the upper line of the cornice. “ They might 
 as well be jackdaws,” you think? Well, as aforesaid, 
 Front is not a colorist, else he would have made his 
 boats black and his doves gray ; but then he would have 
 been Carpaccio, and not Front. This is really all you 
 can expect him to do for a dove, with his poor Cumber- 
 land plumbago ; and, after all, the glory of the creatures 
 is not in being pigeons, but in being Venetians. Swal- 
 low or sparrow, daw or dove, sea-gull by Achilles’ isle or 
 chough by Cornish cliff — that they are living with us by 
 shore and altar, under cottage eaves and around palace 
 council chambers, that is their glory — and, if we knew it, 
 our peace. 
 
 The other point is more definitely technical, yet has its 
 lesson ill other directions also. I have already again and 
 again insisted on Front’s way of taking up his stitches, 
 and carrying one part of his work into another. Look 
 back to what is said of the Como in preface. He is no 
 more content with his Ducal Falace till he has got it well 
 into fugue with its crowd than he was with these old 
 houses by the harbor. He won’t break the corner of its 
 
 wliicli these sheds are built, the “ Misteri ” of the Government 
 Lottery are also revealed weekly to the popular mind. 
 
 * And in the great drawing (No. 60) lent by Lord Coleridge the 
 upper story is singularly and gracefully accurate in the pinnacled 
 Gothic of its central window, and in the various elevations and 
 magnitudes of the rest. The two upper windows in the shade at 
 the nearest angle are the oldest portion of the Palace visible, and 
 Front has carefully noted their different curve. The bright and 
 busy figures are true to old times only, for the building is now being 
 restored, and no man with a heart will ever draw the patched 
 skeleton of it more. 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 arcade, but just flutes, as it were, a single pillar with the 
 mast of a boat, and then carries the mast down — stopping 
 the arch-mouldings for it, observe, as he draws them, so 
 deliberate is he, and, getting well down so to his figures, 
 rivets the rent of the canal across with the standing one, 
 just under Michael Steno’s central window, and then car- 
 ries all away to the right, with the sitting figures and lev- 
 elled sails in harmony with the courses of the palace, and 
 to the left, with the boats. Hide one of these founda- 
 tional forms with your hand, and see how the palace goes 
 to pieces ! There are many compositions in the room 
 more felicitous ; but there is no other in which the op- 
 j^osite influence to the “little rift within the lute ” — the 
 stitch in time that saves nine — is so delicately and so in- 
 tensely illustrated as by the service of this single boat- ' 
 spar to every shaft of the whole Ducal Palace. 
 
 With respect to these Venice drawings there are two 
 metaph}’'sical problems — in my own mind, of extreme in- , 
 solubility — and on which I therefore do not enlarge, 
 namely, why Prout, practiced among all manner of Corn- 
 ish and Kentish boats, could not for the life of him draw 
 a gondola ; and the second, why, not being able to draw 
 a gondola, he yet never gave the grand Adriatic fishing- ' 
 boat, with its colored sail, instead. These, and other ! 
 relative questions still more abstruse — as, for instance, 
 why he could draw the domes of Dresden rightly, and 
 yet made the Madonna della Salute look like the Na- 
 tional Gallery or Bethlehem Hospital — I must for the ; 
 present leave for the reader’s own debate, and only at 
 speed give some account of the points to be illustrated | 
 by the supplementary drawings. ] 
 
 People often ask me — and people who have been long ' 
 at Venice too — of the subject No. 55, lohere those square j 
 pillars are, and what they are. The corner of the Piaz- ' 
 zetta from which this view is taken was once the sweetest 
 of all sacred niches in that great marble withdra wing- 
 room of the Piazzetta of St. Mark’s. My old sketch. No. 
 107, shows approximately the color of the marble walls 
 
NOTES ON PBOUT, 
 
 263 
 
 and pavement of it, and the way the white flowers of the 
 Greek pillars — purest B^'^zantine — shone through the 
 dark spots of lichen. The Daguerreotype, No. 114, 
 taken under my own direction, gives the light and shade 
 of them, chosen just where the western sunlight catches 
 the edge of the cross at the base of the nearer one ; and 
 my study, No. 108, shows more fully the character of the 
 Byzantine chiselling — entirely freehand, flinging the 
 marble acanthus-leaves here and there as they would 
 actually grow. It is through work of this kind that the 
 divine Greek power of the days of Hesiod came down to 
 animate the mosaic workers in St. Mark’s, in the elev- 
 enth century. 
 
 They worked under a Greek princess, of w’hom the 
 reader will find some legend (though }"et I have not been 
 able to do more than begin her story) in the second num- 
 ber of “ St. Mark’s Best.” * In the third I have given some 
 account of the entire series of mosaics which were com- 
 pleted by her husband under the influence of his Greek 
 queen (true queen., mind you, at that time, the Duke of 
 Venice then wearing the king’s diadem, not the republi- 
 can cap) ; and I besought my readers at Venice and else- 
 where to help me to get some faithful record of these 
 mosaics before they perished by modern restoration. I 
 have never made a more earnest appeal for anything — 
 and indeed I believe, had it been for a personal gift — 
 another Splugen drawing, or the like — I should have got 
 it by this time easily enough. But there are always 
 twenty people who will do what they feel to be kind, for 
 one who will take my advice about an important public 
 object. And — if they only knew it — the one real kind- 
 
 * My readers continually complain that they can’t get my 
 presently issuing hooks. There is not a bookseller in London, 
 however, who is not perfectly well aware that the said books are 
 always to be had by a post card sent to my publisher, Mr. G. 
 Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, to whom subscriptions for the 
 object stated in the text are to be sent (or the books may be 
 had of the Fine Art Society). 
 
264 
 
 NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 ness they can show to me is in listening to me — under- 
 standing, in the first place, that I know my business 
 better at sixty than I did at five-and-twenty ; and in the 
 second, that my happiness, such as yet remains to me, 
 does not at all consist in the things about me in my 
 own parlor, but in the thought that the principles I have 
 taught are being acted upon, and the great buildings and 
 great scenes I have tried to describe saved, so far as may 
 yet be possible, from destruction and desecration. At 
 this very hour, the committees of Venetian builders are 
 meeting to plot the total destruction, and re-erection 
 according to their own notions, and for their owm emolu- 
 ment, of the entire west front of St. Mark’s — that which 
 Barbarossa knelt under, and before which Dandolo took 
 his vow for Palestine ! And in the meantime the Chris- 
 tian populace of all Europe is quarrelling about their 
 little parish reredoses and wax-candles ! * 
 
 And so it comes to pass, that the floor of St. Mark’s is 
 already destroyed, together with the north and south 
 sides ; only the west front and roof mosaics are yet left, 
 and these are instantly threatened. I have got an abso- 
 lutely faithful and able artist, trained by Mr. Burne 
 Jones, to undertake the copying of the whole series of 
 mosaics yet uninjured. He is doing this for love and 
 mere journeyman’s wages — how carefully and thorough- 
 ly the three examples in this room (114, 115, 116) will 
 enough show ; but he has been six months at work alone, 
 unable to employ assistants, and all that I have yet got 
 for him by the eagerest appeals I could make at Venice 
 and here is — some hundred and seventy pounds, and half 
 of that from a single personal friend ! f 
 
 * It may perhaps not be quite too late to contradict a report that 
 appeared in some Irish paper, that I had been lately in Dublin, 
 giving some opinion or other about reredoses. I have not been 
 in Ireland these ten years — never shall be in Ireland more — and 
 care no more about any modern churches or church furniture 
 than about the drop-scene at Drury Lane — not so much indeed, 
 if the truth were all told. 
 
 f £ 5. by report from Mr. Allen, of 13th November. 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 265 
 
 I will have a little circular drawu up, stating these and 
 other relative facts clearly, before the close of the pres- 
 ent exhibition. Before its opening, I can allow myself 
 now little more than the mere explanation of what it 
 contains. 
 
 And now I really haven’t time to talk any more, and 
 yet I’ve ever so much to say, if I could, of the following 
 drawings at Arqua and Nuremberg, 77 and 70. I must 
 at least sa}^ at once why these, like Venice and St. Mi- 
 chael’s Mount, go side by side. 
 
 In the first place, I believe that the so-called Petrarchs 
 house at Arqua (67) can only be built on the site of the 
 real one — it can’t be of Petrarch’s time ; but the tomb is 
 true, and just looking from that, to the building of Diir- 
 er’s house (70) — which is assuredly authentic — and of 
 Rubens’s, No. 81, what a quantity of the lives of the men 
 we are told by these three slight sketches ! One of the 
 things I hope to do at Sheffield is to get a connected and 
 systematic series of drawings of the houses and the 
 tombs of great men. The tombs, of course, generally tell 
 more of their successors than of themselves ; but the 
 two together will be historical more than many volumes. 
 Their houses, I say ; yes, and the things they saw from 
 their houses — quite the chief point with many of the best 
 men and women. Casa Guidi windows, often of much 
 more im|3ort than Casa Guidi ; and in this house of Al- 
 bert’s, its own cross-timbers are little matter, but those 
 Nuremberg walls around it are everything. 
 
 73. Kelso. 
 
 I now gather together, as I best may, the supplement- 
 ary drawings which have come in since I arranged my 
 series, and one or two others which did not properl}^ be- 
 long to it. This one of Kelso is chiefly valuable as show- 
 ing his mode of elementary study with washes of two 
 tints— one warm, the other a little cooler. The system 
 was afterward expanded into his color practice. 
 
266 
 
 NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 74 Entrance to North Transept of Rouen. 
 
 Unfinished, and extremely interesting, as showing his 
 method of rubbing in the tint with the stump or his fin- 
 ger, before adding the pencil hues. 
 
 75. Study of Dutch Boats. 
 
 These boat sketches might be multiplied countlessly 
 — and I would fain have given many and talked much of 
 them, but have neither room nor time. Note in this the 
 careful warping of the mast by the strain of the heavy 
 sail. 
 
 76. Neudersdorf. ) 
 
 77. Gdtenfels. j 
 
 Two lovely Rhine realities ; when the river was some- 
 thing better than a steam-tramway. 
 
 '78. An Old Rhine Bridge, at Rheinfelden. 
 
 A favorite Turner subject, and di'awn and engraved 
 with great cai*e in “ Modern Painters.” As a Prout, it is 
 inferior — small in manner and forced, but, as usual, 
 wholly true to the place. 
 
 79. Munich. 
 
 Notable chiefly for the effort made to draw the atten- 
 tion away from the ugly arcade under the houses by the 
 crowd of near figures. Compare the insistance on beau- 
 tiful arcades in the Como and Domo d’Ossola. 
 
 80. Ypres. 
 
 Wholly lovely, and to be classed with the Abbeville 
 and Evreux as one of the most precious records of former 
 dom^tic architecture. 
 
 81. Rubens’s House, Antwerp. 
 
 The kind of domestic architecture that destroyed all 
 reverence for what preceded it, and brought us down 
 to — what we are. 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 267 
 
 Note the beginning of modem anatomies and sciences 
 and pseudo-classicalisms in the monstrous skulls of 
 beasts. 
 
 82. Caen. \ 
 
 83. Falaise. ) 
 
 Two of the most careful and finished pieces of his 
 later work, but rather architectural studies than jfictures, 
 and alas ! the architecture of the worst school. So little 
 can the taste be really formed without study of sculpture 
 as the queen of edifying law. See notes on Supplement- 
 ary Sketches. 
 
 86. Portico di Ottavia, Rome. 
 
 All the life and death of Rome is in this quite invalu- 
 able drawing ; but I have no time to talk of the life and 
 death of Rome, and perhaps the enlightened modern 
 student would only care for a view of the new tobacco 
 manufactory under the Palatine. 
 
 87. Well at Strasburg. 
 
 We don’t want wells neither, in these days of wisdom, 
 having Thirlmere turned on for us, or Loch Katrine, at 
 our pleasure. But — from the days of Jacob’s well till — 
 thirty years ago, such things were pleasant in human 
 eyes. 
 
 88. Well at Strasburg. 
 
 I close our Prout pencilling with seven examples of his 
 superb work on stone ; all by his own hand, and as liter- 
 ally and thoroughly his, touch for touch, as the pencil 
 sketches themselves, and even more wonderful in their 
 easy mastery of the more difficult material. 
 
 What a disgrace it is to modern landscape painters 
 that this book of Prout’s, Sketches in Flanders and Ger- 
 many,” should remain, to this day, the only work of true 
 artistic value produced, that is to say, by the artist’s own 
 hand, purchasable by the public of Europe, in illustra- 
 tion of their national architecture ! 
 
268 
 
 NOTES ON PEOUT, 
 
 89. Well at Nueemberg. 
 
 This study is one of the most beautiful, but also one 
 of the most imaginative, that ever Prout made — highly 
 exceptional and curious. 
 
 The speciality of Nuremberg is, that its walls are of 
 stone, but its windows, especially those in the roof, for 
 craning up merchandise — are of wood. All the project- 
 ing windows and all the dormers in this square are of 
 wood. But Prout could not stand the inconsistency, and 
 deliberately petrifies all the wood. Very naughty of him ! 
 I have nothing to say in extenuation of this offence ; and, 
 alas ! secondly, the houses have, in reality, only three 
 stories, and he has put a fourth on, out of his inner 
 consciousness ! 
 
 I never knew him do such a thing before or since ; but 
 the end of it is, that this drawing of Nuremberg is im- 
 mensely more Nurembergy than the town itself, and a 
 quite glorious piece of medieeval character. 
 
 90. Ulm. 
 
 91. Prague. — Tower of the Gate. 
 
 92. Prague. — Stadthaus. — The realization of sketch No. 
 
 93. Brunswick. — Bathhaus. 
 
 94. Coblentz. 
 
 I have always held this lithograph to show all ProuPs 
 qualities in supreme perfection, and proudly finish our 
 series of pencil and chalk work with it. 
 
 We now come to a large series of earty color studies, 
 promising better things than ever came of them ; and then 
 the examples of Prout, for which we are simply to blame 
 the public taste he had to meet, and not him. There were 
 no pre-Raphaelites in those days. On the walls at the 
 Scala Palace, in that sketch of Verona, No. 49, Prout has 
 written, conscientiously, “ brick ; ” but do you think if he 
 
NOTES ON PROUT, 
 
 269 
 
 had painted it of brick, anybody would have bought the 
 drawing ? Since those days, all the work of Walker, of 
 Boyce, of Alfred Hunt, of Albert Goodwin, of John Brett 
 (the whole school of them, mind you, founded first on the 
 strong pre-Raphaelite veracities which were all but shrieked 
 down at the first seeing of them, and which I had to stand 
 up alone for, against a whole national clamor of critical 
 vituperation), all that affectionate and laborious painting 
 from nature has familiarized you, now, with birds, and 
 ivy, and blossoms, and berries, and mosses, and rushes, 
 and ripjiles, and trickles, and wrinkles, and twinkles ; 
 and, of course, poor old Prout’s conventional blue wash 
 won’t look its best afterward. Be thankful to them (and 
 somewhat also — I say it not in pride, but as a part of the 
 facts — to “Modern Painters” and me), and indulgent to 
 the old workman, who did the best he could for his cus- 
 tomers, and the most he could for his money. 
 
 95. The English Cottage. — See preface. 
 
 96. Launceston. 
 
 Had this drawing been brought to me as an early 
 Turner, I should have looked twice, and thrice, at it be- 
 fore saying no. If Prout had only had just ever so little 
 more pride, and some interest in British history, he would 
 have been a painter, indeed ! and no mean pencil draughts- 
 man. But he just missed it — and a miss is as bad as a 
 mile, or a million of miles ; and I say nothing more of the 
 series of water-colors here, except only that many a good 
 lesson may be learned from them in chiaroscuro, and in 
 flat tinting, by modest students. 
 
270 
 
 NOTES ON PMOUT. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY DRAWINGS. 
 
 There are — or ought to be, if I get them together in 
 time — eleven of my own, namely ; 
 
 104. Calais. 
 
 104a. The Aventine. 
 
 105. Ducal Palace and Bridge of Sighs. 
 
 106. Ducal Palace, Foliage of Southwest Angle. 
 
 107. Pillar of the Piazzetta. 
 
 108. Chiaroscuro Study of the Same Pillar. 
 
 109. The Casa d’Oro. 
 
 110. Window on the Grand Canal. 
 
 111. Abbeville Crocket. 
 
 112. Oak-leaf. ' 
 
 113. Moss AND OXALIS. 
 
 I meant, when first this exhibition was planned, to have 
 made it completely illustrative of the French flamboyant 
 architecture, which Prout had chiefly studied ; but I have 
 been too much interrupted by other duties ; and I can 
 only now point out, once more — after thirty years of reit- 
 erating this vital fact to architects in vain — that until 
 they are themselves absolute masters of sculptural sur- 
 face, founded on natural forms, they do not know the 
 meaning of any good work, in any school. 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 271 
 
 Sculptural surface^ observe : They fancy they have 
 chosen an ornament when they have got its outline ; but 
 in sculpture the surface is everything ; the outline follows, 
 and is compelled by it. Thus, in the piece of Ducal Palace 
 sculpture, No. 106, the entire value of it depends on the 
 chiaroscuro of its surfaces ; and it would be as absurd to 
 think of sketching it without shade, as a piece of rippled 
 lagoon. And in every minutest finial and crocket of that 
 French flamboyant, the surfaces are studied to a perfec- 
 tion not less subtle, though relieved by more violent 
 shade. The fast study, No. Ill, shows the action of the 
 curved stems and flow of surfaces in one of the crockets 
 of Abbeville. See i)hotograph No. 6, and the study of 
 oak-leaves. No. 112, will show how the natural forms of 
 vegetation lend themselves to every need of such atten- 
 tive design. I have painted this bit of leafage in two 
 stages, showing — if anyone cares to know it — the way 
 Hunt used his body color ; laying it first with extreme 
 care in form and gradation, but in f)ure white ; and then 
 glazing over it — never disturbing it, or mixing it in the 
 slightest degree with his clear color. And it is only by 
 this management of opaque color that architectural detail 
 can be drawn at speed, with any useful result. See the 
 bit of honeysuckle ornament, for instance, at the top of 
 the pillar in No. 108, and fancy the time it would have 
 taken to express the bossy roundness of it in any other 
 way. All disputes about the use of body color, begin 
 and end in the “ to be or not to be ” of accurate form. 
 
 Then there are three drawings of St. Mark’s mosaics 
 by Mr. Kooke : 
 
 114. Floral Decoration. 
 
 115. Madonna and David. 
 
 116. The Prophets. 
 
 Then some variously illustrated photographs, etc. 
 
272 
 
 NOTES ON PBOUT, 
 
 117. Abbeville. 
 
 118. PiCTUKE OF Abbeville. 
 
 106a. Venice, the Piazzetta. 
 
 11. Lithogkaph of Modern Strasbueg. 
 
 119. (?) Improvements in Modern London, 
 
 Then, in the glass case, there is a little bit of real Vene- 
 tian sixteenth century silk- work — put there to show pre- 
 cisely what Shakespeare meant by “ Valance of Venice gold 
 in needlework ” (“ Taming of the Shrew ” ); and secondly, 
 to show the use of minute points of color — no less than of 
 form in decoration carried on ; and finally, there is the 
 Meissonier, above referred to, Napoleon, in 1814, on the 
 Chaussee of Vitry, just after the battle of Avcis-sur-Aube. 
 
 “ The French horsemen, though inferior to none in the 
 world for audacity and prowess, were overmatched by 
 their opponents and driven back to the bridge of Ards. 
 Napoleon, who was on the other side, instantly rode for- 
 ward to the entrance of the bridge, already all but choked 
 up with fugitives, and drawing his sword, exclaimed, 
 
 ‘ Let me see which of you will pass before me ! * These 
 words arrested the flight, and the division Friant tracers- • 
 ing the streets of* Arcis, in double-quick time passed the 
 bridge, formed on either side of its other extremity, and 
 by their heavy Are drove back the allied horse. 
 
 * % ^ ^ * 
 
 “ Napoleon was repeatedly in imminent danger, nearly 
 all his staff were killed or wounded. ‘ Fear nothing,’ 
 said he, to the generals who urged him to retire : ‘ the 
 bullet is not yet cast which is to kill me.’ He seemed to 
 court rather than fear death, his air was resolute but som- 
 bre, and as long as the battle raged, by the light of the 
 
NOTES ON PROUT. 
 
 273 
 
 burning houses behind and the flash of the enemies’ guns 
 in front, he continued to face the hostile batteries, 
 
 ^ * Hi 4 : * ❖ 
 
 “On leaving Ards, instead of taking the road to Chalons 
 or to Paris, he moved on the Chaussee of Vitry, direct 
 toward the Ehine. His letter to the Empress Marie 
 Louise was in these terms : 
 
 “ ‘ My love, I have been for some days constantly on 
 horseback ; on the 20th I took Arcis-sur-Aube. The 
 enemy attacked me there at eight in the evening. I 
 beat him the same evening. I took two guns and retook 
 two. The next day the enemy’s army put itself in array 
 to protect the march of its columns on Bar-sur-Aube, 
 and I resolved to approach the Marne and its environs. 
 This evening I shall be at St. Dizier. Farewell, my love. 
 Embrace my son.’” (See “Alison,” vol. x., pp. 396 to 
 406.) 
 
 It would be difficult to find a more perfect example of 
 the French realistic school than this picture. It is, of 
 course, conventional, and founded on photographic effect 
 — the white horse in reality would have looked like a 
 ghost in the twilight, and not one of the details of the 
 housings been in the least visible — had these been so, 
 much more should the details of the landscape have been. 
 But in its kind it is without rivalship, and I purpose that 
 it shall remain in St. George’s schools — for a monument 
 of War-sorrow, where War has been unjust. 
 
 18 
 
II. -HUNT. 
 
 142. The Butteefly. 
 
 Before saying anything more of the Hunt series, I want 
 my readers once more clearly to understand what I have 
 brought it here for ; namely, to show them what real 
 painting is, as such, wholly without inquiry concerning its 
 sentiment or story. The Prouts are here for an exactly 
 opposite reason — not at all to show you what mere pencil- 
 ling is, as such — but what it can pencil for us of European 
 scenery and history. Whereas this butterfly is here, not 
 at all to teach you anything you didn’t know about but- 
 terflies ; nor the peach and grapes to teach you anything 
 you didn’t know about those familiar fruits ; nor even that 
 boy in his father’s boots to teach you anything you didn’t 
 know before about boys and boots. They are here merely 
 to show you what is meant by Painting, as distinguished 
 from daubing, from plastering, from rough casting, from 
 chromo-tinting, from tray- varnishing, from paper- staining, 
 and in general from the sort of things that people in gen- 
 eral do when you put a brush into their hands, and a pot 
 within reach of them. 
 
 Now, that little brown-red butterfly (which Mr. Gurney 
 is so fortunate in possessing) is a piece of real painting ; 
 and it is as good as Titian or anybody else ever did. And 
 if you can enjoy it j^ou can enjoy Titian and all other 
 good painters ; and if you can’t see anything in it, you 
 can’t see anything in them, and it is all affectation and 
 pretence to say that you care about them. 
 
 And with this butterfly, in the drawing I put first, 
 please look at the mug and loaf in the one I have put last, 
 of the Hunt Series, No. 171. The whole art of painting 
 
NOTES ON HUNT. 
 
 275 
 
 is ill that mug — as the fisherman’s genius was in the bot- 
 tle. If you can feel how beautiful it is, how ethereal, how 
 heathery and heavenly, as well as to the uttermost, muggy : 
 you have an eye for color, and can enjoy heather, heaven, 
 and everything else below and above. If not, you must 
 enjoy what you can, contentedly^ but it won’t be paint- 
 ing ; and in mugs it will be more the beer than the 
 crockery ; and on the moors, rather grouse than heather. 
 
 Going back to No. 142, you will perhaps ask me why 
 the poppy is so poor and the butterfly so rich ? Mainly 
 because the poppy withered and the butterfly was pinned 
 and permanent. But there are other reasons, of which 
 more presently. 
 
 144. Heering and Pilchard. 
 
 Supreme painting again, and done with his best pains ; 
 for these two subjects, and 
 
 146 Dead Chicken 
 
 Were done by the old man, in all kindness and care, at 
 my own request, for me to give as types of work to coun- 
 try schools of Art. Yet no kindness or care could alto- 
 gether enable him to work rightly under the direction of 
 another mind ; and the project was ultimately given up 
 by me, the chicken finished as it is, having been one of 
 my chief disapj^ointments. And here anent, let me enter 
 into some general account of the tenor of his drawings. 
 They may be broadly divided into the following classes, 
 into one or other of which every work of importance from 
 his hand will distinctly fall. 
 
 Class 1. 
 
 Drawings illustrative of rural life in its vivacity and 
 purity, without the slightest endeavor at idealization, 
 and still less with any wish either to caricature, or deplore 
 its imperfections. All the drawings belonging to this 
 class are, virtually, faultless, and most of them very beau- 
 tiful. It is, I am glad to say, thoroughly represented in 
 
276 
 
 NOTES ON HUNT. 
 
 this room, which contains several examples of the highest 
 quality, namely, 121, 168, 171, 172, 173, 175. 
 
 Besides two pieces of still life (169 and the interior. 
 No. 174), properly belonging to the group 
 
 Class 2. 
 
 Country life, with endeavor to add interest to it by 
 passing sentiment. 
 
 The drawings belonging to this class are almost always 
 over-finished, and liable to many faults. There are three 
 in this collection — 120, 165, 166. 
 
 Class 3. 
 
 Country life, with some expression of its degradation, 
 either by gluttony, cowardice, or rudeness. 
 
 The drawings of this class are usually very clever and 
 apt to be very popular ; but they are on the whole dis- 
 honorable to the artist. There are five examples here, 
 namely, 157, 158, 161, 163, 164. 
 
 Class 4. 
 
 Flower-pieces. Fruit is often included in these ; but 
 they form a quite separate class, being necessarily less 
 finished drawings — the flowers sooner changing their 
 form. Including the fungi among these, there are eight 
 fine ones in the room, 148, 150, 149, 154, 152, 147, 151, 
 156. 
 
 Class 5. 
 
 Fruit-pieces, on which a great part of the artist’s repu- 
 tation very securely rests. Five first-rate ones are here, 
 and several of interesting, though inferior, quality. 
 
 Class 6. 
 
 Dead animals. Alas ! if he could but have painted 
 living ones, instead of those perpetual bunches of grapes. 
 But it could not be. To a weakly, sensitive, nervous tem- 
 perament, the perpetual changes of position, and perpet- 
 ual suggestions of new beauty in an animal, are entirely 
 
NOTES ON HUNT. 
 
 277 
 
 ruinous ; in ten minutes they put one in a fever. Only 
 the very greatest portrait-painters — Sir Joshua and Ve- 
 lasquez- — can draw animals rightly. 
 
 I begin with this last class and reascend to the high- 
 est. 
 
 138. Dead Haee and Game. 
 
 A most notable drawing of early practice, quite won- 
 derful in textures of fur and in work of shadows, but 
 tentative, and in many points failing. 
 
 141. Dead Dove. (A.) 
 
 A pure water-color drawing, before his style was per- 
 fectly formed. Full of interest, but too conventional and 
 slight in background. 
 
 139. Dead Dove. (B.) 
 
 Finished work of central time. 
 
 145. Dead Dove. (C.) 
 
 Replica, I suppose, of B, with completer background, 
 and of highest quality. I must be pardoned for saying 
 so of my own drawing ; but of course, after long and af- 
 fectionate relations with the painter, it would be strange 
 if I had not some of his best works. 
 
 143. Pine, Melon, and Gkapes. 
 
 We were obliged to put this drawing low down, for, in 
 spite of its dark background, it killed everything we put 
 near it. To my mind, it is the most majestic piece of 
 work in the room. The grapes are of the Rubens Vint- 
 age, and the shadows have the darkness of Tintoret. It 
 is wholty free from any pettiness of manner, and evidences 
 spring and succulence of foliage ; it is as if the strength 
 of nature were in it, rather than of human hand. I never 
 saw it until now, and have learned from it more than after 
 my fifty years of labor I thought anything but a Vene- 
 tian picture could have taught me. 
 
278 NOTES ON HUNT. 
 
 132. “Love what you study, study what you love.” 
 
 All modern painters in a nutshell of a sentence, and the 
 painted nutshell perfect. — See Preface. 
 
 130. Grapes. 
 
 Consummate. Can’t be better anywhere. 
 
 131. Mr. Sibeth’s Quinces. 
 
 All that’s best in this kind. 
 
 125. Bullaces. 
 
 Very fine, but conventional in background. 
 
 129. Grapes. 
 
 Perfect work, but wasted. Why he did so many grapes, 
 and scarcely ever sloes, or finely russet apples, or growing 
 strawberries, always mystified me. 
 
 126. Plums. 
 
 Finest work, but a little dull. My own favorites of 
 his plums were such variegated ones as 133 and 135 ; but 
 I somehow never got any. This drawing, however, was 
 the one of which Hunt said to me innocently — seeing it 
 again after some ten years — “It's very nice ; isn’t it? ” 
 
 128. Plums. 
 
 The bit of oak-leaf here is very wonderful, and inter- 
 esting as an example, and what Hunt meant by saying to 
 me once, “ I like to see things ‘ Fudged ’ out.” It is to 
 be reme’mbered, however, that this was his own special 
 liking ; and it must not be followed by the general stu- 
 dent. The finest forms of anything cannot be “fudged” 
 out, but must be drawn, if possible, with the fii’st line, at 
 least with the last one, for ever. 
 
 149. Dr. Drage’s Fungi. 
 
 A perfect gem ; “ Venetian red ” in its best earthly 
 splendor ; it could only be more bright in clouds. 
 
 I 
 
NOTES ON HUNT, 
 
 279 
 
 147. Mr. Fry’s Hawthorn. 
 
 A little overworked, but very glorious. Soft and 
 scented, I think, if you only wait a little, and make-be- 
 lieve very much. 
 
 155. (Mine.) Hawthorn and Birds’ Nests. 
 
 The hawthorn this time a little i^?ii7erworked, but very 
 good ; and nests as good as can be. 
 
 148. Lilac. (Mr. Sibeth’s.) 
 
 Fine, but curiously redundant. The upper branch 
 by itself, or the lower wdth only the laburnum, or both 
 together without the third, would have been beautiful ; 
 but two’s company, and three’s none. 
 
 150. Vase with Rose and Basket with Fruit. | 
 
 151. Flowers and Fruit. ) 
 
 Two resplendent ones ; everything that he could do 
 best in this kind — absolutely right in color, absolutely 
 in light and shade, and wuthout any rivalship in past or 
 present art. 
 
 162. The Gamekeeper. 
 
 Early study. Please observe that Hunt learned his 
 business, not in spots but in lines. Compare the en- 
 tirely magnificent sketch of the river-side, No. 124, which 
 is as powerful in lines as Rembrandt, and the St. Mar- 
 tin’s Church, No. 123, which is like a bit of Hogarth. 
 
 157. The Invalid. 
 
 Full of humor ; but there is no place for humor in 
 true painting. So also the Wasp, No. 163. If 1 could 
 have the currant-pie wdthout the boy, I should be content. 
 
 161. Gypsies. 
 
 Very powerful ; historic in its kind. 
 
 166. Praying Boy. (Mr. Quii.ter’s.) 
 
280 
 
 NOTES ON HUNT. 
 
 Over-finished, as its companion, No. 165, an endeavor 
 at doing what he did not understand. So also the large 
 study of himself. No. 176, with the Mulatto, No. 122, 
 and Wanderer, No. 120. His mode of work was entirely 
 unfitted for full life-size. 
 
 121. Mr. Quilter’s Stable-boy. 
 
 Mr. Orrock’s Shy Sitter, and The Blessing. 
 
 On the contrary, he is here again in his utmost 
 strength — and in qualities of essential painting — uncon- 
 querable. In the pure faculty of painter’s art — in what 
 Correggio, and Tintoret, and Velasquez, and Kubens, 
 and Rembrandt, meant by painting — that single bunch 
 . of old horse-collars is worth all Meissonier’s horse-bridles 
 — boots, breeches, epaulettes, and stars together. 
 
 The other drawings of the highest class need no com- 
 mentary. There is not much in the two little candle- 
 lights, Nos. 168, 175, but all that is, of the finest, and 
 the three drawings with which I close our series, “The 
 Shy Sitter,” No. 172, “ The Fisherman’s Boy,” No. 173, 
 and “ The Blessing,” No. 171, things that the old painter 
 was himself unspeakably blessed in having power to do. 
 The strength of all lovely human life is in them ; and 
 England herself lives only, at this hour, in so much as, 
 from all that is sunk in the luxury — sick in the penury — 
 and polluted in the sin of her great cities. Heaven has 
 yet hidden for her, old men and children such as these, 
 by their fifties in her fields and on her shores, and fed 
 them with Bread and Water. 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnifi- 
 cence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, tlie 
 quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate 
 man from man, and near him to his Maker ; and there is no action nor 
 ait whose majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore, when 
 we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for 
 present delight, nor for present use alone ; let it be such work as our 
 descendants will thank ns for, and let us think, as we lay stone on 
 stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred be- 
 cause our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look 
 Upon the labor and wrought substance of them, “ See ! this our fathers 
 did for us.” For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its 
 stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense 
 of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even 
 of apjiroval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long 
 been waslied by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting 
 witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional char- 
 acter of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons 
 and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of 
 the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculp- 
 tured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and follow- 
 ing ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concen- 
 trates the sympathy, of nations ; it is in that golden stain of time, that 
 we are to look for the real light, and color, and preciousness of archi- 
 tecture ; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till 
 it has been intrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, 
 till its walls have been witnesses of suffering and its pillars rise out of 
 the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of 
 the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so 
 much as these possess, of language and of life. — ‘'The Seven Lamps 
 of Architecture,” pp. 172, 178. 
 
 But so far as it can be rendered consistent with the inherent charao* 
 
282 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 ter, tlie picturesque or extraneous sublimity of architecture has just this 
 of nobler function in it than that of any other object whatsoever, that 
 it is an exponent of age, of that in which, as has been said, the greatest 
 glory of the building consists ; and therefore, the external signs of this 
 glory, having power and purpose greater than any belonging to their 
 mere sensible beauty, may be considered as taking rank among pure 
 and essential characters ; so essential to my mind, that I think a build- 
 ing cannot be considered as in its prime until four or five centuries have 
 passed over it ; and that the entire choice and arrangement of its details 
 should have reference to their appearance after that period, so that 
 none should be admitted which would suffer material injury either by 
 the weatlier-staining, or the mechanical degradation which the lapse of 
 such a period would necessitate. 
 
 It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions which the 
 application of this principle involves. They are of too great interest 
 and complexity to be even touched upon within my present limits, but 
 this is broadly to be noticed, that those styles of architecture which are | 
 picturesque in the sense above explained with respect to sculpture, that 
 is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrangement of points of 
 shade rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonly 
 gain in richness of effect when their details are partly worn away ; 
 hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always 
 be adopted when the materials to be employed are liable to degradation, 
 as brick, sandstone, or soft limestone ; and styles in any degree depen- 
 dent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be practised alto- 
 gether ill hard and undecomposing materials — granite, serpentine, or 
 crystalline marbles. There can be no doubt that the nature of the 
 accessible materials influenced the formation of both styles ; and it 
 should still more authoritatively determine our choice of either. — Ibid.^ 
 pp. 179, 180. 
 
 APPENDIX n. I 
 
 The essence of picturesque character has been already defined to be 
 a sublimity not inherent in the nature of the thing, but caused by 
 something external to it ; as the ruggedness of a cottage-roof possesses 
 something of a mountain aspect, not belonging to the cottage as such. 
 And this sublimity may be either in mere external ruggedness, and 
 other visible character, or it may lie deeper, in an expression of sorrow i 
 and old age, attributes which are both sublime ; not a dominant expres- 
 sion, but one mingled with such familiar and common characters as 
 prevent the object from becoming perfectly pathetic in its sorrow, or 
 perfectly venerable in its age. 
 
 For instance, I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I 
 
APPENDIGES. 
 
 283 
 
 hare always in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in Eng- 
 land. at the foot of the old tower of Calais church. The large neglect, 
 the noble unsightliness of it ; the record of its years written so visibly, 
 yet without sign of weakness or decay ; its stern wasteness and gloom, 
 eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter sea 
 grasses ; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not falling ; Its 
 desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly fissures, and yet 
 strong, like a bare brown rock ; its carelessness of what any one thinks 
 or feels about it, putting forth no claim, having no beauty nor desirable- 
 ness, pride nor grace ; yet neither asking for pity ; not as ruins are, use- 
 less and piteous, feebly or fondly garrulous of better days ; but useful 
 still, going through its own daily work, — as some old fisherman beaten 
 gray by storm, yet drawing his daily nets : so it stands, with no com- 
 plaint about its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and 
 serviceableness, gathering human souls together underneath it; the 
 sound of its bells for prayer still rolling through its rents ; and the gray 
 peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of the three that rise above 
 the waste of surfy sand and hillocked shore, — the lighthouse for life, 
 and the belfry for labor, and this for patience and praise. 
 
 I cannot tell the half of the strange pleasures and thoughts thatcomo 
 about me at the sight of that old tower ; for, in some sort, it is the epit- 
 ome of all that makes the Continent of Europe interesting, as opposed 
 to new countries ; and, above all, it completely expresses that agedness 
 in the midst of active life which binds the old and the new into har- 
 mony. We, in England, have our new street, our new inn, our green 
 shaven lawn, and our piece of ruin emergent from it — a mere specimen 
 of the middle ages put on a bit of velvet carpet to be shown, which, but 
 for its size, might as well be on a museum shelf at once, under cover. 
 But, on the Continent, the links are unbroken between the past and 
 present, and in such use as they can serve for, the gray headed wrecks 
 are suffered to stay with men ; while in unbroken line, the generations 
 of spared buildings are seen succeeding each in its place. And thus in 
 its largeness, in its permitted evidence of slow decline, in its poverty, 
 in its absence of all pretence, of all show and care for outside aspect, 
 that Calais tower has an infinite of symbolism in it, all the more striking 
 because usually seen in contrast with English scenes expressive of feel- 
 ings the exact reverse of these. — “ Modern Painters,” vol. iv. , pp. 2, 3. 
 
 APPENDIX III. 
 
 And, in some sort, the hunter of the picturesque is better than many 
 other pleasure-seekers ; inasmuch as he is simple-minded, and capable 
 of unostentatious and economical delights, which, if not very helpful 
 
284 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 to other people, are at all events utterly nninjurious, even to the vic- 
 tims or subjects of his picturesque fancies ; while to many others his 
 work is entertaining and useful. And, more than all this, even that 
 delight which he seems to take in misery is not altogether un virtuous. 
 Through all his enjoyment there runs a certain undercurrent of tragical 
 passion — a real vein of human sympathy ; — it lies at the root of all 
 those strange morbid hauiitings of his ; a sad excitement, such as other 
 people feel at a tragedy, only less in degree, just enough, indeed, to 
 give a deeper tone to his pleasure, and to make him choose for his sub- 
 ject the broken stones of a cottage wall rather than of a roadside bank, 
 the picturesque beauty of form in each being suppo.sed precisely the 
 same ; and, together with this slight tragical feeling, there is also a 
 humble and romantic sympathy, a vague desire, in his own mind, to 
 live in cottages rather than in palaces ; a joy in humble things, a con- 
 tentment and delight in makeshifts, a secret persuasion (in many re- 
 spects a true one) that there is in these ruined cottages a happiness often 
 quite as great as in kings’ palaces, and a virtue and nearness to God 
 infinitely greater and holier than can commonly be found in any other 
 kind of place ; so that the misery in which he exults is not, as he sees 
 it, misery, but nobleness — “ poor and sick in body, and beloved by the 
 Gods.” And thus, being nowise sure that these things can be mended 
 at all, and very sure that he knows not how to mend them, and also 
 that the strange pleasure he feels in them must have some good reason 
 in the nature of things, he yields to his destiny, enjoys his dark canal 
 without scruple, and mourns over every improvement in the town, and 
 every movement made by its sanitary commissioners, as a miser would 
 over a planned robbery of his chest ; in all this being not only innocent, 
 but even respectable and admirable, compared with the kind of person 
 who has no pleasure in sights of this kind, but only in fair fa 9 ades, trim 
 gardens, and park palings, and who would thrust all poverty and mis- 
 ery out of his way, collecting it into back alleys, or sweeping it finally 
 out of the world, so that the street might give wider play for his char- 
 iot wheels, and the breeze less offence to his nobility. — “ Modern Paint- 
 ers,” vol. iv., pp. 11, 12. 
 
 APPENDIX IV. 
 
 I DO not doubt that you are greatly startled at my saying that greater 
 pleasure is to be received from inferior Art than from the finest. But 
 what do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood 
 with so much regret (if their childhood has been, in any moderate 
 degree, healthy or peaceful) ? That rich charm, which the least pos- 
 session had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures. 
 
APPENDICES, 
 
 285 
 
 That miraculous aspect of the nature around us was because we had 
 seen little and knew less. Every increased possession loads us with 
 new weariness ; every piece of new knowledge diminishes the faculty 
 of admiration ; and Death is at last appointed to take us from a scene 
 in which, if we were to stay longer, no gift could satisfy us, and no 
 miracle surprise. . . . 
 
 Ill your educational series is a lithograph drawing, by Front, of an 
 old house in Strasbourg. The carvings of its woodwork are in a style 
 altogether provincial, yet of which the origin is very distant. The 
 delicate Renaissance architecture of Italy was affected, even in its finest 
 periods, by a tendency to throw out convex masses at the bases of its 
 pillars ; the wood-carvers of the sixteenth century adopted this bulged 
 form as their first element of ornamentation, and these windows of 
 Strasbourg are only imitations by the German peasantry of what, in its 
 finest type, you must seek as far away as the Duomo of Bergamo. 
 
 But the burgher, or peasant, of Alsace enjoyed his rude imitation, 
 adapted, as it was, boldly and frankly to the size of his house and the 
 grain of the larch logs of which he built, infinitely more than the re- 
 fined Italian enjoyed the floral luxuriance of his marble ; and all the 
 treasures of a great exhibition could not have given him the tenth part 
 of the exultation with which he saw the gable of his roof completed 
 over its jutting fret-work; and wrote among the rude intricacies of its 
 sculpture, in flourished black letter, that “He and his wife had built 
 their house with God’s help, and prayed Him to let them live long in it 
 — they and their children. ” 
 
 But it is not only the rustic method of architecture which I wish you 
 to note in this plate ; it isthe rustic method of drawing also. The manner 
 in which these blunt timber-carvings are drawn by Front is just as pro- 
 vincial as the carvings themselves. Born in a far-away district in Eng- 
 land, and learning to draw, unhelped, with fishing-boats for his models ; 
 making his way instinctively until he had command of his pencil enough 
 to secure a small income by lithographic drawing ; and finding pictu- 
 resque character in buildings from which all the finest lines of their 
 carving had been effaced by time ; possessing also an instinct in the 
 expression of such subjects so peculiar as to win for him a satisfying 
 popularity, and far better, to enable him to derive perpetual pleasure 
 in the seclusion of country hamlets, and the quiet streets of deserted 
 cities. Front had never any motive to acquaint himself with the re- 
 finements, or contend with the difficulties of a more accomplished art. 
 So far from this, his manner of work was, by its very imperfection, in 
 the most perfect sympathy with the subjects he enjoyed. The broad 
 chalk touches in which he has represented to us this house at Stras- 
 bourg are entirely sufficient to give true idea of its effect. To liave 
 drawn its ornaments with the subtlety of Leonardestpie delineation 
 would only have exposed their faults and mocked their rusticity. The 
 
286 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 drawing would have become painful to you from the sense of the time 
 which it had taken to represent what was not worth the labor, and to 
 direct your attention to what could only, if closely examined, be a mat- 
 ter of offence. But here you have a simple and provincial draughtsman 
 happily and adequately expressing a simple and provincial architecture; 
 nor could builder or painter have become wiser, but to their loss. — 
 “Works of John Ruskin,” vol. iv., “Eagle’s Nest,” pp. 76, 77, 78, 
 79, 80. 
 
CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS, 
 
 PEOUT UST. 
 
 Contributed 6y 
 
 1 Calais Town, . . . . 
 
 2 Calais Old Pier, 
 
 3 Figure Studies, 
 
 4 Abbeville. West Front of S. 
 
 Wulfran, . . . . 
 
 5 Abbeville. Northwest Tower 
 
 of S. Wulfran, 
 
 6 Abbeville. Photo, . 
 
 7 Amiens, 
 
 8 Dieppe. Chapel of the Holy 
 
 Sepulchre, . . . . 
 
 9 Evreux, 
 
 10 Strasburg, . , . . 
 
 11 Strasburg. Litho, , 
 
 12 Lisieux, , . . . . 
 
 13 Lisieux. Water-color Drawing, 
 
 14 Bayeux, . , . . . 
 
 15 Tours, Shop at, . . . 
 
 16 Kouen. The Tour de Beurre, . 
 
 17 Kouen. Staircase, Maelon, 
 
 18 Ghent, 
 
 19 Antwerp, 
 
 20 Augsburgh, .... 
 
 21 Brunswick, . . . . 
 
 22 Dresden, . . . . . 
 
 23 Prague. The Bridge, 
 
 24 Prague. Stadt Haus, 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 <( 
 
 it 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 a 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 a 
 
 it 
 
 it 
 
 Mr. J. C. Ottway 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 it 
 
 it 
 
 it 
 
 it 
 
 it 
 
 Col. T. H. Sale 
 Mr. James Knowles 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 Mr. John Simon 
 
288 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 25 Bramburg, 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 26 Nuremberg, 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 27 Lahnstein, 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. W. H. Urwick 
 
 28 The Drachenfels, 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 29 Islands of the Ehine, 
 
 , 
 
 <( 
 
 30 The Pfalz, 
 
 , 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 31 Worms, .... 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. G. W. Reid, F.S.A. 
 
 32 Worms. Pencil, 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 33 Four Studies of Peasants 
 
 at 
 
 
 Ratisbonne, . 
 
 , 
 
 • “ 
 
 34 An Old Water-mill, . 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. Alfred H^unt 
 
 35 Ulm, .... 
 
 , 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 36 Ulm. Water-color Drawing, 
 
 . 
 
 Ml*. C. S. Whitmore 
 
 37 Swiss Costumes, 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 38 Old Hulk, 
 
 . 
 
 Fine Art Society 
 
 39 Chillon, .... 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 40 Chillon. The Dungeon, . 
 
 . 
 
 (t 
 
 41 Montreux, 
 
 . 
 
 ]\lr. S. G. Prout 
 
 42 Martigny. The Waterfall, 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 43 Martigny. Village, . 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 44 A Castle, . . . . 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. A. Hunt 
 
 45 Mayence, .... 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. C. S. Whitmore 
 
 46 Brieg, .... 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 
 47 Domo d’Ossola, 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 48 Como, .... 
 
 . 
 
 a 
 
 49 Verona, .... 
 
 , 
 
 it 
 
 50 Verona. Water-color Drawing, 
 
 51 Verona. Three Pencil Draw- 
 
 Mr. J. C. Ottway 
 
 ings, .... 
 
 . 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 52 Ghent, .... 
 
 , 
 
 Mr. W. J. Stuart 
 
 53 Sunrise, .... 
 
 , 
 
 Mr. W. Scrivener 
 
 54 Swiss Village, . 
 
 , 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 55 Place of St. Mark’s, Venice, 
 
 . 
 
 <1 
 
 56 Venice. Ducal Palace from the 
 
 West, 
 
 67 Venice. Ducal Palace from the 
 East, 
 
CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 289 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 68 S. Michael’s Mount, Normandy, Mr. Kuskin 
 
 69 The Grand Canal, Venice. Near 
 
 the Rialto, . 
 
 60 The Doge’s Palace, Venice, 
 
 61 Verona, . . . . 
 
 62 Sunset, . . . . 
 
 63 The Grand Canal, Venice, 
 
 64 The Bridge of Sighs, 
 
 65 Bologna. San Jacopo, 
 
 66 Bologna. 
 
 The Tower of Gah 
 
 The Right Hon. Lord 
 Coleridge 
 Mr. J. Rhodes 
 Mr. J. C. Scrivener 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 senda, .... 
 
 67 Arqua. Petrarch’s House, 
 
 68 Arqua. Petrarch’s Tomb, 
 
 69 Vauxhall, 
 
 70 Nuremberg. Diirer’s House, 
 
 71 Rome. Coliseum, . 
 
 72 Rome. Fountain of Egeria, 
 
 73 Kelso, .... 
 
 74 Rouen, .... 
 
 75 Study of Dutch Boats, 
 
 76 Neudersdorf, . 
 
 77 Gutenfels, 
 
 78 An Old Rhine Bridge at Rheins 
 
 felden, .... 
 
 79 Munich, .... 
 
 80 Ypres, . • . 
 
 81 Rubens’ House, Antwerp, 
 
 82 Caen, . . 
 
 83 Falaise, .... 
 
 84 Old Gateway at Monmouth, 
 
 85 Old Hulk, 
 
 86 Portico di Ottavia, Rome, 
 
 87 Well at Strasburg, . 
 
 88 Well at Strasburg, . 
 
 89 Well at Nuremberg, 
 
 90 Ulm, .... 
 
 (I 
 
 Mr. S. G. Prout 
 (( 
 
 Mr. H. Moore 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 (C 
 
 Mr. J. W. Gibbs 
 
 Ml’. Ruskin 
 ({ 
 
 (4 
 
 44 
 
 44 
 
 44 
 
 44 
 
 44 
 
 44 
 
 44 
 
 Mr. A. F. Payne 
 Mr. Keeling 
 Mr. Duncan 
 Mr. Robinson 
 ]VIr. Ruskin 
 
 44 
 
 19 
 
290 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 Contributed 
 
 91 Prague. Tower of the Gate, Mr. Ruskin 
 
 92 Prague. Stadthaus, . . “ 
 
 93 Brunswick. Rathhaus, . “ 
 
 94 Coblenz, .... 
 
 95 English Cottage, . . . 
 
 96 Launceston, . . . Mr. W. Eastlake 
 
 97 Wreck of an East Indiaman, . Hon. H. Strutt 
 
 98 Frankfort, .... Mr. A. T. Hollingsworth 
 
 99 Marine View, . . . Mr. Safe 
 
 100 Verona, .... Mr. J. J. Wigzell 
 
 101 Interior of St. Julien at Tours Mr. S. Castle 
 
 102 A Bridge, .... Mr. A. F. Payne 
 
 103 View of a Church, . . Rev. J. Townsend 
 
 HUNT LIST. 
 
 120 The Wanderer, 
 
 121 The Eavesdropper, 
 
 122 Head of a Mulatto Girl, 
 
 123 St. Martin’s Church, 
 
 124 Somerset House, . 
 
 125 Bullaces, . . 
 
 126 Plums, . . 
 
 127 Black Grapes and Straw- 
 
 berries, . . . . 
 
 128 Magnum Bonum Plums, 
 
 129 Black and White Grapes, 
 
 130 Grapes, . . . . 
 
 131 Quinces, . . . . 
 
 132 “ Love what you study, study 
 
 what you love,” 
 
 133 Plums and Blackberries, 
 
 134 Black Grapes and Peach, 
 
 135 Fruit, . . . . . 
 
 136 Black and White Grapes, 
 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 Mr. W. Quilter 
 IVIr. F. Wigan 
 Mr. Ellis 
 
 Mr. J. C. Robinson 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 Mr. Edmund Sibeth 
 
 u 
 
 i< 
 
 Mr. W. J. Galloway 
 Mr. Edmund Sibeth 
 
 Mr. Geo. Gurney 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 Mi\ Alfred Harris 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 
CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 137 Grapes, Casket, and Peaches, 
 
 138 Hare (dead), 
 
 139 A Pigeon, 
 
 140 Acorn, .... 
 
 141 A Pigeon, .... 
 
 142 Flowers and Fruit with But- 
 
 terfly, . . . . 
 
 143 Pine, Melon, and Grapes, 
 
 144 Herrings and Red Mullet, 
 
 145 A Pigeon, .... 
 
 146 Dead Chicken, 
 
 147 A Bird’s Nest, with May-blos- 
 
 som, . . . . 
 
 148 Lilac and Bird’s Nest, . 
 
 149 Fungi, . . . . 
 
 150 Vase with Rose, and Basket 
 
 with Fruit, 
 
 151 Flowers and Fruit, 
 
 152 Apple Blossom, 
 
 153 Dog-roses and Bird’s Nest, . 
 
 154 Primrose and Bird’s Nest, 
 
 155 Birds’ Nests and May Blos- 
 
 som, 
 
 156 Primrose, 
 
 157 The Invalid, 
 
 158 Saturday Morning, 
 
 158a “ Study of a Head,” 
 
 159 The Pitcher Girl, 
 
 159aSketch for the drawing of the 
 
 Fly- catcher, 
 
 160 Sketch for the drawing of the 
 
 Cricketer, 
 
 161 The Gipsies, 
 
 162 The Gamekeeper, 
 
 163 Boy startled by a Wasp, 
 
 164 A Young Artist, , 
 
 165 Prayer, 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 Mr. A. W. Lyon 
 
 u 
 
 . Mr. W. Quilter 
 . G. Knight 
 . Mr. Ruskin 
 
 Mr. Geo. Gurney 
 A. T. Hollingsworth 
 Mr. Geo. Gurney 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 
 Mr. Fry 
 
 Mr. Edmund Sibeth 
 Dr. Drage 
 
 Mr. Edmund Sibeth 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 Mr. Geo. Gurney 
 Mr. R. D. Farnworth 
 Mr. Geo. Gurney 
 
 Mr. Ruskin 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock 
 Mr. S. J. Thacker 
 Mr. J. J. Wigzell 
 Mr. G. Peck 
 Mr. Jas. Orrock. 
 
 Mr. H. G. Hine 
 
 Mr. Carl Haag 
 Mr. W. Quilter 
 
 a 
 
 Mr. John Rhodes 
 Mr. George Gurney 
 Dr. Prescott Hewett 
 
 291 
 
292 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 166 Devotion, 
 
 167 Girl’s Head, 
 
 168 Boy with a lighted Candle, 
 
 169 The Blacksmith’s Shop, 
 
 170 By the Wayside, . 
 
 171 The Blessing, 
 
 172 The Shy Sitter, . 
 
 173 My Father’s Boots, 
 
 174 An Interior, 
 
 175 Boy with Lantern, 
 
 176 Portrait of Hunt (painted by 
 
 himself), 
 
 176*Grapes — Muscatel, Peach, and 
 Spray of Raspberries, 
 
 177 Portrait of Sami. Prout, by 
 
 Wm. Hunt, , . . Mr. 
 
 178 Portrait of Wm. Hunt, by 
 
 himself, .... Mr. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Mr. 
 
 Contributed by 
 
 W. Quilter 
 W. J. Galloway 
 W. Beacall 
 W. H. Urwick 
 S. J. Thacker 
 Jas. Orrock 
 
 ii 
 
 John Rhodes 
 Ruskin 
 J. J. Elliott 
 
 Mr. Sutton Palmer 
 
 Haydon 
 
 Osier 
 
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS TO THE EXHIBITION. 
 
 Beacall, Mr. W. 
 
 Brown, Dr. John. 
 
 Coleridge, The Right Hon. 
 Lord. 
 
 Drage, Dr. 
 
 Duncan, Mr. E. 
 
 Eastlake, Mr. W. 
 
 Elliott, Mr. J. J. 
 
 Fry, Mr. 
 
 Galloway, Mr. W. J. 
 
 Gibbs, Mr. J. W. 
 
 Gordon, The Rev. O. 
 
 Gurney, Mr. Geo. 
 
 Haag, Mr. Carl. 
 
 Harris, Mr. Alfred. 
 
 Hewett, Mr. Prescott, 
 
 Hine, Mr. H. G. 
 Hollingsworth, Mr. A. T. 
 Howard-Keeling, Mr. H. 
 Hunt, Mr. A. 
 
 Knowles, Mr. James. 
 
 Lyon, Mr. A. W. 
 
 Moore, Mr. H. 
 
 Orrock, Mr. James. 
 
 Ottway, Mr. j. 0. 
 
 Palmer, Mr. Sutton. 
 
 Payne, Mr. A. F. 
 
 Peck, Mr. G. 
 pROirr, Mr. G. 
 
 Quaile, Mr. E. 
 
 Quilter, Mr. W. 
 
 Reid, Mr. G. W., F.S.A. 
 Rhodes, Mr. John. 
 Robinson, Mr. J. C, 
 
 Ruskin, Mr. 
 
 Sale, Colonel. 
 
 Safe, Mr. James W. 
 Scrivener, Mr. W. C. 
 Sibeth, Mr. Edmund. 
 Strutt, The Hon. Henry. 
 Stuart, Mr. W. J. 
 Swinburne, Sir John. 
 Thacker, Mr. S. J. 
 
 The Fine Art Society. 
 Townsend, The Rev. W. J. 
 Urwick, Mr. W. H. 
 
 Wigan, Mr. F. 
 
 WiGZELL, Mr. j. j. 
 Whitmore, Mrs. C. S. 
 Willett, Mr. Henry. 
 
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CATALOGUE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 DRAWINGS AND SKETCHES 
 
 BY 
 
 J. M. W. TUEUEE, E.A., 
 
 AT FUESENT EXHIBITED IX THE NATIONAL OALLERT. 
 
 REVISED, AND CAST INTO PROGRESSIVE GROUPS, WITH EXPLANATORY 
 
 NOTES, 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, 
 
 HONORABT 6TCDENT OF CHRISTCHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI 
 COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 That in the largest, and, I suppose, richest city of the 
 world, the most delicate and precious water-color drawings 
 which its citizens possess should be kept in a cellar, under its 
 National Gallery, in which two-thirds of them are practically 
 invisible, even in the few bright days which London smoke 
 leaves to summer ; and in which all are exposed to irreparable 
 injury by damp in winter, is a fact which I must leave the 
 British citizen to explain : stating here only that neither Mr. 
 Burton nor Mr. Eastlake are to be held responsible for such 
 arrangement; but, essentially, the public’s scorn of all art 
 which does not amuse it ; and, practically, the members of the 
 Royal Academy, whose primary duty it is to see that works 
 by men who have belonged to their body, w^hich may be edu- 
 cationally useful to the nation, should be rightly and suffi- 
 ciently exhibited. 
 
 I have had no heart myself, during recent illness, to finish 
 the catalogue which, for my own poor exoneration from the 
 shame of the matter, I began last year. But in its present 
 form it may be of some use in the coming Christmas holidays, 
 and relieve the kindness of Mr. Oldham from unnecessary 
 burden. 
 
 The Trustees of the National Gallery will I trust forgive 
 my assumption that, some day or other, they may enable their 
 keeper to remedy the evils in the existing arrangement ; if 
 not by displacing some of the pictures of inferior interest in 
 the great galleries, at least by adding above their marble pil- 
 lars and vaulted ceilings, such a dry and skylighted garret as 
 
298 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 any photographic establishment, opening a new branch, would 
 provide itself with in the slack of the season. Such a room 
 would be all that could be practically desired for the Turner 
 drawings ; and modern English indolence, if assisted in the 
 gratification of its languid curiosity by a lift, would not, I 
 trust, feel itself aggrieved by the otherwise salutary change. 
 
INTEODUOTOET OLASSIFIOATIOK 
 
 The confused succession of the drawings at present placed 
 in the water-color room of the National Gallery was a conse- 
 quence of their selection at different periods, by the gradually 
 extended permission of the Trustees, from the mass of the in- 
 ferior unexhibited sketches in the possession of the nation. 
 I think it best, in this catalogue, to place the whole series in 
 an order which might conveniently become permanent, should 
 the collection be eventually transferred to rooms with suffi- 
 cient light to see it by : and for the present the student will 
 find no difficulty, nor even a delay of any consequence, in find- 
 ing the title of any drawing by reference to the terminal 
 index, in which, by the number in the existing arrangement, 
 he is referred to that in the proposed one, followed in the 
 text. 
 
 The collection as at present seen consists of four hundred 
 drawings, in wooden sliding frames, contained in portable 
 cabinets ; and of about half that number grouped in fixed 
 frames originally intended for exhibition in the schools of 
 Kensington, and in which the drawings were chosen therefore 
 for their instructive and exemplary, more than their merely 
 attractive qualities. I observed, however, that the number of 
 these partly detracted from their utility ; and have now again 
 chosen out of them a consecutive and perfectly magistral 
 group, of which it may safely be recommended that every stu- 
 dent of landscape art should copy every one in succession, as 
 he gains the power to do so. 
 
 This first, or “ Scholar’s ” group, consists of sixty-five draw- 
 ings arranged, at present, in thirty frames ; but eventually, 
 
300 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CLASSIFICATION 
 
 each of these drawings should be separately framed, and placed 
 where it can be perfectly seen and easily copied. 
 
 The drawings originally exhibited at Kensington, out of 
 which this narrower group is now selected, were for several 
 years the only pencil and water-color drawings by Turner 
 accessible to the public in the National collection. I there- 
 fore included among them many sami)les of series which were 
 at that time invisible, but to which, since the entire mass of 
 drawings is now collected, it is proper that the drawings 
 which, by their abstraction, would break the unity of subjects, 
 should be restored. I have therefore, in this catalogue, placed 
 in complete order all the important local groups of sketches 
 (in Rome, Naples, Savoy, etc.), and retained in the miscellane- 
 ous framed collection only those which could be spared with- 
 out breaking the sequence of the cabinet drawings. And fur- 
 ther, I have excluded from this framed collection some of 
 minor importance, which it seems to me might, not only with- 
 out loss, but with advantage to the concentrated power of the 
 London examples, be spared, on loan for use in provincial 
 Art schools. 
 
 The Kensington series of framed groups, originally num- 
 bering 153, has by these two processes of elimination been 
 reduced in the following catalogue to one hundred, of which 
 thirty form the above -described Scholar's group,” absolutely 
 faultless and exemplary. The remainder, of various charac- 
 ter and excellence (which, though often of far higher reach 
 than that of the Scholar’s group, is in those very highest 
 examples not unaffected by the master’s peculiar failings), I 
 have in the following catalogue called the “ Student’s group ” ; 
 meaning that it is presented to the thoughtful study of the 
 general public, and of advanced artists ; but that it is only 
 with discrimination to be copied, and only with qualification 
 to be praised. Whereas, in the Scholar’s group, there is not 
 one example which may not in every touch be copied with 
 benefit, and in every quality, without reserve, admired. 
 
 After these two series follow in this catalogue, the four 
 hundred framed drawings in the cabinets, re-arranged and 
 completed by the restorations out of the Kensington series. 
 
INTRODUCTORY CLASSIFICATION. 
 
 301 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 with brief prefatory explanations of the nature of each group. 
 One or two gaps still require filling ; but there being some 
 difficulty in choosing examples fit for the exact places, I pub- 
 lish the list as it stands. The present numbers are given in 
 order in the terminal index. 
 
 For many reasons I think it best to make this hand-cata- 
 logue direct and clear, with little comment on separate draw- 
 ings. I may possibly afterward issue a reprint of former 
 criticism of the collection, with some further practical advice 
 to scholars. 
 

 PEIMAET SYNOPSIS. 
 
 The following general plan of the new arrangement wi’ 
 facilitate reference in the separate heads of it. The marginii 
 figures indicate the number of frames in each series. 
 
 First Hundred. 
 
 OBOI7P. 
 
 I. The Scholar’s Group, . 
 n. The Student’s Group, , 
 
 30 
 
 70 
 
 100 
 
 Second Hundred. 
 
 HI. Scotland. Pencil. (Early), 
 
 . 15 : 
 
 IV. Still Life. Color. (Mid. Time), . 
 
 • ^ i 
 
 V. Switzerland. Color. (Early), 
 
 . 10 
 
 VI. Mountains. Color. (Late), 
 
 . 50 
 
 VH. Venice. Color. (Late), 
 
 . 20 j 
 
 
 II 
 
 Third Hundred. 
 
 
 Vni. Savoy. Pencil (Early), 
 
 . 25 i 
 
 IX. Vignettes to Kogers’ Italy. (Mid. Time), 
 
 . 25 i' 
 
 X. Rome. (Mid. Time), .... 
 
 , 30 
 
 XI. Tivoli. (Mid. Time), . . • • 
 
 . 5 
 
 Xn. Naples. (Mid. Time), .... 
 
 ii 
 
 
 100 
 
DRAWINGS AND SKETCHES BY TURNER. 
 
 303 
 
 Fourth Hundred. 
 
 GBOUP. 
 
 XIII. Vignettes to Rogers’ Poems. (Late), . , 35 
 
 XIV. Rivers of England. (Late), . . , ,15 
 
 XV. Ports of England. (Late), .... 5 
 
 XVI. Venice. (Latest), 25 
 
 XVII. Various. (Latest), 20 
 
 100 
 
 Fifth Hundred. 
 
 XVIil. Finest Color on Gray. (Late), . . .25 
 
 XIX. Finest Color on Gray. (Latest), . . .25 
 
 XX. Studies on Gray for Rivers of France. (Late), 16 
 
 XXI. The Seine, 35 
 
 100 
 
 GROUP I. 
 
 {First Hundred.) 
 
 The Scholar’s Group. 
 
 It consists of sixty-five drawings in thirty frames, originally 
 chosen and arranged for exhibition at Kensington, together 
 with upward of a hundred more (as explained in the preface), 
 out of which this narrower series, doubly and trebly sifted, is 
 now recommended to the learner, for constant examination, 
 and progressive practice ; the most elementary examples being 
 first given. Their proper arrangement would be on a screen 
 in perfect light, on a level with the eye— the three largest only 
 above the line of the rest. When several drawings are in the 
 same frame, they are lettered a, 6, c, etc., either from left to 
 right, or from above downward. The numbers on the right 
 hand of the page are those by which they are indicated in the 
 
304 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 existing arrangement ; the letter K standing for Kensington, 
 to prevent confusion with the numbers of those in cabinets, 
 which were always at the National Gallery. 
 
 1. a. Tower of St. Mary Kedcliffe, Bristol, . . k 3 
 
 6. Transept and Tower, York Cathedral. 
 
 c. Tower of Boston, Lincolnshire. 
 
 2. a. Carnarvon Castle, . . . , . , k 145 
 
 6. Wells Cathedral. 
 
 3. Malmesbury Abbey. Sketch from nature for 
 
 the drawing in the English series, . . e 4 
 
 4. a. Study of sailing boat, k 18 
 
 h. Head of rowing boat. 
 
 c. Stern of rowing boat. 
 
 5. a. b. Sketches of boats in light and shade, . . k 17 
 
 c. Diagram of a Dutch boat. 
 
 6. Study of spars of merchant-brig, , . . k 10 
 
 7. Study of cottage roof in color, . . . k 13 
 
 8. Gate of Carisbrook Castle. Water - colored 
 
 drawing, half way completed, . . . k 14 
 
 9. a. Sketch from nature at Ivy Bridge, afterward 
 
 realized in the oil picture, . . . k 21 
 
 A Sketch of the bed of a stream, on the spot, 
 half finished. 
 
 10. a. Sketch from nature of the tree on the left in 
 
 Crossing the Brook,” . . . , k 16 
 
 b. c. Studies of animals. 
 
 d. Sketch from nature at Ivy Bridge, realized 
 
 in the finished drawing in this collec- 
 tion. 
 
 e. Sketch from nature in Val d’ Aosta, amplified 
 
 afterward into the “ Battle of Fort Kock,” 
 now placed in the upper rooms of the 
 
 
 Gallery, 
 
 . . K 41 
 
 11. 
 
 Doric columns and entablature. 
 
 . K 33 
 
 12. 
 
 Part of the portico of St. Peter’s, . 
 
 . K 11 
 
 13. 
 
 Glass balls, partly filled with water. 
 
 (Study of 
 
 
 reflection and refraction), 
 
 . E 121 
 
SKETCHES BT TURNER. 305 
 
 14. Four sketches on the Seine, for drawings in the 
 
 Rivers of France. On gray paper, . . k 70 
 
 15. Two studies of marine. On gray, . . . k 143 
 
 16. Four sketches at Calais. On gray, . . . k 71 
 
 17. Four sketches on the Seine, . • , . k 73 
 
 a. Marly. 
 
 h. Near St. Germain. 
 
 c. Chateau of La Belle Gabrielle. 
 
 d. Near St. Germain. 
 
 18. Two studies of the Arch of Titus, Rome, on white, 
 
 stained gray, with lights taken out, . . k 120 
 
 19. Two outline sketches of Cockermcruth Castle, , k 62 
 
 20. Two outline sketches of x^ark scenery, . . k 60 
 
 21. Rome from Monte Mario. Finest pure pencil, . k 101 
 
 22. Rome from Monte Mario. Pencil outline with 
 
 color, . ....... K 103 
 
 23. Rome. The Coliseum. Color, unfinished, . k 107 
 
 24. Study of cutter. (Charcoal), . . . . k 45 
 
 25. Study of pilot boat. (Sepia), . . . . k 46 
 
 26. Two pencil studies, Leeds, and Bolton Abbey, . k 6 
 
 27. Four pencil sketches at and near York, , . k 148 
 
 28. Two pencil sketches, at Cologne and on the 
 
 Rhine, k 147 
 
 29. Four sketches in color at Petworth, , . . k 76 
 
 30. Four sketches in color on the Loire and Meuse, k 138 
 
 GROUP n. 
 
 (First Hundred.) 
 
 I 
 
 The Student’s Geoup. 
 
 The Student’s group is arranged so as to exhibit Turner’s 
 methods of work, from his earliest to his latest time of power. 
 All his essential characters as an artist are shown in it ; his 
 highest attainments, with his peculiar faults — faults of inher- 
 ent nature, that is to say ; as distinguished from those which, 
 20 
 
306 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 after the year 1845, were signs merely of disease. No work 
 of his declining time is admitted into this series. 
 
 It begins (No. 31) with three examples of the earliest ef- 
 forts by him existing in the National collection of his draw- 
 ings. Then follow examples of his methods of study with 
 pencil and pen, from first to last : then, examples of his work 
 similarly progressive, in transparent color on white paper ; 
 and, finally, examples of his use of body color on gray paper 
 — a method only adopted late in life, as one proper for none 
 but a consummate master. 
 
 The entire series is contained in seventy frames, selected, 
 as those of the Scholar’s group are, from the collection first 
 arranged for Kensington ; and close the first hundred of the 
 frames here permanently catalogued. 
 
 31. 
 
 32. 
 
 33. 
 
 34. 
 
 35. 
 
 36. 
 
 37. 
 
 38. 
 
 39. 
 
 40. 
 
 41. 
 
 Three early sketches at Clifton, when he was 
 twelve or thirteen years old. He went on for 
 several years working thus in pencil and 
 color ; then saw the necessity of working in 
 pencil outline only, and never ceased that 
 method of work to the close of life, . . x 1 
 
 a. Carew Castle. Early pencil outline, after he 
 
 had determined its method, . . . . k 144 
 
 h. Lancaster, of later date. Both drawings real- 
 ized in the England series. 
 
 a. Kirkstall Abbey, k 5 
 
 b. Holy Island Cathedral. Subjects realized in 
 
 the Liber Studiorum. 
 
 Sketch from nature of the Liber subject, “Source 
 
 of the Arveron,” k 39 
 
 Sketch from nature for the drawing at Farnley, 
 
 “ Mont Blanc from the Valley of Chamouni,” . k 40 
 
 Foreground studies, laurel, etc., . . . . k 51 
 
 Studies of market ware at Rotterdam, . . k 54 
 
 Study of sheep, x 52 
 
 Memoranda of coast incidents, . • . . x 20 
 
 Sketches at York, x 149 
 
 Two Egremont subjects, k 61 
 
SKETCHES BT TURNER. 
 
 307 
 
 42. Two Bridge subjects, k 146 
 
 43. Studies from Claude, etc., k 118 
 
 44. Twelve leaves from a notebook at Venice (all 
 
 drawn as richly on the other sides), . . k 115 
 
 45. Four leaves of a notebook on journey to Scotland 
 
 by sea, k 112 
 
 46. a. Sketches at Andernach, k 116 
 
 b. Sketches on the Rhine. 
 
 c. Sketches on Lago Maggiore. 
 
 The leaves a b are out of a notebook containing 
 
 270 such. 
 
 47. 
 
 Sketches at Naples, .... 
 
 . K 117 
 
 48. 
 
 At Dresden, 
 
 . K 119 
 
 49. 
 
 Cologne Cathedral, and Rhine subject, 
 
 . K 147 
 
 50. 
 
 Sketches in Rouen, with engraving of 
 
 finished 
 
 
 drawing made from one of them, . 
 
 . K 55 
 
 These twenty drawings (31-50) are enough to show the 
 method of the artist’s usual work from nature. He never 
 sketched in tinted shade but at home, in making studies for 
 pictures, or for engravers, as in the series of the Liber Studi- 
 orum. When he wanted light and shade in painting from 
 nature, he always gave color also, for it was as easy to him 
 to give the depth of shade he wanted in different tints, as in 
 one ; and the result was infinitely more complete and true. 
 The series of water-color sketches and drawings which next 
 follow, represent, therefore, his progress in color and chiar- 
 oscuro simultaneously ; and I have placed under the next 
 following numbers, examples of his water-color work from 
 j the beginning of its effective power, to the end. But these 
 
 I are not, as in the Scholar’s group, all equally exemplary. 
 
 I The absolutely safe and right models are already given in the 
 
 Scholar’s group : here, there are instances given of methods 
 questionable — or distinctly dangerous, as well as of the best. 
 Thus Turner drew for several years almost exclusivel}’' in 
 neutral tint, as in No. 51 : but it is not at all certain that this 
 practice should be enforced as academical ; and again, the 
 drawing of Folkestone is an instance of delicacy of work like 
 
308 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 that of a miniature, applied to a large surface ; this is cer- 
 tainly a practice liable to lead to the loss of simplicity and 
 power : — it is one on the whole to be deprecated ; and it 
 gravely limited Turner’s power of making large and manly 
 drawings, at the time when it was most desirable for public 
 instruction that he should have done so. 
 
 The drawings of Edinburgh, and Ivy Bridge, are types of 
 his finest manner, unaffected by this weakness of minute exe- 
 cution. The drawings of Bochester and Dover show his 
 minutest execution rightly applied, and his consummate skill 
 in composition. 
 
 51. 
 
 52. 
 
 53. 
 
 54. 
 
 55. 
 
 56. 
 
 57. 
 
 58. 
 
 59. 
 
 60. 
 61. 
 62. 
 
 63. 
 
 64. 
 
 65. 
 
 66 . 
 
 67. 
 
 68 . 
 
 69. 
 
 70. 
 
 View of Tivoli. Neutral tint (one of multitudes, 
 which had to be done before the great Tivolis 
 
 could be), 
 
 Kuins of the Savoy Chapel. Neutral tint, . 
 
 Early study of a cottage, 
 
 The Castle of Aosta ; in color, with the pencil 
 study for it below : one of the series out 
 of which Group VIII. (third hundred) was 
 
 chosen, 
 
 Angry Swans, . . . . . 
 
 Study of pigs and donkeys, .... 
 
 Study of ducks, 
 
 Study of storm-clouds ; with the plate afterward 
 engraved from it by Turner himself beneath. 
 Three studies at sea, ...... 
 
 Study of evening and night skies, 
 
 Shields. Engraved for Ports of England, . 
 Bochester. Engraved for Bivers of England, 
 Dover. Engraved for Ports of England, 
 Folkestone. Large drawing unfinished, 
 Edinburgh from the Calton Hill. Finished drawing, 
 Ivy Bridge. Finished drawing, .... 
 
 Battle of Fort Bock. Finished drawing. 
 
 The Source of the Arveron. Unfinished, large, . 
 Grenoble. Unfinished, large, .... 
 
 Grenoble. “ “ > • • • 
 
 K 9 
 
 K 8 
 K 12 
 
 K 27 
 
 K 122 
 
 K 53 
 K 58 
 
 K 64 
 K 65 
 K 63 
 
 K 68 
 
 K 69 
 K 67 
 K 44 
 K 35 
 K 42 
 K 41 
 K 125 
 K 126 
 K 127 
 
SKETCHES BY TURNER. 
 
 309 
 
 The two last drawings are among the most exquisit# frag- 
 ments existing of his central manner. They are beginnings 
 of a favorite subject, which he seems to have found beyond his 
 power on this scale, and afterward finished on a reduced one. 
 They may properly close the examples of his work in pure 
 water-color. Two specimens of his sketching in oil — a rare 
 practice with him — follow ; and then, a magnificent selection 
 from the body-color drawings of his best time, which contain 
 tlie most wonderful things he ever did in his own special 
 manner. 
 
 71. Kocks in Bolton glen, k 128 
 
 72. Torrent bed. One of the studies made at the 
 
 date of Ivy Bridge, k 34 
 
 73. Sunset and Twilight : the last at Petworth, . k 132 
 
 74. Pen -outline sketches for the Bivers of France, • k 77 
 
 75. Tancarville, and three other French subjects, . k 81 
 
 76. Four French subjects, , . . . . k 80 
 
 77. Eocks on the Meuse, and three other subjects, . k 82 
 
 78. Luxembourg, and three other subjects, . . k 83 
 
 79. Two of Honfleur, two unknown, . . , . k 84 
 
 80. Honfleur, and three other subjects, . . . x 85 
 
 81. Dijon, and three other subjects, . . . . x 86 
 
 82. Interiors, x 75 
 
 83. Saumur, Huy, and Dinant, x 133 
 
 84. a. Town on Loire ; 6, Carrara mountains, , . x 139 
 
 85. Nantes, and Dressing for Tea, . . . . x 135 
 
 86. Harfleur, Caudebec, and two others, , • . x 136 
 
 87. Saumur, and two others, . . • , . x 137 
 
 88. Orleans and Nantes, x 134 
 
 89. Dinant, etc., x 78 
 
 90. Havre, etc., x 79 
 
 Henceforward to the close of the Student’s group are placed 
 examples of his quite latest manner : in outline, more or less 
 fatigued and hasty, though full of detail — in color, sometimes 
 extravagant— and sometimes gloomy ; but every now and then 
 manifesting more than his old power in the treatment of sub-* 
 jects under aerial and translucent effect. 
 
SIO 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 
 91. 
 
 Fribourg, Swiss. Pen outline over pencil. 
 
 . K 152 
 
 92. 
 
 Fribourg, Swiss. Pen outline over pencil, 
 
 . K 153 
 
 93. 
 
 Swiss Fortress and Grenoble, . 
 
 * , 
 
 . K 142 
 
 94. 
 
 Lausanne, and another subject, 
 
 • • 
 
 . K 93 
 
 95. 
 
 Fluelen and Kussnacht, . 
 
 • • 
 
 k95 ! 
 
 96. 
 
 Lake of Annecy, and Landeck, 
 
 • • 
 
 . K 96 
 
 97. 
 
 Venice, 
 
 • • 
 
 k 97 i 
 
 98. 
 
 Venice, 
 
 • • 
 
 . K 98 
 
 99. 
 
 Lucerne and Zurich, 
 
 ^ 1 • 
 
 , K 99 
 
 100. 
 
 Lake Lucerne. Morning, 
 
 • • 
 
 . K 100 c. 
 
 SECOND HUNDBED. , 
 
 (Cabinet Drawings.) 
 
 The second century of the drawings, as rearranged, forms 
 a mixed group, containing both early and late work, which I 
 have thrown together in a cluster, in order to make the I 
 arrangement of the following three hundred drawings more | 
 consistent. 
 
 The first thirty drawings of this hundred are all early ; and | 
 of consummate value and interest. The remaining seventy 
 were made at the time of the artist’s most accomplished 
 power ; but are for the most part slight, and intended rather 
 to remind himself of what he had seen, than to convey any 
 idea of it to others. Although, as I have stated, they are 
 placed in this group because otherwise they would have inter- 
 fered with the order of more important drawings, it cannot 
 but be interesting to the student to see, in close sequence, the 
 best examples of the artist’s earliest and latest methods of 
 sketching. 
 
SKETCHES BY TUBNEK 
 
 311 
 
 
 GROUP III 
 
 (Second Hundred.) 
 
 ' Fifteen pencil drawings of Scottish scenery made on his 
 I first tour in Scotland, and completed afterward in light and 
 I shade, on tinted paper touched with white. Several of his 
 best early colored drawings were made from these studies, 
 
 ' and are now in the great collection at Farnley. 
 
 ; They are all remarkable for what artists call “ breadth ” of 
 I effect (carried even to dulness in its serene rejection of all 
 minor elements of the picturesque — craggy chasms, broken 
 waterfalls, or rustic cottages ) ; and for the labor given in 
 I careful pencil shading, to round the larger masses of moun- 
 tain, and show the relation of the clouds to them. The moun- 
 > tain forms are always perfect, the clouds carefully modelled ; 
 
 I when they cross the mountains they do so solidly, and there 
 ; is no permission of the interferences of haze or rain. The 
 composition is always scientific in the extreme. 
 
 I I do not know the localities, nor are they of much conse- 
 ; quence. Their order is therefore founded, at present, only on 
 i the character of subject ; but I have examined this series less 
 I carefully than any of the others, and may modify its sequence 
 in later editions of this catalogue. The grand introductory 
 upright one is, I think, of Tummel bridge, and with the one 
 following, 102, shows the interest which the artist felt from 
 I earliest to latest days in all rustic architecture of pontifical 
 character. 
 
 The four following subjects, 103-106, contain materials 
 used in the Liber composition called “ Ben Arthur ” ; 114 is 
 called at Farnley “ Loch Fyne.” 
 
 The reference numbers in the right hand column are hence- 
 forward to the cabinet frames as at present arranged, unless 
 the prefixed K indicate an insertion of one out of the Ken- 
 sington series. 
 
312 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 101. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 (Bridges on the Tummel ? ), 
 
 
 . 311 
 
 102. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Bridges and village, 
 
 • • 
 
 
 . 313 
 
 103. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Argyllshire ? 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 . 309 
 
 104. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Argyllshire ? 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 . • 310 
 
 105. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Argyllshire ? 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 . 307 
 
 106. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Study of trees, . 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 . E 22a 
 
 107. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Study of trees, . 
 
 ♦ » 
 
 • 
 
 . K 225 
 
 108. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Study of trees, • 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 . 306 
 
 109. 
 
 Scotland, 
 
 • • • • 
 
 « • 
 
 • 
 
 . 346 
 
 110. 
 
 Scotland, 
 
 • • • • 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 . 347 
 
 111. 
 
 Scotland, 
 
 • • • • 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 . 348 
 
 112. 
 
 Scotland, 
 
 
 • • 
 
 
 . 349 
 
 113. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Loch Fyne ? • 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 . 312 
 
 114. 
 
 Scotland. 
 
 Loch Fyne ? 
 
 • • 
 
 • 
 
 . 314 
 
 115. 
 
 Scotland, 
 
 • « • • 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 308 
 
 GROUP IV. 
 
 {Second Hundred.) 
 
 STUDIES OF BIRDS AND FISH. 
 
 Placed immediately after the Scottish series in order to 
 show the singularly various methods of the Master’s study. 
 These sketches are, however, at least ten years later in date. 
 They are all executed with a view mainly to color, and, in 
 color, to its ultimate refinements, as in the gray down of the 
 birds, and the subdued iridescences of the fish. 
 
 There is no execution in water-color comparable to them 
 for combined rapidity, delicacy, and precision — the artists of 
 the world may be challenged to approach them ; and I know 
 of only one piece of Turner’s own to match them — the Dove 
 at Farnley. 
 
 116. Teal, . 
 
 117. Teal, . 
 
 . K 59 
 . 375 
 
SKETCHES DT TtlRNEM. 
 
 313 
 
 118. (Not yet placed.) * 
 
 119. Perch, ......... 373 
 
 120. Trout and other fish 374 
 
 GROUP V. 
 
 {Second Hundred.) 
 
 COLORED SKETCHES IN SWITZERLAND. 
 
 These quite stupendous memoranda were made on his first 
 Swiss journey, 1803, and are at the maximum of his early 
 power. Several of very high quality W' ere made from those 
 on the St. Gothard ; a beautiful one at Farnley from 126 ; and 
 the greatest of the Liber mountain subjects, from 123, 125, 
 and 127. 
 
 121. On the pass of St. Gothard, above Amsteg, . . 324 
 
 122. The old road, pass of St. Gothard, . . . 320 
 
 123. The old Devil’s Bridge, pass of St. Gothard, . 321 
 
 124. Bonneville, Savoj^ 323 
 
 125. The Source of the Arveron, as it was in 1803, . 319 
 
 126. The Mer-de-glace of Chamouni, looking upstream, 325 
 
 127. The Mer-de-glace of Chamouni, looking down- 
 
 stream, * 322 
 
 128. Contamines, Savoy, k 38 
 
 (Two subjects still wanting to this series, may, I believe, be 
 furnished out of the reserves in tin cases.) 
 
 * I may possibly afterward, with the permission of the Trustees, be 
 able to supply this gap with a drawing of a Jay, given me by Mr. W. 
 Kingsley, or with some purchased example--there being no more than 
 these four in the National collection. 
 
r 
 
 314 CATALOGUE OF DBAWIN08 AND 
 
 - GROUP VI. 
 
 {Second Hundred.) 
 
 Fifty sketclies on his later Continental journeys, made in 
 pencil outline only on the spot, and colored from memory. 
 
 Of the finest quality of pure Turnerian art, which is in sum, 
 as explained in my various university lectures over and over 
 again, the true abstraction of the color of Nature as a distinct 
 subject of study, with only so much of light and shade as may 
 explain the condition and place of the color, without taint- j 
 
 ing its purity. In the modern French school, all the color j 
 
 is taken out of Nature, and only the mud left. By Turner, 
 all the mud is taken out of Nature, and only the color left. 
 Tones of chiaroscuro, which depend iipon color, are however i 
 often given in full depth, as in the Nos. 138, 139, 179, and 180. ; 
 
 131. 
 
 The Red Gorge, 
 
 
 132. 
 
 The Alice Blanche, . 
 
 
 133. 
 
 The Via Mala, . 
 
 
 134. 
 
 Miner’s Bridge, 
 
 
 135. 
 
 Altorf, 
 
 
 136. 
 
 * Martigny, 
 
 
 137. 
 
 Mont Righi at dawn. 
 
 
 138. 
 
 Mont Righi at sunset. 
 
 
 139. 
 
 Fort I’Ecluse, . 
 
 
 140. 
 
 Dent d’Oches, from Lausanne, 
 
 141. 
 
 Lausanne, 
 
 
 142. 
 
 Lausanne, 
 
 
 143. 
 
 Lausanne, 
 
 
 144. 
 
 Lausanne, 
 
 
 145. 
 
 Lausanne, 
 
 
 146. 
 
 Vevay, 
 
 
 147. 
 
 Baden (Swiss), 
 
 
 72 
 47 
 
 73 
 80 
 
 100 
 
 81 
 
 96 
 
 45 
 42 
 41 
 44 
 50 
 
 91 
 
 92 
 95 
 
 46 
 49 
 
SKETCHES BY TUBNEB, 
 
 315 
 
 148. 
 
 Baden (Swiss), .... 
 
 
 83 
 
 149. 
 
 Baden (Swiss), ... * 
 
 
 85 
 
 150. 
 
 Heidelberg, ..... 
 
 
 284 
 
 151. 
 
 Heidelberg, 
 
 
 282 
 
 152. 
 
 Heidelberg, * . . . . 
 
 
 283 
 
 153. 
 
 Coblentz, Bridge of boats, 
 
 
 279 
 
 154. 
 
 Coblentz, Bridge of boats, 
 
 
 . K 94 6 
 
 155. 
 
 Coblentz, Bridge on the Moselle, . 
 
 
 280 
 
 156. 
 
 Coblentz, Bridge on the Moselle, . 
 
 
 . K 94 a 
 
 157. 
 
 Fortress, 
 
 
 48 
 
 158. 
 
 Fortress, ..... 
 
 
 82 
 
 159. 
 
 Eiver scene, ..... 
 
 
 78 
 
 160. 
 
 River scene, 
 
 
 79 
 
 161. 
 
 Rheinfelden, just above Basle, Swiss, 
 
 
 86 
 
 162. 
 
 Rheinfelden, 
 
 
 87 
 
 163. 
 
 Rheinfelden, ..... 
 
 
 88 
 
 164. 
 
 Rheinfelden, ..... 
 
 
 89 
 
 165. 
 
 Rheinfelden, ..... 
 
 
 90 
 
 166. 
 
 Fortress, 
 
 
 77 
 
 167. 
 
 Lake Lucerne, from Kussnacht, 
 
 
 43 
 
 168. 
 
 Mont Pilate, from Kussnacht, 
 
 
 290 
 
 169. 
 
 Lake Lucerne, from Brunnen, 
 
 
 . K 100 a 
 
 170. 
 
 Lake Lucerne, from Brunnen, 
 
 
 . K 1005 
 
 171. 
 
 Zurich, 
 
 
 289 
 
 172. 
 
 Zurich, 
 
 
 287 
 
 173. 
 
 Lucerne, ..... 
 
 
 288 
 
 174. 
 
 Schaffhausen, .... 
 
 
 285 
 
 175. 
 
 Constance ..... 
 
 
 286 
 
 176. 
 
 Splugen, ..... 
 
 
 75 
 
 177. 
 
 Bellinzona, ..... 
 
 
 94 
 
 178. 
 
 Fluelen, 
 
 
 99 
 
 179. 
 
 Aart, ...... 
 
 
 97 
 
 180. 
 
 Goldau, 
 
 
 . 98 
 
316 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 GROUP m 
 
 (Second Hundred,) 
 
 TWENTY SKETCHES IN VENICE, 
 
 Characteristic of Turner’s entirely final manner, when the 
 languor of age made him careless, or sometimes reluctant in 
 outline, while yet his hand had lost none of its subtlety, nor 
 his eye of its sense for color. From the last but one (199) 
 he painted the best of his late Academy pictures, now in the 
 upper gallery, and 188 has itself been carried forward nearly 
 to completion. 
 
 181. 
 
 The Approach to Venice, .... 
 
 
 51 
 
 182. 
 
 The Ducal Palace and Eiva, 
 
 
 52 
 
 183. 
 
 The Riva (dei Schiavoni), .... 
 
 
 53 
 
 184. 
 
 The Riva, from the Canal of Chioggia, 
 
 * 
 
 54 
 
 185. 
 
 Church of Salute, from the Riva, 
 
 
 55 
 
 186. 
 
 The Riva, looking west, .... 
 
 
 56 
 
 187. 
 
 The Riva, from the outlet of the Canal of the 
 
 
 
 Arsenal, . . . 
 
 
 57 
 
 188. 
 
 The Canal of the Arsenal, .... 
 
 
 58 
 
 189. 
 
 Bridge over the Canal of the Arsenal, . 
 
 
 59 
 
 190. 
 
 San Giorgio, . , . . . 
 
 
 60 
 
 191. 
 
 The Steps of the Salute, .... 
 
 
 61 
 
 192. 
 
 The Grand Canal, with the Salute, 
 
 
 62 
 
 193. 
 
 The Casa Grimani, ..... 
 
 
 63 
 
 194. 
 
 San Simeon Piccolo, 
 
 • 
 
 64 
 
 195. 
 
 Fishing Boat, 
 
 
 65 
 
 196. 
 
 Moonrise, ....... 
 
 
 66 
 
 197. 
 
 The Giudecca, with Church of Redentore, . 
 
 . 
 
 67 
 
 198. 
 
 Looking down the Giudecca, 
 
 , 
 
 68 
 
 199. 
 
 Looking up the Giudecca, .... 
 
 . 
 
 69 
 
 200. 
 
 Farewell to Venice, 
 
 . 
 
 70 
 
SKETCHES BY TURNER. 
 
 31T 
 
 THIRD HUNDRED. 
 
 The third century of drawings consists entirely of sketches 
 or compositions made in Italy, or illustrative of Italian scen- 
 ery and history. It opens with a group of pencil sketches 
 made in Savoy and Piedmont in 1803, showing the artist’s 
 first impressions of the Italian Alps. Then follow the vig- 
 nettes made to illustrate Rogers’ poem of “ Italy,” many of 
 which were composed from the preceding pencil sketches; 
 and then follow fifty sketches made on his first visit to south- 
 ern Italy, divided into three groups, illustrative of Rome, 
 Tivoli, and Naples. 
 
 GROUP YIII. 
 
 (Third Hundred.) 
 
 TWENTY-FIVE SKETCHES IN SAVOY AND PIEDMONT, 
 
 With very black, soft pencil, on dark tinted paper, touched 
 with white. Of the highest value and interest. Made, I be- 
 lieve, in 1803 ; at all events on his first Continental journey : 
 all in complete chiaroscuro, and in his grandest manner. 
 They ai*e absolutely true to the places; no exaggeration is 
 admitted anywhere or in any respect, and the compositions, 
 though in the highest degree learned, and exemplary of con- 
 structive principles in design, are obtained simply by selection, 
 not alteration, of forms — and by the introduction either of 
 clouds, figures, or entirely probable light and shade. 
 
 All are rapid and bold ; some, slight and impetuous ; but 
 they cannot be too constantly studied, or carefully copied, by 
 landscape students, since, whatever their haste, the conception 
 is always entirely realized ; and the subject disciplined into a 
 complete picture, balanced and supported from corner to cor- 
 ner, and concluded in all its pictorial elements. 
 
318 
 
 CATALOGUE OF LRAWINGS AND 
 
 Observe also that altbougb these sketches give some of the 
 painter’s first, strongest, and most enduring impressions of 
 mountain scenery, and architecture of classical dignity — their 
 especial value to the general student is that they are in no 
 respect distinctively Turnerian, but could only be known by 
 their greater strength and precision from studies such as 
 Gainsborough or Wilson might have made at the same spots : 
 and they are just as useful to persons incapable of coloring, 
 in giving them the joy of rightly treated shade, as to the ad- 
 vanced colorist in compelling him to reconsider the founda- 
 tions of effect, which he is too often beguiled into forgetting. 
 
 201. 
 
 Town of Grenoble, . 
 
 . . 
 
 . K 32 a 
 
 202. 
 
 Grenoble, with Mont Blanc, 
 
 . • 
 
 . k31 b 
 
 203. 
 
 Grenoble, with Mont Blanc, 
 
 . • 
 
 5 
 
 204. 
 
 Koad from Grenoble to Voreppe, 
 
 . 
 
 . E 30 a 
 
 205. 
 
 Entrance to the Chartreuse, 
 
 . . 
 
 9 
 
 206. 
 
 Entrance to the Chartreuse, 
 
 . 
 
 10 
 
 207. 
 
 Entrance to the Chartreuse, 
 
 . 
 
 12 
 
 208. 
 
 Bridges at the Chartreuse, 
 
 . . 
 
 11 
 
 209. 
 
 Cascade of the Chartreuse, 
 
 , . 
 
 14 
 
 210. 
 
 Gate of the Chartreuse (looking forward), 
 
 17 
 
 211. 
 
 Gate of the Chartreuse (looking back), 
 
 18 
 
 212. 
 
 Gate of the Chartreuse (looking back, farther 
 
 off), 19 
 
 213. 
 
 Chain of Alps of the Chartreuse, 
 
 . 
 
 3 
 
 214. 
 
 Alps of the Chartreuse (the Liber subject). 
 
 . K 31 a 
 
 215. 
 
 Val d’Isere, .... 
 
 . . 
 
 . k29 6 
 
 216. 
 
 Val d’Isere, with Mont Blanc, . 
 
 • 
 
 . K 30 5 
 
 217. 
 
 Martigny, . . . . 
 
 
 24 
 
 218. 
 
 Hospice of St. Bernard, . 
 
 . 
 
 . K 25 a 
 
 219. 
 
 Descent to Aosta, 
 
 . 
 
 22 
 
 220. 
 
 Town of Aosta, . . . 
 
 . 
 
 . K 25 ^ 
 
 221. 
 
 East gate of Aosta (Italy vignette). 
 
 . 
 
 . K 26 d! 
 
 222 
 
 Triumphal arch of Aosta, . 
 
 . 
 
 . K 26 6 
 
 223. 
 
 Near Aosta, .... 
 
 . 
 
 23 
 
 224. 
 
 Ascent to Courmayeur, 
 
 . 
 
 . K 29 a 
 
 225. 
 
 Descent to Ivrea, 
 
 . 
 
 25 
 
SKETCHES BY TUBNEB, 
 
 319 
 
 GROUP IX. 
 
 {Third Hundred.) 
 
 The vignettes to Rogers’ “ Italy ” are of Turner’s best time, 
 and contain some of liis very best work ; the more interesting 
 because, with few exceptions, they are quickly, and even 
 slightly, executed. Whether slight, or carried on to comple- 
 tion, they are in the highest degree exemplary to the student 
 of water -color; one only excepted, the “Venice,” which, 
 whether painted during some fit of slight illness, or perhaps 
 hurriedly by candlelight under some unexpected call from the 
 engraver, is utterly different from the rest, and wholly un- 
 worthy of the painter. This is therefore excluded from the 
 series, and placed among the supplementary studies. The 
 total number of vignettes executed by Turner for Rogers’ 
 “Italy” was twenty-five; but one, the “Dead-house of St. 
 Bernard,” is irrevocably in America, and the exclusion of the 
 “ Venice ” leaves the total number in these cases, twenty-three. 
 To complete them to a symmetrical twenty-five I have placed 
 with them, to terminate their series, the two of the later series 
 executed for Rogers’ “Poems,” which have most in common 
 with the earlier designs of the “Italy.” 
 
 The twenty-three Italian ones are arranged with little varia- 
 tion from the order in which they are placed as the illustra- 
 tions of the poems ; the reasons for admitted variations will 
 be comprehended without difficulty. The two that are added 
 are bold compositions from materials in Italy ; the last was 
 the illustration of Rogers’ line, “ The shepherd on Tornaro’s 
 misty brow,” beginning a description of sunrise as the type 
 of increasing knowledge and imagination in childhood. But 
 there is no such place known as Tornaro, and the composition, 
 both in the color of sea and boldness of precipice, resembles 
 only the scenery of the Sicilian Islands. 
 
320 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 
 226. 
 
 The Lake of Geneva, . 
 
 
 . 210 
 
 227. 
 
 The Lake of Lucerne (from Tell’s Chapel), . 
 
 . 213 
 
 228. 
 
 St. Maurice, 
 
 
 . 205 
 
 229. 
 
 Martigny, 
 
 
 . 212 
 
 230. 
 
 Hospice of St. Bernard, 
 
 
 . 211 
 
 231. 
 
 Aosta, ...... 
 
 
 
 232. 
 
 Hannibal passing the Alps, . 
 
 
 . 204 
 
 233. 
 
 The Battle of Marengo, 
 
 
 . 207 
 
 234. 
 
 The Lake of Como, 
 
 
 . 215 
 
 235. 
 
 Isola Bella, Lago Maggiore, . 
 
 
 . 208 
 
 236. 
 
 Verona. Moonlight, . 
 
 
 . 217 
 
 237. 
 
 Padua. Moonlight. The Canal for Venice, 
 
 . 223 
 
 238. 
 
 Florence, 
 
 
 . 214 
 
 239. 
 
 Galileo’s Villa, Arcetri, . 
 
 
 . 221 
 
 240. 
 
 Composition, .... 
 
 
 . 202 
 
 241. 
 
 Rome, 
 
 
 . 216 
 
 242. 
 
 St. Peter’s, 
 
 
 . 218 
 
 243. 
 
 The Campagna, .... 
 
 
 . 219 
 
 244. 
 
 Tivoli, The Temple of the Sybil, . 
 
 
 . 224 
 
 245. 
 
 Banditti, ..... 
 
 
 . 222 
 
 246. 
 
 Naples, 
 
 
 . 201 
 
 247. 
 
 Amalfi, 
 
 
 . 225 
 
 248. 
 
 Paestum, 
 
 
 . 206 
 
 249. 
 
 The Garden, .... 
 
 
 . 220 
 
 250. 
 
 The Cliffs of Sicily. Sunrise, 
 
 
 . 230 
 
 GKOUP X. 
 
 (Third Hundred.) 
 
 THIBTY SKETCHES IN PENCIL, SOMETIMES TOUCHED WITH 
 COLOR, AT ROME. 
 
 This group, with the two following, exemplify the best 
 drawings made by Turner from Nature. All his powers were 
 at this period in perfection ; none of his faults had developed 
 themselves ; and his energies were taxed to the utmost to 
 
SKETCHES BY TURNER, 
 
 321 
 
 seize, both in immediate admiration, and for future service, 
 the loveliest features of some of the most historically interest- 
 ing scenery in the world. 
 
 There is no exaggeration in any of these drawings, nor any 
 conventionalism but that of outline. They are, in all re- 
 spects, the most true and the most beautiful ever made by the 
 : painter ; but they differ from the group first given (VII) 
 in being essentially Turnerian, representing those qualities of 
 form and color in which the painter himself most delighted, 
 and which persons of greatly inferior or essentially different 
 faculties need not hope for benefit by attempting to copy. 
 The quantity of detail given in their distances can only be 
 seen, in a natural landscape, by persons possessing the strong- 
 est and finest faculties of sight : and the tones of color 
 adopted in them can only be felt by persons of the subtlest 
 I color -temperament, and happily - trained color - disposition. 
 
 I To the average skill, the variously imperfect ocular power, 
 and blunted color-feeling of most of our town-bred students, 
 I the qualities of these drawings are — not merely useless, but, 
 in the best parts of them, literally invisible. 
 
 On the other hand, to students of fine faculty and w^ell- 
 trained energy, no drawings in the world are to be named 
 ! with these fifty (251-300), as lessons in landscape drawing : 
 
 : 251. 
 
 Rome from Monte Mario (finest pencil), . 
 
 . K 101 
 
 : 252. 
 
 Rome from Monte Mario (partly colored), 
 
 . K 103 
 
 253. 
 
 Villas on Monte Mario, .... 
 
 326 
 
 251 
 
 Stone pines on Monte Mario, . 
 
 263 
 
 ; 255. 
 
 The Castle of St. Angelo, 
 
 262 
 
 256. 
 
 The Bridge and Castle of St. Angelo, 
 
 . K 102 
 
 , 257. 
 
 The Tiber and Castle of St. Angelo, 
 
 255 
 
 j 258. 
 
 The Tiber and the Capitol, 
 
 264 
 
 259. 
 
 The Tiber and the Apennines, , 
 
 268 
 
 1 260. 
 
 Study in Rome, ..... 
 
 266 
 
 . 261. 
 
 Foreground in Rome, .... 
 
 382 
 
 262. 
 
 Foreground in Rome, with living acanthus, 
 
 . Kill 5 
 
 263. 
 
 Foreground in Rome, .... 
 
 257 
 
 264. 
 
 Sto Peter’s, from the West, . , , 
 
 21 
 
 267 
 
’322 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 265. St. Peter’s, from the South (pencil), . . 259 
 
 266. Colored sketch of the same subject, . . 273 
 
 267. St. Peter’s and the Vatican, .... 269 
 
 268. The Colonnade of Bernini (beneath), . . 256 
 
 269. The Portico of St. Peter’s, . . . . 258 
 
 270. The Arch of Septimius Severus (pencil on gray), 253 
 
 271. The Basilica of Constantine (color), . . . k 108 
 
 272. The Coliseum and Basilica of Constantine, . 272 
 
 273. The Coliseum and Arch of Constantine, . . 331 
 
 274. The Coliseum and Arch of Titus, . . . 328 
 
 275. The Coliseum — seen near, with flock of goats, . 275 
 
 276. The Coliseum (study of daylight color), . . 271 
 
 277. The Coliseum in pale sunset, with new moon, . 265 
 
 278. The Palatine, ....... 274 
 
 279. The Alban Mount, ...... 260 
 
 280. Borne and the Apennines, . . . • 327 
 
 GKOUP XI. 
 
 (Third Hundred.) 
 
 Five sketches from nature at Tivoli ; three in pencil, two 
 in color. Unsurpassable. 
 
 281. The Temple of Vesta (in distance), . . . 302 
 
 282. The Temple of Vesta (near), . . . . . 252 
 
 283. General view from the valley, .... 303 
 
 284. The same subject in color, ..... 340 
 
 285. The Town with its Cascades, and the Campagna, . 339 
 
 GKOUP XII. 
 
 (Third Hundred.) 
 
 Fifteen sketches, at or near Borne and Naples. The three 
 Campagna ones, with the last four of the Neapolitan group, 
 are exemplary of all Turner’s methods of water-color paint-^ 
 ing at the acme of his sincere power. 
 
SKETCHES BY TURNER. 
 
 323 
 
 286. Campagna. Warm sunset. Inestimable, . 329 
 
 287. Campagna. Slighter, but as fine. Morning, . 330 
 
 288. Campagna. Snowy Apennines in distance, . 338 
 
 289. 
 
 290. Nymphseum of Alexander Severus, . . . k 105 
 
 291. Study for the great picture of the Loggie of 
 
 Vatican, ullla 
 
 292. Naples, from the South (pencil), . . . 333 
 
 293. Queen Joanna’s Palace and St. Elmo (pencil), . 305 
 
 294. Villas at Posilipo (pencil), .... 301 
 
 295. Naples and Vesuvius, from the North (color). 
 
 296. The Castle of the Egg. Light against dark, . 304 
 
 297. The Castle of the Egg. Dark against light, . 334 
 
 298. Vesuvius. Beginning of finished drawing, , 335 
 
 299. Monte St. Angelo and Capri. Morning, , 336 
 
 300. Monte St. Angelo and Capri. Evening, . . 337 
 
 FOUBTH HUNDEED. 
 
 The fourth century of drawings are all of the later middle 
 period of Turner’s career, where the constant reference to the 
 engraver or the Academy-visitor, as more or less the critic or 
 patron of his work, had betrayed him into mannerisms and 
 fallacies which gradually undermined the constitution of his 
 intellect : while yet his manual skill, and often his power of 
 imagination, increased in certain directions. Some of the 
 loveliest, and executively the most wonderful, of his drawings 
 belong to this period ; but few' of the greatest, and none of 
 the absolutely best, while many are inexcusably faultful or 
 false. With few exceptions, they ought not to be copied by 
 students, for the best of them are inimitable in the modes of 
 execution peculiar to Turner, and are little exemplary other- 
 wise. 
 
 The initial group of this class, the thirteenth in consecutive 
 order, contains the best of the vignettes executed in illustra- 
 tion of Kogers’ Pleasures of Memory,” “ Voyage of Column 
 
324 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 bus,” and other minor poems. In most cases they are far 
 more highly finished than those of the “ Italy ; ” but few show 
 equal power, and none the frank sincerity. The two best of 
 all had much in common with the Italian series, and have 
 been placed with it ; but “ The Twilight ” (301), “ Green- 
 wich” (306), “Bolton Abbey ” (311), “ Yallombre” (316), and 
 “Departure of Columbus” (321), are among the subtlest exam- 
 ples of the artist’s peculiar manner at this period ; and all, as 
 now arranged up to the number 325, have a pretty connection 
 and sequence, illustrative of the painter’s thought, no less than 
 of the poet’s. 
 
 They have a farther interest, as being the origin of the 
 loveliest engravings ever produced by the pure line ; and I 
 hope in good time that proofs of the plates may be exhibited 
 side by side with the drawings. In arranging the twenty-five 
 excellent ones just described, I have thrown out several un- 
 worthy of Turner — which, however, since they cannot be sep- 
 arated from their proper gTOup, follow it, numbering from 326 
 to 335 ; the gaps being filled up by various studies for vignettes 
 of the “Italy” as well as the “Poems,” which I extricated 
 from the heaps of loose sketches in the tin cases. 
 
 GKOUP XIII. 
 
 (Fourth Hundred.) 
 
 301. 
 
 Twilight, 
 
 . 226 
 
 302. 
 
 Gypsies, 
 
 . 231 
 
 303. 
 
 The Native Village, 
 
 . 227 
 
 304. 
 
 Greenwich, ..... 
 
 . 234 
 
 305. 
 
 The Water-gate of the Tower, 
 
 . 235 
 
 306. 
 
 St. Anne’s Hill, .... 
 
 . 228 
 
 307. 
 
 St. Anne’s Hill, .... 
 
 . 229 
 
 308. 
 
 The Old Oak in Life, . 
 
 . 232 
 
 309. 
 
 The Old Oak in Death, 
 
 . 233 
 
 310. 
 
 The Boy of Egremont, 
 
 . 236 
 
SKETCHES BT TURNER. 325 
 
 311. 
 
 Bolton Abbey, .... 
 
 . . 
 
 . 237 
 
 312. 
 
 St. Herbert’s Isle, Derwentwater. (Ideal), . 
 
 . 238 
 
 313. 
 
 Lodore, 
 
 ♦ • 
 
 . 239 
 
 314. 
 
 Loch Lomond, .... 
 
 • • 
 
 . 240 
 
 315. 
 
 Jacqueline’s Cottage. (Ideal), 
 
 • • 
 
 . 241 
 
 316. 
 
 The Falls at Vallombre. (Ideal), 
 
 • • 
 
 . 243 
 
 317. 
 
 The Alps at Daybreak. (Ideal), . 
 
 • • 
 
 . 242 
 
 318. 
 
 The Captive. (Ideal), . 
 
 • • 
 
 . 245 
 
 319. 
 
 St. Julian’s Well. (Ideal), . 
 
 • • 
 
 . 244 
 
 320. 
 
 Columbus at La Rabida, . . 
 
 • • 
 
 . 246 
 
 321. 
 
 Departure of Columbus, 
 
 • 
 
 . 247 
 
 322. 
 
 Dawn on the last day of the Voyage, 
 
 • • 
 
 . 248 
 
 323. 
 
 Morning in America, 
 
 • • 
 
 . 249 
 
 324. 
 
 Cortez and Pizarro, 
 
 • • 
 
 . 250 
 
 325. 
 
 Datur Hora Quieti, 
 
 • • 
 
 . 397 
 
 Next follow the inferior ones ; among which the pretty 
 “ Rialto ” is degraded because there is no way over the bridge, 
 and the “Ducal Palace” for its coarse black and red color. 
 So also the “Manor-house,” though Mr. Goodall made a quite 
 lovely vignette from it ; as also from the “Warrior Ghosts.” 
 
 326. The English Manor-house, .... 399 
 
 327. The English School, 396 
 
 328. The English Fair, 398 
 
 329. Venice. The Ducal Palace, .... 391 
 
 330. Venice. The Rialto, ..... 394 
 
 331. The Simoom, . 393 
 
 332. The War-spirits, 400 
 
 333. The Warrior Ghosts, 395 
 
 334. Study for the Warrior Ghosts, . . . k 87a 
 
 335. Second study for the same vignette, . . k 876 
 
 * And tlie figures absurd ; but by Rogers’ fault, not Turner’s. See 
 the very foolish poem. 
 
326 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 GKOUP XIV. 
 
 {Fourth Hundred.) 
 
 RIVERS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 This most valuable group consists of fifteen finished draw- 
 ings, which always remained in Turner’s possession, he refus- 
 ing to sell separately, and the public of his time not caring 
 to buy in mass. 
 
 They were made for publication by engraving ; and were 
 skilfully engraved ; but only in mezzotint. They are of the 
 highest quality, in so far as work done for engraving can be, 
 and all finished with the artist’s best skill. Two of the series 
 of fifteen are placed in the Student’s group, and room thus 
 made for two of the “ Ports,” which are consecutive with the 
 following group : 
 
 336. 
 
 Stangate Creek, (on River) Medway, 
 
 • 
 
 . 161 
 
 337. 
 
 Totness, 
 
 <( 
 
 Dart, 
 
 • 
 
 . 162 
 
 338. 
 
 Dartmouth, 
 
 it 
 
 Dart, 
 
 
 . 163 
 
 339. 
 
 Dartmouth Castle, 
 
 it 
 
 Dart, 
 
 • 
 
 . 164 
 
 340. 
 
 Okehampton Castle, 
 
 it 
 
 Okement, 
 
 • 
 
 . 165 
 
 341. 
 
 Arundel Castle, 
 
 it 
 
 Arun, 
 
 • 
 
 . 166 
 
 342. 
 
 Arundel Park, 
 
 it 
 
 Arun, 
 
 • 
 
 . 167 
 
 343. 
 
 More Park, 
 
 it 
 
 Colne, . 
 
 • 
 
 . 168 
 
 344. 
 
 Newcastle, 
 
 a 
 
 Tyne, . 
 
 • 
 
 . 171 
 
 345. 
 
 Kirkstall Abbey, 
 
 it 
 
 Aire, 
 
 • 
 
 . 173 
 
 346. 
 
 Kirkstall Lock, 
 
 a 
 
 Aire, 
 
 • 
 
 . 172 
 
 347. 
 
 Brougham Castle, 
 
 it 
 
 Lowther, 
 
 • 
 
 . 174 
 
 348. 
 
 Norham Castle, 
 
 it 
 
 Tweed, . 
 
 • 
 
 . 175 
 
 349. 
 
 Whitby, 
 
 • 
 
 • • • 
 
 • 
 
 .170 
 
 350. 
 
 Scarborough, 
 
 • 
 
 • • • 
 
 • 
 
 . 169 
 
SKETCHES BY TUBNEB. 
 
 327 
 
 GROUP XV. 
 
 {Fourth Hundred,) 
 
 PORTS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Five finished drawings, nearly related in style to the Rivers ; 
 but nobler, and two of them (“The Humber” and “Sheer- 
 ness ”) among the greatest of Turner s existing works. 
 
 The “Whitby” and “Scarborough” belong nominally to 
 this group, but in style they are like the Rivers, with which I 
 have placed them ; of course consulting in these fillings up of 
 series, the necessary divisions into five adopted for the sake 
 of portability. The seven drawings were illustrated in their 
 entirety to the best of my power in the text of the work in 
 which they were published — the “Harbors of England.” 
 
 Five finished drawings of very high quality, made for mez- 
 zotint engraving, and admirably rendered by Mr. Lupton 
 under Turner’s careful superintendence. 
 
 351. The Humber, 
 
 352. The Medway, 
 
 353. Portsmouth, 
 
 354. Sheerness, 
 
 355. Ramsgate, . 
 
 . 378 
 . 376 
 . 379 
 . 380 
 . 377 
 
 GROUP XVI. 
 
 {Fourth Hundred.) 
 
 Twenty-five sketches, chiefly in Venice. Late time, extrav- 
 agant, and showing some of the painter’s worst and final 
 faults ; but also, some of his peculiar gifts in a supreme de- 
 gree. 
 
328 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 356. 
 
 The Ducal Palace, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 351 
 
 357. 
 
 The Custom House, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 355 
 
 358. 
 
 The Grand Canal, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 352 
 
 359. 
 
 Casa Grimani and Rialto, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 354 
 
 360. 
 
 The Rialto, . 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 353 
 
 361. 
 
 Grand Canal above Rialto, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 356 
 
 362. 
 
 On the Cross-canal between 
 
 Bridge of 
 
 Sighs 
 
 and 
 
 
 Rialto, . • • 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 358 
 
 363. 
 
 The same, nearer. 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 359 
 
 364. 
 
 Cross-canal neai’ Arsenal, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 357 
 
 365. 
 
 San Stefano, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 360 
 
 366. 
 
 South side of St. Mark’s, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 291 
 
 367. 
 
 Ducal Palace, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 292 
 
 368. 
 
 Boats on the Giudecca, . 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 293 
 
 369. 
 
 Steamers, 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 361 
 
 370. 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 362 
 
 371. 
 
 Tours, .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 363 
 
 372. 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 364 
 
 373. 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 365 
 
 374. 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 366 
 
 375. 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 367 
 
 376. 
 
 ?..... 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 368 
 
 377. 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 369 
 
 378. 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 370 
 
 379. 
 
 Arsenal, Venice, . 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 371 
 
 380. 
 
 Fish Market, 
 
 
 
 
 
 372 
 
 GROUP XVII. 
 {Fourth Hundred.) 
 
 VARIOUS. (latest.) 
 
 381. ? 381 
 
 382. ? 382 
 
 383. Saumur, 383 
 
 384. Namur, 384 
 
SKETCHES BY TURNER. 
 
 329 
 
 385. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 386. 
 
 Chateau d’Arc? 
 
 
 
 
 . 386 
 
 387. 
 
 North Transept, Rouen, 
 
 
 
 
 . 387 
 
 388. 
 
 Avignon, .... 
 
 
 
 
 . 388 
 
 389. 
 
 Namur, .... 
 
 
 
 
 . 389 
 
 390. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 391. 
 
 Rome, 
 
 
 
 
 . 251 
 
 392. 
 
 The Cascades, Tivoli, . 
 
 
 
 
 . 254 
 
 393. 
 
 Rome, ..... 
 
 
 
 
 . 257 
 
 394 
 
 Rome, The Coliseum, . 
 
 
 
 
 . 261 
 
 395. 
 
 Rome, ..... 
 
 
 
 
 . 270 
 
 396. 
 
 Studies of Sky, 
 
 
 
 
 . 296 
 
 397. 
 
 Scotland ? . . . . 
 
 
 
 
 . 297 
 
 398. 
 
 The Tiber, .... 
 
 
 
 
 . 298 
 
 399. 
 
 The Capitol from Temple of? 
 
 
 
 
 . 299 
 
 400. 
 
 Bridges in the Campagna, 
 
 
 
 
 . 300 
 
 GROUP XVIII. 
 
 (Fifth Hundred.') 
 
 FINEST COLOR ON GRAY. (lATE.) 
 
 Twenty-five rapid studies in color on gray paper. Of his 
 best late time, and in his finest manner, giving more condi- 
 tions of solid form than have ever been expressed by means 
 at once so subtle and rapid. 
 
 401. Full sails on Seine, 101 
 
 402. The breeze beneath the Coteau, .... 102 
 
 403. Heavy barges in a gust, . , , . .103 
 
 404. French lugger under the Heve, .... 104 
 
 405. The steamer, ....... 105 
 
 406. Havre, ......... 106 
 
 407. Havre, ........ . 107 
 
 408. Harfleur, . * « . . . . . 108 
 
330 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 409. 
 
 Honfleur in distance, . 
 
 
 
 
 . 113 
 
 410. 
 
 Honfleur ? Compare Seine series, 
 
 
 
 . 110 
 
 411. 
 
 Cherbourg, .... 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . Ill 
 
 412. 
 
 Cherbourg, .... 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 112 
 
 413. 
 
 Street with canal, . 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 109 
 
 414. 
 
 Kouen, .... 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 114 
 
 415. 
 
 The Gray Castle, , 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 115 
 
 416. 
 
 Nantes, .... 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 116 
 
 417. 
 
 Nantes ? . . . . 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 117 
 
 418. 
 
 Angers? .... 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 118 
 
 419. 
 
 Beaugency, .... 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 119 
 
 420. 
 
 Beaugency, .... 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 120 
 
 421. 
 
 Chateau de Blois, . 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 121 
 
 422. 
 
 Chateau Hamelin, 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 122 
 
 423. 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 123 
 
 424. 
 
 ? 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 124 
 
 425. 
 
 Tours? The Scarlet Sunset, 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 . 125 
 
 This last magnificent drawing belongs properly to the next 
 group, which is almost exclusively formed by drawings in 
 which the main element is color, at once deep and glowing. 
 But the consistency of the group is in color and treatment ; 
 and in the uniform determination of the artist that every sub- 
 ject shall at least have a castle and a crag in it — if possible a 
 river ; or by Fortune’s higher favor — blue sea, and that all 
 trees shall be ignored, as shady and troublesome excres- 
 cences. In default of locality, I have put here and there a 
 word of note or praise. 
 
 GKOUP XIX. 
 [Fifth Hundred.) 
 
 
 FINEST COLOR ON GRAY. (LATEST.) 
 
 
 426. 
 
 Rhine. (Yellow raft essential), 
 
 . 176 
 
 427. 
 
 Too red and yellow. Full of power in form, 
 
 . 177 
 
 428. 
 
 Delicate, and very lovely, .... 
 
 . 178 
 
SKETCHES BY TURNER. 
 
 331 
 
 429. 
 
 430. 
 
 431. 
 
 432. 
 
 433. 
 
 434. 
 
 435. 
 43G. 
 
 437. 
 
 438. 
 
 439. 
 
 440. 
 
 441. 
 
 442. 
 
 443. 
 
 444. 
 
 445. 
 44G. 
 
 447. 
 
 448. 
 
 449. 
 
 450. 
 
 Ehine ? or Danube ? Very grand, . . .179 
 
 Bacharach. Wonderful, but too wild, . . . 180 
 
 Best quality — all but the white chalk, . . . 181 
 
 Heidelberg. Kosy tower, and a tree or two ! 
 
 Lovely, 182 
 
 Such things are, though you mayn’t believe it, . 183 
 Dinant, Meuse. A mighty one, .... 184 
 Dinant. Bronzed sunset. Firm and good, . . 185 
 
 Luxembourg. Splendid, ..... 186 
 Luxembourg. Forced, and poor, . . . 187 
 
 Luxembourg. Higliest quality, .... 188 
 Luxembourg. Supreme of the set, except, . . 189 
 
 Luxembourg. Probably the grandest drawing of 
 
 this date, 190 
 
 Luxembourg. Too blue and red, but noble, . 191 
 Meuse. Admirable, but incomplete, . . .192 
 
 Coast of Genoa? Good, but dull, . . . 193 
 
 Coast of Genoa ? Highest quality, . . . 194 
 
 Italian lakes? Supreme of all, for color, . . 195 
 
 Marseilles? Splendid, but harsh, . . .196 
 
 Biviera? Fine, but a little hard and mannered, . 197 
 Sorrento coast ? Sunset. Lovely, . . .198 
 
 Vico ? coast of Sorrento. The same type : poorer, 199 
 The Vermilion Palace, 200 
 
 I know scarcely any of their subjects except the Luxem- 
 bourgs ; and have therefore left them in their first rough 
 arrangement ; although subjects probably Genovese and South 
 Italian are mixed with others from Germany and the Bhine, 
 
 GBOUP XX. 
 
 (Fifth Hundred.) 
 
 STUDIES ON GRAY FOR RIVERS OF FRANCE. (lATE.) 
 
 451. Four studies at Marly and Bouen, , , ,26 
 
 452. Two studies in France and 
 
 Two studies for a picture, . .... 27 
 
332 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 453. Four studies in France, 28 
 
 454. Four studies in France, 29 
 
 455. Two studies at Boulogne and 
 
 Two studies at Ambleteuse, . w • .30 
 
 456. Four studies at Calais, . . . . . .31 
 
 457. Four studies in France, . . . . .32 
 
 458. Four English marine studies, . . . .33 
 
 459. Bouen, in France : two marine studies, . . 34 
 
 460. On the Bhine, St. Germain, Dieppe, on the Seine, 35 
 
 (The above ten, pen and ink on gray.) 
 
 461. Orleans, Tours (color on gray), . . . . 36 
 
 462. On the Seine ? (color on gray), . . . .38 
 
 463. Luxembourg? Huy on the Meuse (color on gray), 39 
 
 464. Honfleur, Honfleur ? (color on gray), , . .40 
 
 465. Liber Studiorum subjects, two Lake of Thun, 
 
 Mont St. Gothard, Ville de Thun (pencil), . 37 
 
 GBOIJP XXI. 
 
 (Fifth Hundred.) 
 
 THE SEINE. 
 
 In this series the best drawings are as far as possible put 
 together — geographical order being ignored, rather than mix 
 the second-rate ones with those of entirely satisfactory quality. 
 But the course of subject for the most part is in ascent of the 
 river ; and the two vignettes begin and end the whole. 
 
 466. Chateau Gaillard. Vignette, .... 151 
 
 467. Havre. Sunset in the port, 157 
 
 468. Havre. Twilight outside the port, . . . 158 
 
 469. Tancarville, 153 
 
 470. Tancarville and Quilleboeuf, ..... 154 
 
 471. QuiUeboeuf, . 127 
 
 472. Between Quilleboeuf and Villequier, . . . 128 
 
 473. Honfleur, 159 
 
SKETCHES BT TURNER. 
 
 474. Harfleur, 126 
 
 475. Caudebec, . . 129 
 
 476. Lillebonne, 134 
 
 477. Lillebonne, ........ 135 
 
 478. La Chaise de Gargantua, ..... 130 
 
 479. Jumieges, 165 
 
 480. Vernon, 152 
 
 481. Kouen, looking up river, 131 
 
 482. Eouen, looking down river, 132 
 
 483. Eouen Cathedral, 133 
 
 484. Pont de I’Arche, 136 
 
 485. Chateau Gaillard, 137 
 
 486. Mantes, ........ 139 
 
 487. Between Mantes and Vernon, .... 138 
 
 488. St. Germain, ....... 146 
 
 489. Bridges of St. Cloud and Sevres, .... 147 
 
 490. Bridge of Sevres, 148 
 
 491. Lantern of St. Cloud, ...... 156 
 
 492. Barriere de Passy, 141 
 
 493. The Flower-market, 144 
 
 494. The Dog-market, 143 
 
 495. PontNeuf, ........ 142 
 
 496. St. Denis, ........ 145 
 
 497. The Bridge of Meulan, 140 
 
 498. Melun, 149 
 
 499. Troyes, 150 
 
 500. Vignette. Light towers of the H6ve, . , . 160 
 
TEEMIl^AL INDEX, 
 
 I 
 
 In the first column are the numbers in the existing arrangement ; in 
 the second the numbers in this Catalogue ; and in the third the page in 
 this Catalogue. The stars indicate the drawings not included in the ( 
 
 revised Catalogue, as adapted rather for exhibition in the provinces. | 
 
 FIRST SECTION. 
 Kensington Series. 1 to 153. 
 
 1 . 
 
 
 31 
 
 
 306 
 
 25 a 
 
 
 
 218 
 
 
 
 318 
 
 *2 
 
 
 
 
 
 25 6 
 
 
 
 220 
 
 
 
 318 
 
 3 a, 5, and c 
 
 1 
 
 
 304 
 
 26 a 
 
 
 
 221 
 
 • 
 
 
 318 
 
 4 . 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 304 
 
 26 6 
 
 
 
 222 
 
 • 
 
 
 318 
 
 5 a and b 
 
 
 33 
 
 
 306 
 
 27 
 
 
 
 54 
 
 • 
 
 
 308 
 
 6 a and b 
 
 
 26 
 
 
 305 
 
 *28 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 *7 
 
 
 
 
 
 29 a 
 
 
 
 224 
 
 
 
 318 
 
 8 . 
 
 
 52 
 
 
 308 
 
 29 6 
 
 
 
 215 
 
 
 
 318 
 
 9 
 
 
 51 
 
 
 308 
 
 30 fit 
 
 
 
 204 
 
 • 
 
 
 318 
 
 10 . 
 
 
 6 
 
 * 
 
 304 
 
 30 6 
 
 
 
 216 
 
 M 
 
 * 
 
 318 
 
 11 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 304 
 
 dla 
 
 
 
 214 
 
 • 
 
 
 318 
 
 12 
 
 
 53 
 
 
 308 
 
 31 6 
 
 
 
 202 
 
 • 
 
 
 318 
 
 13 . 
 
 
 7 
 
 
 304 
 
 •32 
 
 
 
 201 
 
 
 
 318 
 
 14 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 304 
 
 33 
 
 • 
 
 
 11 
 
 
 
 304 
 
 *15 
 
 
 
 
 
 34 
 
 • 
 
 
 72 
 
 
 , 
 
 309 
 
 16 a to e 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 304 
 
 35 
 
 • 
 
 
 65 
 
 
 
 308 
 
 17 rt, and c 
 
 5 
 
 
 304 
 
 *36 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 18 a. b, and c 
 
 4 
 
 
 304 
 
 *37 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 *19 
 
 
 
 
 
 38 
 
 
 • 
 
 128 
 
 
 • 
 
 313 
 
 20 . 
 
 
 39 
 
 
 306 
 
 39 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 34 
 
 
 
 306 
 
 21 a and b 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 304 
 
 40 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 35 
 
 
 • 
 
 306 
 
 22 a . 
 
 
 106 
 
 
 312 
 
 41 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 67 
 
 
 
 308 
 
 22 6 . 
 
 
 107 
 
 
 312 
 
 42 
 
 
 • 
 
 66 
 
 
 
 308 
 
 ♦23 
 
 
 
 
 
 *43 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 *24 
 
 
 
 
 
 44 
 
 
 
 64 
 
 
 
 308 
 
DBA^yIN 08 AND SKETCHES BY TURNER, 335 
 
 45 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 
 305 
 
 46 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 » « 
 
 305 
 
 *47 
 
 *48 
 
 *49 
 
 *50 
 
 51 
 
 
 
 36 
 
 
 306 
 
 52 
 
 
 
 38 
 
 
 306 
 
 53 
 
 
 
 56 
 
 
 308 
 
 54 
 
 
 
 37 
 
 
 306 
 
 55 
 
 
 
 50 
 
 * 
 
 307 
 
 *56 
 
 *57 
 
 58 
 
 
 
 57 
 
 
 308 
 
 59 
 
 
 
 116 
 
 * 
 
 312 
 
 ♦60 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 
 305 
 
 61 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 
 306 
 
 *62 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 
 305 
 
 63 
 
 
 
 60 
 
 
 308 
 
 64 
 
 
 
 58 
 
 
 308 
 
 65 
 
 
 
 59 
 
 
 308 
 
 *66 
 
 67 
 
 
 
 63 
 
 
 308 
 
 68 
 
 
 
 61 
 
 
 308 
 
 69 
 
 
 
 62 
 
 
 308 
 
 70 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 305 
 
 71 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 . 
 
 305 
 
 *72 
 
 73 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 . 
 
 305 
 
 *74 
 
 75 
 
 
 
 82 
 
 
 309 
 
 76 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 • 
 
 305 
 
 77 
 
 
 
 74 
 
 
 309 
 
 78 
 
 
 
 89 
 
 
 309 
 
 79 
 
 
 
 90 
 
 
 309 
 
 80 
 
 
 
 76 
 
 
 309 
 
 81 
 
 
 
 75 
 
 e 
 
 309 
 
 82 
 
 
 
 77 
 
 
 309 
 
 83 
 
 
 
 78 
 
 
 309 
 
 84 
 
 
 
 79 
 
 
 309 
 
 85 
 
 
 
 80 
 
 
 309 
 
 86 
 
 
 
 81 
 
 
 309 
 
 87 a 
 
 
 
 334 
 
 , * 
 
 325 
 
 87 6 
 
 
 
 335 
 
 
 325 
 
 *88 
 
 
 
 94 
 
 
 . 310 
 
 a . 
 
 
 156 
 
 
 . 315 
 
 b . 
 
 
 154 
 
 
 . 315 
 
 
 
 95 
 
 
 . 310 
 
 
 
 96 
 
 
 . 310 
 
 
 
 97 
 
 
 . 310 
 
 
 
 98 
 
 
 . 310 
 
 
 
 99 
 
 
 . 310 
 
 a . 
 
 
 169 
 
 
 . 315 
 
 b . 
 
 
 170 
 
 
 . 315 
 
 c . 
 
 
 100 
 
 
 . 310 
 
 
 
 251 
 
 
 . 321 
 
 
 
 256 
 
 
 . 321 
 
 
 
 252 
 
 
 . 321 
 
 
 
 290 
 
 
 . 323 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 
 . 305 
 
 
 
 271 
 
 
 . 322 
 
 a . 
 
 . 291 
 
 
 . 3^3 
 
 b . 
 
 . 262 
 
 
 . 321 
 
 
 . 45 
 
 
 . 307 
 
 
 . 44 
 
 . 307 
 
 
 . 46 
 
 . 307 
 
 
 . 47 
 
 . 307 
 
 
 . 43 
 
 . 307 
 
 
 . 48 
 
 . 307 
 
 
 . 18 
 
 . 305 
 
 
 . 13 
 
 . 304 
 
 
 . 55 
 
 . 308 
 
 * 
 
 . 68 
 
 . 308 
 
 
 . 69 
 
 . 308 
 
 , 
 
 . 70 
 
 . 308 
 
 
 . 71 
 
 . 309 
 
 *89 
 
 *90 
 
 *91 
 
 *92 
 
 93 
 
 94 
 
 94 
 
 95 
 
 96 
 
 97 
 
 98 
 
 99 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 100 
 
 101 
 
 102 
 
 103 
 
 *104 
 
 105 
 
 *106 
 
 ♦107 
 
 *108 
 
 *109 
 
 *110 
 
 111 
 
 111 
 
 112 
 
 ♦113 
 
 *114 
 
 115 
 
 116 
 
 117 
 
 118 
 
 119 
 
 120 
 
 121 
 
 122 
 
 *123 
 
 *124 
 
 125 
 
 126 
 
 127 
 
 128 
 
 *129 
 
336 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 *130 
 
 
 
 142 . 
 
 . 93 
 
 . 310 
 
 *131 
 
 
 
 143 . 
 
 . 15 
 
 . 305 
 
 133 . 
 
 . 73 
 
 . 309 
 
 144 . 
 
 . 32 
 
 . 306 
 
 133 . 
 
 . 83 
 
 . 309 
 
 145 . 
 
 . 2 . 
 
 . 304 
 
 134 . 
 
 . 88 
 
 . 309 
 
 146 . 
 
 . 42 
 
 , 307 
 
 135 . 
 
 . 85 
 
 . 309 
 
 147 . 
 
 . 28 
 
 . 305 
 
 136 . 
 
 . 86 
 
 . 309 
 
 148 . 
 
 . 27 
 
 . 305 
 
 137 . 
 
 . 87 
 
 . 309 
 
 149 . 
 
 . 40 
 
 . 306 
 
 138 . 
 
 . 30 
 
 . 305 
 
 *150 
 
 
 
 139 . 
 
 . 84 
 
 . 309 
 
 *151 
 
 
 
 *140 
 
 
 
 152 . 
 
 . 91 
 
 . 310 
 
 ♦141 
 
 
 
 153 . 
 
 . 92 
 
 . 310 
 
 SECOND SECTION. 
 
 Drawings now framed and placed in Cabinets. 
 Nos. 1 TO 400. 
 
 The stars, as in the first section, indicate drawings recommended for 
 provincial exhibition. 
 
 *1 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 
 223 
 
 
 
 318 
 
 *2 
 
 
 
 
 24 
 
 
 217 
 
 
 
 318 
 
 3 . 
 
 . 213 
 
 
 . 318 
 
 25 
 
 
 225 
 
 
 
 818 
 
 *4 
 
 
 
 
 *26 
 
 
 451 
 
 
 
 331 
 
 5 . 
 
 . 203 
 
 * 
 
 . 318 
 
 ♦27 
 
 
 452 
 
 
 
 331 
 
 *6 
 
 
 
 
 *28 
 
 
 453 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 *7 
 
 
 
 
 *29 
 
 
 454 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 *8 
 
 
 
 
 *30 
 
 
 455 
 
 • 
 
 
 332 
 
 9 . 
 
 . 205 
 
 * 
 
 . 318 
 
 ♦31 
 
 
 456 
 
 • 
 
 * 
 
 332 
 
 10 
 
 . 206 
 
 
 . 318 
 
 *32 
 
 
 457 
 
 • 
 
 
 332 
 
 11 
 
 . 208 
 
 
 . 318 
 
 *33 
 
 
 458 
 
 • 
 
 
 332 
 
 12 . 
 
 . 207 
 
 
 . 318 
 
 ♦34 
 
 
 459 
 
 • 
 
 
 332 
 
 •13 
 
 
 
 
 *35 
 
 
 460 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 332 
 
 14 . 
 
 . 209 
 
 
 . 318 
 
 *36 
 
 
 461 
 
 • 
 
 
 332 
 
 *15 
 
 
 
 
 *37 
 
 
 465 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 *16 
 
 
 
 
 ♦38 
 
 
 462 
 
 
 * 
 
 332 
 
 17 
 
 . 210 
 
 
 . 318 
 
 *39 
 
 
 463 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 18 . 
 
 . 211 
 
 
 . 318 
 
 *40 
 
 
 464 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 19 
 
 . 212 
 
 
 . 318 
 
 41 
 
 
 140 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 *20 
 
 
 
 
 42 - 
 
 
 139 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 314 
 
 •21 
 
 
 
 
 ♦43 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 22 
 
 . 219 
 
 , 
 
 . 318 
 
 44 . 
 
 
 141 
 
 • 
 
 • 
 
 314 
 
45 
 
 46 
 
 47 
 
 48 
 
 49 
 
 50 
 
 51 
 
 52 
 
 53 
 
 54 
 
 55 
 
 56 
 
 57 
 
 58 
 
 59 
 
 60 
 
 61 
 
 62 
 
 63 
 
 64 
 
 65 
 
 66 
 
 67 
 
 68 
 
 69 
 
 70 
 
 *71 
 
 72 
 
 73 
 
 *74 
 
 75 
 
 *76 
 
 77 
 
 78 
 
 79 
 
 80 
 
 81 
 
 82 
 
 83 
 
 84 
 
 85 
 
 86 
 
 87 
 
 88 
 
 89 
 
 SKETCHES BY TURNER. .337 
 
 138 
 
 
 , 
 
 314 
 
 i 90 
 
 
 
 165 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 146 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 ! 91 
 
 
 
 143 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 132 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 i 92 
 
 
 
 144 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 157 
 
 
 , 
 
 315 
 
 i *93 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 147 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 94 
 
 
 
 177 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 142 
 
 
 * 
 
 314 
 
 95 
 
 
 
 145 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 181 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 96 
 
 
 
 137 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 182 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 97 
 
 
 
 179 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 183 
 
 
 , 
 
 316 
 
 98 
 
 
 
 180 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 184 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 99 
 
 
 
 178 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 185 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 100 
 
 
 
 135 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 186 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 101 
 
 
 
 401 
 
 
 
 329 
 
 187 
 
 
 , 
 
 316 
 
 102 
 
 
 
 402 
 
 
 
 329 
 
 188 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 |103 
 
 
 
 403 
 
 
 
 329 
 
 189 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 104 
 
 
 
 404 
 
 
 
 329 
 
 190 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 105 
 
 
 
 405 
 
 
 
 329 
 
 191 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 106 
 
 
 
 406 
 
 
 
 329 
 
 192 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 il07 
 
 
 * 
 
 407 
 
 
 
 329 
 
 193 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 108 
 
 
 
 408 
 
 
 
 329 
 
 194 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 il09 
 
 
 
 413 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 195 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 illO 
 
 
 
 410 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 196 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 111 
 
 
 
 411 
 
 
 , 
 
 330 
 
 197 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 112 
 
 
 
 412 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 198 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 113 
 
 
 , 
 
 409 
 
 • 
 
 
 330 
 
 199 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 114 
 
 
 
 414 
 
 • 
 
 
 330 
 
 200 
 
 
 
 316 
 
 115 
 
 
 
 415 
 
 • 
 
 
 330 
 
 
 
 
 
 116 
 
 
 
 416 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 131 
 
 
 * 
 
 314 
 
 117 
 
 
 
 417 
 
 
 e 
 
 330 
 
 133 
 
 
 , 
 
 314 
 
 118 
 
 
 
 418 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 
 
 
 
 119 
 
 
 , 
 
 419 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 176 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 120 
 
 
 
 420 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 
 
 
 
 121 
 
 
 
 421 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 166 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 122 
 
 
 
 422 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 159 
 
 
 * 
 
 315 
 
 123 
 
 
 
 423 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 160 
 
 
 
 315! 
 
 124 
 
 
 
 424 
 
 • 
 
 
 330 
 
 134 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 125 
 
 
 
 425 
 
 • 
 
 
 330 
 
 136 
 
 
 
 314 
 
 126 
 
 
 
 474 
 
 • 
 
 
 333 
 
 158 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 127 
 
 
 
 471 
 
 • 
 
 
 332 
 
 148 
 
 
 • 
 
 315 
 
 128 
 
 
 
 472 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 
 
 
 
 129 
 
 
 
 475 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 149 
 
 
 , 
 
 315 
 
 130 
 
 
 
 478 
 
 
 • 
 
 333 
 
 161 
 
 
 , 
 
 315 
 
 131 
 
 
 
 481 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 162 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 132 
 
 
 
 482 
 
 • 
 
 
 333 
 
 133 
 
 
 
 315 
 
 133 
 
 
 
 483 
 
 • 
 
 
 333 
 
 164 
 
 
 • 
 
 315 
 
 134 
 
 
 O 
 
 476 
 
 « 
 
 • 
 
 333 
 
 22 
 
338 
 
 135 
 
 136 
 
 137 
 
 138 
 
 139 
 
 140 
 
 141 
 
 142 
 
 143 
 
 144 
 
 145 
 
 146 
 
 147 
 
 148 
 
 149 
 
 150 
 
 151 
 
 152 
 
 153 
 
 154 
 
 155 
 
 156 
 
 157 
 
 158 
 
 159 
 
 160 
 
 161 
 
 162 
 
 163 
 
 164 
 
 165 
 
 166 
 
 167 
 
 168 
 
 169 
 
 170 
 
 171 
 
 172 
 
 173 
 
 174 
 
 175 
 
 176 
 
 177 
 
 178 
 
 179 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 331 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 320 
 
 CATALOGUE OF DRAWINGS AND 
 
 
 477 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 180 
 
 
 
 430 
 
 
 484 
 
 
 • 
 
 333 
 
 181 
 
 
 
 431 
 
 
 483 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 182 
 
 
 , 
 
 432 
 
 
 487 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 183 
 
 
 
 433 
 
 
 486 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 184 
 
 
 , 
 
 434 
 
 
 497 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 185 
 
 
 
 435 
 
 
 492 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 186 
 
 
 
 436 
 
 
 495 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 187 
 
 • 
 
 
 437 
 
 
 494 
 
 
 • 
 
 333 
 
 188 
 
 
 , 
 
 438 
 
 
 493 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 189 
 
 • 
 
 
 439 . 
 
 . 
 
 496 
 
 
 * 
 
 333 
 
 190 
 
 
 
 440 
 
 
 488 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 191 
 
 
 
 441 
 
 . 
 
 489 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 192 
 
 
 , 
 
 442 
 
 
 490 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 193 
 
 
 
 443 
 
 
 498 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 194 
 
 
 
 444 
 
 
 499 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 195 
 
 
 , 
 
 445 
 
 
 466 
 
 
 , 
 
 332 
 
 196 
 
 
 
 446 
 
 
 480 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 197 
 
 
 
 447 
 
 
 469 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 198 
 
 
 , 
 
 448 
 
 
 470 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 199 
 
 
 
 449 
 
 
 479 
 
 
 , 
 
 333 
 
 200 
 
 
 
 450 
 
 . 
 
 491 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 201 
 
 
 
 246 
 
 
 467 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 202 
 
 
 
 240 
 
 
 468 
 
 
 . 
 
 332 
 
 203 
 
 
 
 231 
 
 
 473 
 
 
 
 332 
 
 204 
 
 
 , 
 
 232 
 
 
 600 
 
 
 
 333 
 
 205 
 
 
 , 
 
 228 
 
 
 336 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 206 
 
 
 
 248 
 
 
 337 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 207 
 
 
 
 233 
 
 
 338 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 208 
 
 
 
 235 
 
 
 339 
 
 
 , 
 
 326 
 
 209 
 
 • 
 
 Reserved 
 
 
 340 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 210 
 
 • 
 
 . , 
 
 226 
 
 
 341 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 211 
 
 • 
 
 * 
 
 230 
 
 
 342 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 212 
 
 
 
 229 
 
 
 343 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 213 
 
 • 
 
 
 227 
 
 
 350 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 214 
 
 • 
 
 
 238 
 
 
 349 
 
 
 , 
 
 326 
 
 215 
 
 • 
 
 
 234 
 
 
 344 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 216 
 
 
 • 
 
 241 
 
 
 346 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 217 
 
 
 
 236 
 
 
 345 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 218 
 
 
 , 
 
 242 
 
 
 347 
 
 
 , 
 
 326 
 
 219 
 
 
 
 243 
 
 
 348 
 
 
 
 326 
 
 220 
 
 
 
 249 
 
 . 
 
 426 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 221 
 
 
 ♦ 
 
 239 
 
 
 427 
 
 
 
 330 
 
 222 
 
 
 
 245 
 
 
 428 
 
 
 , 
 
 330 
 
 223 
 
 
 
 237 
 
 . 
 
 429 
 
 
 • 
 
 331 
 
 224 
 
 
 . 
 
 244 
 
SKETCHES BY TURNER. 339 
 
 225 . 
 
 . 247 
 
 
 
 320 
 
 270 
 
 
 , 
 
 395 
 
 
 
 329 
 
 226 . 
 
 . 301 
 
 
 
 324 
 
 271 
 
 
 
 276 
 
 
 
 322 
 
 227 , 
 
 . 303 
 
 
 
 324 
 
 272 
 
 
 
 272 
 
 
 , 
 
 822 
 
 228 . 
 
 . 308 
 
 
 
 324 
 
 273 
 
 
 , 
 
 266 
 
 
 * 
 
 322 
 
 229 . 
 
 . 309 
 
 
 , 
 
 324 
 
 274 
 
 
 
 278 
 
 
 
 322 
 
 230 . 
 
 . 250 
 
 
 
 320 
 
 275 
 
 
 . 
 
 275 
 
 
 
 322 
 
 231 . 
 
 . 302 
 
 
 
 324 
 
 ^276 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 232 . 
 
 . 304 
 
 
 
 324 
 
 1 ^:-2,77 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 233 . 
 
 . 305 
 
 
 
 324 
 
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340 DRAWINGS AND SKETCHES BY TURNER. 
 
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GUIDE 
 
 TO 
 
 THE PKIHCIPAL PICTUKES 
 
 IN THE 
 
 ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS 
 
 AT 
 
 YEHICE. 
 
 ARRANGED FOR ENGLISH TRAVELLERS 
 
 BT 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, 
 
 SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINK ART, OXFORD, AND HONORARY ASSOCIATE OF THE ACADEMY 
 
 OF VENICE. 
 

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GUIDE, ETC. 
 
 PAET I. 
 
 Over the entrance gate of the Academy are three of the 
 most precious pieces of sculpture in Venice ; her native work, 
 dated ; and belonging to the school of severe Gothic which 
 indicates the beginning of her Christian life in understanding 
 of its real claims upon her. 
 
 St. Leonard on the left, St. Christopher on the right, under 
 Gothic cusped niches. The Madonna in the centre, under a 
 simple gable; the bracket-cornice beneath bearing date 1345; 
 the piece of sculpture itself engaged in a rectangular panel, 
 which is the persistent sign of the Greek schools ; descending 
 from the Metopes of the Parthenon. 
 
 You see the infant sprawls on lier knee in an ungainly man- 
 ner ; she herself sits with quiet maiden dignity, but in no 
 manner of sentimental adoration. 
 
 That is Venetian naturalism ; showing their henceforward 
 steady desire to represent things as they really (according to 
 the workman’s notions) might have existed. It begins first 
 in this century, separating itself from the Byzantine formal- 
 ism — the movement being the same which was led by Giotto 
 in Florence fifty years earlier. These sculptures are the re- 
 sult of his influence, from Padua, and other such Gothic pov/- 
 er, rousing Venice to do and think for herself, instead of 
 letting her Greek subjects do all for her. This is one of her 
 first performances, independently of them. She has not yet 
 the least notion of making anybody stand rightly on their 
 feet ; you see how St. Leonard and St'. Christopher point their 
 
344 GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 toes. Clearly, until we know how to do better than this, in 
 perspective and such matters, our painting cannot come to 
 much. Accordingly, all the Venetian painting of any impor- 
 tance 3 "ou are now to see in the Academy is subsequent to 
 these sculptures. But these are, fortunately, dated — 1378 
 and 1384. Twenty years more will bring us out of the four- 
 teenth century. And therefore, broadly, all the painter’s art 
 of Venice begins in the fifteenth ; and we may as well at once 
 take note that it ends with the sixteenth. There are only 
 these two hundred years of painting in Venice. Now, with- 
 out much pause in the corridor, though the old well in the 
 cortile has its notabilities if one had time — up the spiral 
 stairs, and when you have entered the gallery and got your 
 admission tickets — (quite a proper arrangement that you 
 should pay for them ; if I were a Venetian prefect, you should 
 pay a good deal more for leave to come to Venice at all, that 
 I might be sure you cared to come) — walk straight forward 
 till you descend the steps into the first room in the arrange- 
 ment of the Academy catalogue. On your right, at the bot- 
 tom of the steps, you see a large picture (16) in a series of 
 compartments, of which the central one, the Crowning of the 
 Virgin, was painted by a Venetian vicar (vicar of St. Agnes), 
 in 1380. A happy, faithful, cheerful vicar he must have been ; 
 and any vicar, rector, or bishop who could do such a thing 
 now would be a blessing to his parish, and delight to his 
 diocese. Symmetrical, orderly, gay, and in the heart of it 
 nobly grave, this work of the old Plebanus has much in it of 
 the future methods of Venetian composition. The two an- 
 gels peeping over the arms of the throne may remind you to 
 look at its cusped arches, for we are here in central Gothic 
 time, thirty years after the sea-fa 9 ade of the Ducal Palace had 
 been built. 
 
 Now, on the opposite side of the room, over the door lead- 
 ing into the next room, you see (1) in the Academy catalogue 
 “ The work of Bartholomew Vivarini of Murano, 1464,” show- 
 ing you what advance had been made in eighty years. The 
 figures still hard in outline — thin (except the Madonna’s 
 throat, which always, in Venice, is strong as a pillar), and 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. 345 
 
 much marked in sinew and bone (studied from life, mind you, 
 not by dissection) ; exquisitely delicate and careful in pure 
 color ; in character, portraits of holy men and women, such 
 as then were. There is no idealism here whatever. Monks 
 and nuns had indeed faces and mien like these saints, when 
 they desired to have the saints painted for them. 
 
 A noble picture ; not of any supreme genius, but complete- 
 ly containing the essence of Venetian art. 
 
 Next, going under it, through the door, you find yourself 
 in the principal room of the Academy, which please cross 
 quietly to the window opposite, on the left of which hangs a 
 large picture which you will have great difficulty in seeing at 
 all, hung as it is against the light ; and which, in any of its 
 finer qualities, you absolutely cannot see ; but may yet per- 
 ceive what they are, latent in that darkness, which is all the 
 honor that the kings, nobles, and artists of Europe care to 
 bestow on one of the greatest pictures ever painted by 
 Christendom in her central art-power. Alone worth an entire 
 modern exhibition-building, hired fiddlers and all ; here you 
 liave it jammed on a back wall, utterly unserviceable to 
 human kind, the little angels of it fiddling unseen, unheard 
 by anybody’s heart. It is the best John Bellini in the Acad- 
 emy of Venice ; the third best in Venice, and probably in the 
 world. Repainted, the right-hand angel, and somewhat 
 elsewhere ; but on the whole perfect ; unspeakably good, and 
 right in ail ways. Not inspired with any high religious 
 passion ; a good man’s work, not an enthusiast’s. It is, in 
 principle, merely the perfecting of Vivarini’s ; the saints, 
 mere portraits of existing men and women ; the Madonna, 
 idealized only in that squareness of face and throat, not in 
 anywise the prettier for it, otherwise a quite commonplace 
 Venetian woman. Such, and far lovelier, you may see living to- 
 day, if you can see™and may make manifest, if you can paint. 
 
 And now, you may look to the far end of the room, where 
 Titian’s “ Assumption ” has the chairs put before it ; every- 
 body being expected to sit down, and for once, without ask- 
 ing what o’clock it is at the railroad station, reposefully 
 admire. __ 
 
346 GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 Of which, hear first what I wrote, very rightly, a quarter 
 of a century ago. 
 
 “The traveller is generally too much struck by Titian’s 
 great picture of ‘ The Assumption ’ to be able to pay proper 
 attention to the other works in this gallery. Let him, how- 
 ever, ask himself candidly how much of his admiration is de- 
 pendent merely on the picture’s being larger than any other 
 in the room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it ; 
 let him be assured that the picture is in reality not one whit 
 the better either for being large or gaudy in color, and he 
 will then be better disposed to give the pains necessary to dis- 
 cover the merit of the more profound works of Bellini and 
 Tintoret.” 
 
 I wrote this, I have said, very rightly, not quite rightly. 
 For if a picture is good, it is better for being large, because 
 it is more difficult to paint large than small ; and if color is 
 good, it may he better for being bright. 
 
 Nay, the fault of this picture, as I read it now, is in not be- 
 ing bright enough. A large piece of scarlet, two large pieces 
 of crimson, and some very beautiful blue, occupy about a 
 fifth part of it ; but the rest is mostly fox color or dark 
 brown : majority of the apostles under total eclipse of brown. 
 St. John, there being nobody else handsome to look at, is 
 therefore seen to advantage ; also St. Peter and his beard ; 
 but the rest of the lower canvas is filled with little more than 
 flourishings of arms and Singings of cloaks, in shadow and 
 light. 
 
 However, as a piece of oil painting, and what artists call 
 “ composition,” with entire grasp and knowledge of the ac- 
 tion of the human body, the perspectives of the human face, 
 and the relations of shade to color in expressing form, the 
 picture is deservedly held unsurpassable. Enjoy of it what 
 you can ; but of its place in the history of Venetian art ob- 
 serve these three following points : 
 
 I. The throned Madonnas of Vivarini and Bellini were to 
 Venice what the statue of Athena in the Brazen House was to 
 Athens. Not at all supposed to he Athena, or to he Madon- 
 nas ; but symbols, by help of which they conceived the pres- 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, 347 
 
 ence with them of a real Goddess. But this picture of Ti- 
 tian’s does not profess to symbolize any Virgin here with us, 
 but only to show how the Virgin was taken away from us a 
 long time ago. And professing to represent this, he does not 
 in the least believe his own representation, nor expect any- 
 body else to believe it. He does not, in his heart, believe the 
 Assumption ever took place at all. He is merely putting to- 
 gether a stage decoration of clouds, little boys, with wings 
 stuck into them, and pantomime actors in studied positions, 
 to amuse his Venice and himself. 
 
 II. Though desirous of nothing but amusement, he is not, 
 at heart, half so much amused by his work as John Bellini, or 
 one-quarter so much amused as the innocent old vicar. On 
 the contrary, a strange gloom has been cast over him, he 
 knows not why ; but he likes all his colors dark, and puts 
 great spaces of brown, and crimson passing into black, where 
 the older painters would have made all lively. Painters call 
 this “ chiaroscuro.” So also they may call a thunder-cloud in 
 the sky of spring ; but it means more than light and shade. 
 
 HI. You see that in ail the three earlier, pictures everybody 
 is quiet. Here, everybody is in a bustle. If you like to look at 
 my pamphlet on the relation of Tintoret to Michael Angelo, you 
 will see how this comes to pass, and what it means. And that 
 is all I care for your noticing in the Assumption, just now. 
 
 Next, look on right and left of it, at the two dark pictui-es 
 over the doors (63, 25). 
 
 Darkness visible, with flashes of lightning through it. The 
 thunder-cloud upon us, rent with fire. 
 
 Those are Tintorets ; finest possible Tintorets ; best pos- 
 sible examples of what, in absolute power of painting, is su- 
 premest work, so far as I know, in all the world. 
 
 Nothing comes near Tintoret for colossal painter’s power as 
 such. But you need not think to get any good of these pic- 
 tures ; it would take you twenty years’ work to understand 
 the fineness of them as painting ; and for the rest, there is 
 little good in them to be got. Adam and Eve no more sat iu 
 that warm-weather picnic manner, helping each other politely 
 to apples, on the occasion of their fall, than the Madonna went 
 
848 GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 up all bending about in her red and blue cloak on the occasion 
 of her Assumption. But of the wrong and the truth, the error 
 and the glory, of these pictures, I have no time to speak now ; 
 nor you to hear. All that you have to notice is that painting 
 has now become a dark instead of bright art, and in many 
 ways a frightful and unpleasant art, or else I will add once 
 for all, referring you for proof of it to the general examples of 
 Venetian work at this late epoch, supplied as a luxury to for- 
 eign courts, fi lascivious art.^ 
 
 Nevertheless, up to the time when Tintoret painted the Cru- 
 cifixion in the Scuola di San Kocco, Venice had not in heart 
 abjured her religion. The time when the last chord of its faith 
 gives way cannot be discerned, to-day and hour ; but in that 
 day and hour of which, for external sign, Ave may best take 
 the death of Tintoret in 1594, the Arts of Venice are at an end. 
 
 I have therefore now shown you the complete course of 
 their power, from 1380 at the Academy gates, to 1594— say, 
 broadly, two centuries (her previous art being only architect- 
 ual, mosaic, or decorative sculpture). We will now go through 
 the rooms, noticing what is best worth notice in each of the 
 epochs defined ; essentially, you observe, three. The first Ave 
 may call the ViVarini epoch, bright, innocent, more or less 
 elementary, entirely religious art — reaching from 1400 to 
 1480 ; the second (which for reasons presently to be shoAvn, 
 we will call the Garpaccian epoch), sometimes classic and 
 mythic, as Avell as religious, 1480-1520 ; the third, supreme- 
 ly^ powerful art corrupted by taint of death, 1520-1600, which 
 Ave will call the Tintoret epoch. 
 
 Of course the lives of the painters run in and out across 
 
 * One copy of Titian’s work bearing such commercial value, and show- 
 ing what was briefly the Gospel preached by Missionary Venice to for- 
 eign nations in the sixteenth century, you will find presently in the 
 narrow corridor, No. 347 : on which you will usually also find some 
 modern copyist employed, for missionary purposes ; but never on a 
 Vivarini. And in thus becoming dark, terrific, and sensual, Venetian 
 art led the way to the mere naturalism and various baseness of follow- 
 ing European art with the rubbish of which that corridor (Sala ix.. 
 Numbers 276 to 353) is mostly filled. 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. 349 
 
 these limits ; yet if you fasten these firmly in your mind — 80, 
 40, 80 — you will find you have an immense advantage and 
 easy grip of the whole history of Venetian art. 
 
 In the first epoch, however, I do not mean to detain you ; 
 but the room you first entered, into which I will now ask you 
 to return, is full of pictures which you will find interesting if 
 you have time to decipher them, and care for Christianity and 
 its expressions. One only I will ask you to look at, after 
 Titian’s Assumption ; the little Ascension by Nicolo Semite- 
 colo, low down, on the right of the vicar’s picture in Number 
 16. For that Ascension is painted in real belief that the As- 
 cension did take place ; and its sincerity ought to be pleasant 
 to you, after Titian’s pretence. 
 
 Now, returning up the steps, and taking the corridor to 
 your right, opposite the porter’s table, enter the little room 
 through the first door on your right ; and therein, just on 
 your right as you go in, is Mantegna’s St. George, No. 273 ; 
 to which give ten minutes quietly, and examine it with a mag- 
 nifying glass of considerable power. For in that you have a 
 perfect tj^pe of the Italian methods of execution corresponding 
 to the finish of the Dutch painters in the north ; but far more 
 intellectual and skilful. You cannot see more wonderful work 
 in minute drawing with the point of the brush ; the virtue of 
 it being that, not only every touch is microscopically minute, 
 but that, in this minuteness, every touch is considered, and 
 every touch right. It is to be regarded, however, only as a 
 piece of workmanship. It is wholly without sentiment, though 
 the distant landscape becomes affecting through its detailed 
 truth — the winding road under the rocks, and the towered 
 city, being as full of little pretty things to be searched out as 
 a natural scene would be. 
 
 And I have brought you first, in our now more complete 
 review, to this picture, because it shows more clearly than any 
 other through what tremendous work the Italian masters ob- 
 tained their power. 
 
 Without the inherited strength won by this precision of 
 drawing in the earlier masters, neither Titian nor Tintoret 
 could have existed. 
 
350 GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 Ketaru into tlie corridor, and walk along it to the end with- 
 out wasting time ; — there is a Bonifazio, No. 326, worth a 
 painter’s while to stop at, but in general mere Dutch rubbish. 
 Walk straight on, and go in at the last door on the left, with- 
 in which you will find 
 
 456, Cima da Conegliano. An entirely sincere and noble 
 picture of the central epoch. Not supreme in any artistic 
 quality, but good and praiseworthy in all ; and, as a concep- 
 tion of its subject, the most beautiful you will find in Venice. 
 Grudge no time upon it ; but look at nothing else here ; re- 
 turn into the corridor, and proceed by it into the great room. 
 
 Opposite you is Titian’s great “ Presentation of the Virgin,” 
 interesting to artists, and an unusually large specimen of 
 Titian’s rough work. To me, simply the most stupid and un- 
 interesting picture ever painted by him : if you can find any- 
 thing to enjoy in it, you are very welcome. I have nothing 
 more to say of it, except that the color of the landscape is as 
 false as a piece of common blue tapestry, and that the “ cele- 
 brated ” old woman with her basket of eggs is as dismally 
 ugly and vulgar a filling of spare corner as was ever daubed 
 on a side-scene in a hurry at Drury Lane. 
 
 On the other side of the room, 543, is another wide waste 
 of canvas; miserable example of the w^ork subsequent to Paul 
 Veronese ; doubly and trebly mischievous in caricaturing and 
 defiling all that in the master himself is noble : to look long 
 at such a thing is enough to make the truest lovers of Vene- 
 tian art ashamed of Venice, and of themselves. It ought to 
 be taken down and burned. 
 
 Turn your back to it, in the centre of the room ; and make 
 up your mind for a long stand ; for opposite you, so standing, 
 is a Veronese indeed, of the most instructive and noble kind 
 (489) ; and beneath it, the best picture in the Academy of 
 Venice, Carpaccio’s “ Presentation ” (488). 
 
 Of the Veronese, I will say nothing but that the main in- 
 structiveness of it is in the exhibition of his acquired and in- 
 evitable faults (the infection of his sera), wuth his own quiet- 
 est and best virtues. It is an artist’s picture, and even only 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. 351 
 
 to be rightly felt by very good artists ; the aerial perspectives 
 ■ in it being extremely subtle, and rare, to equal degree, in the 
 painter’s work. To the general spectator, I will only observe 
 that he has free leave to consider the figure of the Virgin exe- 
 crable ; but that I hope, if he has a good opera-glass, he will 
 find something to please him in the little rose-bush in the 
 glass vase on the balustrade. I would myself give all the 
 bushes — not to say all the trees — and all the seas, of Claude 
 and Poussin, in one bunch and one deluge — for this little rose- 
 bush and its bottle. 
 
 488. “The Presentation in the Temple.” Signed “Victor 
 i Carpaccio, 1510.” From the Church of St. Job. 
 
 You have no similar leave, however, good general spectator, 
 ( to find fault with anything here ! You may measure yourself, 
 j outside and in — your religion, your taste, your knowledge of 
 art, your knowledge of men and things — by the quantity of 
 6 admiration which honestl}’’, after due time given, you can feel 
 c for this picture. 
 
 You are not required to think the Madonna pretty, or to 
 9 receive the same religious delight from the concej^tion of the 
 ' scene, which you would rightly receive from Angelico, Filipj:>o 
 I Lippi, or Perugino. This is essentially Venetian — prosaic, 
 I matter of fact — retaining its supreme common-sense through 
 I all enthusiasm. 
 
 Nor are you required to think this a first-rate work in Vene- 
 i tian color. This is the best picture in the Academy precisely 
 I' because it is not the best piece of color there ; because the 
 great master has subdued his own main passion, and restrained 
 I' his color-faculty, though the best in Venice, that you might 
 s 'not say the moment you came before the picture, as you do of 
 
 I the Paris Bourdone (492), “ What a piece of color ! ” 
 
 To Paris, the Duke, the Senate, and the Miracle are all 
 " merely vehicles for flashes of scarlet and gold on marble and 
 i ' silk ; but Carpaccio, in this picture of the Presentation, does 
 
 II not want you to think of his color, but of 7jour Christ. 
 
 To whom the Madonna also is subjected^ — to whom all is 
 'I subjected ; you will not find such another Infant Christ in 
 
 I 
 
352 GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURED IN 
 
 Venice. (But always look carefully at Paul Veronese’s, for it 
 is one of the most singular points in the character of this 
 usually decorative and inexpressive painter, that his Infant 
 Christs are always beautiful.) 
 
 For the rest, I am not going to praise Carpaccio’s work. 
 Give time to it ; and if you don’t delight in it, the essential 
 faculty of enjoying good art is wanting in you, and I can’t 
 give it to you by ten minutes’ talk ; but if you begin really to 
 feel the picture, observe that its supreme merit is in the ex- 
 actly just balance of all virtue — detail perfect, yet inconspic- 
 uous ; composition intricate and severe, but concealed under 
 apparent simplicity ; and painter’s faculty of the supremest, 
 used nevertheless with entire subjection of it to intellectual 
 purpose. Titian, compared to Carpaccio, paints as a circus- 
 rider rides — there is nothing to be thought of in him but his 
 riding. But Carpaccio paints as a good knight rides ; his rid- 
 ing is the least of him ; and to himself — unconscious in its 
 ease. 
 
 When you have seen all you can of the picture as a whole, 
 go near, and make out the little pictures on the edge of St. 
 Simeon’s robe ; four quite lovely ones ; the lowest admitting, 
 to make the whole perfect, delightful grotesque of fairy an- 
 gels within a heavenly castle wall, thrusting down a troop of 
 supine devils to the deep. The other three, more beautiful 
 ill their mystery of shade ; but I have not made them out yet. 
 There is one solemn piece of charge to a spirit folding its arms 
 ill obedience ; and I think the others must be myths cf crea- 
 tion, but can’t tell yet, and must now go on quickly to note 
 merely the pictures you should look at, reserving talk of them 
 for a second number of this Guide. 
 
 483, 500, 524, containing all you need study in Bonifazio. 
 In 500, he is natural and does his best ; in 483, he pretends to 
 religion, which he has not ; in 524, to art, which he has not. 
 The last is a monstrous example of the apathy with which tlie 
 later Italian artists, led by Kaphael, used this horrible subject 
 to exhibit their ingenuity in anatomical posture, and excite 
 the feeble interest of vulgar spectators. 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. 353 
 
 503. Quiet Tintoret ; very noble in senators, poor in Ma- 
 donna. 
 
 519. Quiet Paul Veronese ; very noble in St. Jerome’s robe 
 and Lion, and in little St. John’s back. Not particularly so 
 in anybody’s front, but a first-rate picture in the picture way. 
 
 507. Dashing Tintoret ; fearfully repainted, but grand yet 
 ; in the lighter figures of background. 
 
 496-502. Dashing Paul Veronese — splendid 4n art ; in con- 
 e ception of Evangelists — all that Venice wanted of them, at 
 u that day. You must always, however, judge her as you would 
 a sailor— what would be ridiculous or bombastic in others has 
 
 1 often some honesty in it with her. Think of these Evangelists 
 
 2 as a kind of figure-heads of ships. 
 
 Enter now the great room with the Veronese at the end of 
 ^ it, for which the painter (quite rightly) was summoned before 
 d the Inquisition of State : you will find his examination, trans- 
 l lated by a friend to whom I owe much in my old Venetian 
 i] days, in the Appendix to my second Guide ; but you must not 
 i stop now at this picture, if you are in a hurry, for you can see 
 i the like of it, and better, in Paris ; but you can see nothing in 
 I all the world, out of Venice, like certain other pictures in this 
 
 3 room. 
 
 Glancing round it, you see it may be generally described as 
 ;; full of pictures of street architecture, with various more or less 
 fl interesting transactions going on in the streets. Large Cnna- 
 t leitos, in fact ; only with the figures a little more interesting 
 1 than Canaletto’s figures ; and the buildings, on the whole, red 
 1 and white or brown and white, instead of, as with Canaletto, 
 t( black and white. And on consideration, and observation, you 
 i will perceive, if you have any perception of color, that Vene- 
 :i tian buildings, and most others, being really red and white or 
 n brown and white, not black and white, this is really the right 
 Oj manner of painting them, and these are true and sufficient rep- 
 >1 resentations of streets, of landscapes, and of interiors of houses, 
 with the people, as I said, either in St. Mark’s Place, 555, or 
 ! 23 
 
354 GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 at Grand Cairo, 540, or before the Castle of St. Angelo at 
 Eome, 546, or by the old Kialto here, 564, being themselves 
 also more or less interesting, if you will observe them, first in 
 their dresses, which are very curious and pretty, and after- 
 ward in many other particulars, of which for the present I 
 must leave you to make out what you can ; for of the pictures 
 by Carpaccio in this room I must write an entirely separate 
 account (begun already for one of them only, the Dream of 
 St. Ursula, 533),^ and of the Gentile Bellini you can only know 
 the value after good study of St. Mark’s itself. Observe, how- 
 ever, at least in this, and in 548 and 564, the perfectly true 
 representation of what the Architecture of Venice was in her- 
 glorious time ; trim, dainty — red and white like the blossom 
 of a carnation — touched with gold like a peacock’s plumes, 
 and frescoed, even to its chimney-pots, with fairest arabesque 
 — its inhabitants, and it together, one harmony of work and 
 life — all of a piece, you see them, in the wonderful palace- 
 perspective on the left in 548, with eveiybody looking out of 
 their windows. And in this picture of St. Mark’s, painted by 
 John Bellini’s good brother, true as he could, hue for hue, and 
 ray for ray, you see that all the tossing of its now white marble 
 foliage against the sky, which in my old book on Venice I com- 
 pared to the tossed spray of sea waves (believing then, as I 
 do still, that the Venetians in their living and breathing daj^s 
 of art were always influenced in their choice of guiding lines 
 of sculpture by their sense of the action of wind or sea), were 
 not, at all events, meant to be like sea foam white in anger, 
 but like light spray in morning sunshine. They were all over- 
 laid with gold. 
 
 Not yet in vicious luxury. Those porches of St. Mark’s, so 
 please you, English friends, were not thus gilt for the wedding 
 of Miss Kilmansegg, nor are those pictures on the vaults ad- 
 vertisements, like yours in your railway stations ; all the arts 
 
 * Of which, with her legend, if you care to hear more, you will find 
 more in the three numbers of “ Fors Clavigera ” now purchaseable of my 
 agent in Venice (Mr. Bunney, Fondamenta San Biagio, 2143), from 
 whom all my recent publications on Venice may be also procured. 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OP FINE ARTS. nb5 
 
 < of England bent on recommending 3^011 cheap bathing ma- 
 i chines and j>ainless pills. Here are purer baths and medicines 
 ij told of ; here have been more ingenious engineers. From the 
 Sinai desert, from the Sion rock, from the defiles of Lebanon, 
 j met here the ghosts of ancient builders to oversee the v/ork, 
 
 - of dead nations, to inspire it — Bezaleel and the maids of 
 
 1 Israel who gave him their jewels ; Hiram and his forgers in 
 
 / the vale of Siddirn, his woodmen of the S3uian forests ; David 
 
 i the lord of war, and his Son the Lord of Peace, and the mul- 
 
 t titudes that kept holy day when the cloud filled the house they 
 
 had built for the Lord of All— -these in their myriads stood 
 by, to watch, to guide ; it might have been, had Venice willed, 
 to bless. 
 
 Literally so, mind 3"ou. The wreathen work of the lily cap- 
 itals and their archivolts, the glass that keeps unfaded their 
 color— the design of that color itself, and the stories that are 
 told in the glow of it — all these were brought by the Jew or the 
 Tyrian, bringing also the treasures of Persia and Egypt ; and 
 with these, laboring beside them as one brought up with them, 
 stood the Athena of Corinth, and the Sophia of Byzantium. 
 
 Not in vicious luxury these, yet — though in Tyrian splendor 
 glows St. Mark’s : nor those quiet and trim little houses on 
 the right, joining the Campanile. You are standing (the 
 work is so completely done that you may soon fanc}^ yourself 
 so) in old St. Mark’s Place, at the far end of it, before it was 
 enlarged ; you may find the stone marking the whole length 
 of it in the pavement, just opposite the easternmost door of 
 the Cafe Florian. And there were none of those pompous 
 loggie then, where you walk up and down before the cafe, 
 but these trim, dainty, happily inhabited houses, mostly in 
 white marble and gold, with disks of porphyry ; and look 
 at the procession coming toward 3mu underneath them — 
 what a bed of moving flowers it is ! Not Birnam Wood com- 
 ing, gloonn^ and terrible, but a very bloom and garland of 
 good and knightl}’’ manhood — its Doge walking in the midst 
 of it — simple, valiant, actual, beneficent, magnificent king. Do 
 you see better sights than this in St. Mark’s Place now, in 
 your days of progress? 
 
356 GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 Now, just to get some little notion liow tlie figures are 
 “put in” by these scrupulous old formalists, take the pains 
 to look closely at the first you come upon of the procession 
 oil the extreme left — the three musicians, namely, with the 
 harp, violin, and lute. Look at them as portraits only ; you 
 will not find more interesting ones in all the rooms. And 
 then you will do well to consider the picture as a reality for 
 a little while, and so leave the Academy with a vision of liv- 
 ing Venice in your heart. We will look at no more painting 
 to-day. 
 
 PART n. 
 
 If you have looked with care at the three musicians, or any 
 other of the principal fignires, in the great town or landscape 
 views in this principal room, you will be ready now with better 
 patience to trace the order of their subjects, and such character 
 or story as their treatment may develop. I can only help 
 jmu, however, with Carpaccio’s, for I have not been able to 
 examine, or much think of, Mansueti’s, recognizing, never- 
 theless, much that is delightful in them. 
 
 By Carpaccio, then, in this room,"^ there are in all eleven 
 important pictures, eight from the legend of St. Ursula, and 
 three of distinct subjects. Glance first at the series of St. 
 Ursula subjects, in this order : 
 
 I. — 539. Maurus the King of Brittany receives the English 
 ambassadors : and has talk with his daughter touching their 
 embassy. 
 
 II. — *533. St. Ursula’s Dream. 
 
 III. — 537. King Maurus dismisses the English ambassa- 
 dors with favorable answer from his daughter. (This is the 
 most beautiful piece of painting in the rooms.) 
 
 * Or at least in the Academy : the arrangement may perhaps he altered 
 before this Guide can be published ; at all events we must not count 
 on it. 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, 357 
 
 IV. — 549. The Kiug of England receives the Princess’s 
 favorable answer. 
 
 V. — 542. The Prince of England sets sail for Brittany — 
 there receives his bride, and embarks with her on pilgrimage. 
 
 VI. — 546. The Prince of England and his bride, voyaging 
 on pilgrimage with the eleven thousand maidens, arrive at 
 Rome, and are received by the Pope, who, “ with certain Car- 
 dinals,” joins their pilgrimage. (The most beautiful of all the 
 series, next to the Bream.) 
 
 VII. — 544. The Prince, with his bride, and the Pope with 
 his Cardinals, and the eleven thousand maids, arrive in the 
 laud of the Huns, and receive martyrdom there. In the 
 second part of the picture is the funeral procession of »St. 
 Ursula. 
 
 VIII. — St. Ursula, with her maidens, and the pilgrim Pope, 
 and certain Cardinals, in glory of Paradise. I have always 
 forgotten to look for the poor bridegroom in this picture, and 
 on looking, am by no means sure of him. But I suppose it is 
 he who holds St. Ursula’s standard. The architeclure and 
 landscape are unsurpassably tine ; the rest much imperfect ; 
 but containing nobleness only to be learned by long dwelling 
 on it. 
 
 .In this series, I have omitted- one picture, 544, which is of 
 scarcely any interest— except in its curious faults and unwor- 
 thiness. At all events, do not at present look at it, or think 
 of it ; but let us examine all the rest without hurry. 
 
 In the first place, then, we find this curious fact, intensely 
 characteristic of the fifteenth as opposed to the nineteenth 
 century — that the figures are true and natural, but the land- 
 scape false and unnatural, being by such fallacy made entirely 
 subordinate to the figures. I have never approved of, and 
 only a little understand, this state of things The painter is 
 never interested in the ground, but only in the creatures tliat 
 tread on it. A castle tower is left a mere brown bit of canvas, 
 and all his coloring kept for the trumpeters on the top of it. 
 The fields are obscurely green ; the sky imperfectly blue ; and 
 the mountains could not possibly stand on the very small 
 foundations they are furnished with. 
 
358 GUIDE TO THE PBINGIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 Here is a Religion of Humanity, and nothing else — to pur- 
 pose ! Nothing in the universe thought worth a look, unless 
 it is in service or foil to some two-legged creature showing 
 itself off to the best advantage. If a flower is in a girl’s hair 
 it ,shall be painted properly ; but in the fields, shall be only a 
 spot ; if a striped pattern is on a boy’s jacket, we paint all the 
 ins and outs of it, and drop not a stitch ; but the striped 
 X^atterns of vineyard or furrow in field, the enamelled mossy 
 mantles of the rocks, the barred heraldry of the shield of the 
 sky — perhaps insects and birds may take pleasure in them, 
 not 
 
 To his own native lagunes and sea, the painter is yet less 
 sensitive. His absurd rocks, and dotty black hedges round 
 bitumen-colored fields (542), are yet painted with some 
 grotesque humor, some modest and unworldly beauty ; and 
 sustain or engird their castellated quaintnesses in a manner 
 X^leasing to the X)re-Rax3haelite mind. But the sea — waveless 
 as a deal board — and in that tranquillity, for the most part re- 
 flecting nothing at its edge — literally, such a sea justifies that^ 
 uncourteous saying of earlier Venice of her Doge’s bride — 
 “ Mare sub pede pono.”* 
 
 Of all these deficiencies, characteristic not of this master 
 only, but of his age, you will find various analysis in the third 
 volume of “Modern Painters,” in the chapter on mediaeval 
 landscax^e ; with begun examination of the causes which led 
 gradually to more accurate observance of natural phenomena, 
 until, by Turner, the method of Carpaccio’s mind is iDrecisely 
 reversed, and tlie Nature in the background becomes princi- 
 pal ; the figures in the foreground, its foil. I have a good 
 deal more, howevei*, to say on this subject now — so much 
 more, indeed, that in this little Guide there is no proper room 
 for any of it, except the simple conclusion that both the 
 
 * On the scroll in the hand of the throned Venice on the Piazzetta side 
 of the Ducal Palace, the entire inscription is, 
 
 “ Fortis, jnsta, trono fnrias, mare sub pede, pono.” 
 
 “ Strong, and just, I pnt the furies beneath my throne, and the sea 
 beneath my foot.” 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF PINE ARTS, 
 
 359 
 
 painters are wrong in whatever they either definitely misrep- 
 resent, or enfeeble by inharmonious deficiency. 
 
 In the next place, I want you to notice Carpaccio’s fancy in 
 what he does represent very beautifully — the architecture, 
 real and ideal, of his day. 
 
 His fancy, I say ; or phantasy ; the notion he has of what 
 architecture should be ; of which, without doubt, you see his 
 clearest expression in the Paradise, and in the palace of the 
 most Christian King, St. Ursula’s father. 
 
 And here I must ask you to remember, or learn if you do 
 not know, the general course of transition in the architecture 
 of Venice — namely, that there are three epochs of good build- 
 ing in Venice ; the first lasting to 1300, Byzantine, in the stylo 
 of St. Mark’s ; the second, 1300 to 1480, Gothic, in the style 
 of the Ducal Palace ; and the third, 1480 to 1520, in a manner 
 which architects have yet given no entirely accepted name to, 
 but which, from the name of its greatest designer. Brother 
 Giocondo, of Verona,* I mean, myself, henceforward to call 
 Giocondine.” 
 
 Now, the dates on these pictures of Carpaccio’s run from 
 1480 to 1485, so that 5^11 see he was painting in the youthful 
 gush, as it were, and fullest impetus of Giocondine architec- 
 ture, which all Venice, and chiefly Carpaccio, in the joy of art, 
 thought was reall}'' at last the architecture divinely designed, 
 and arrived at by steady progress of taste, from the Creation 
 to 1480, and then the ne plus ultra, and real Babel-style with- 
 out bewilderment — its top truly reaching to heaven — style 
 which was never thenceforth to be bettered by human thought 
 or skill. Of which Giocondine manner, I really think you had 
 better at once see a substantially existent piece. It will not 
 take long — say an hour, with lunch ; and the good door-keeper 
 will let you come in again without paying. f 
 
 So (always supposing the day fine), go down to your boat, 
 
 * Called “ tlie second Founder of Venice,” for liis engineering work 
 on the Brentii. Ilis architecture is chiefly at Verona; the stylo being 
 adopted and enriched at Venice by the Lombardi, 
 
 f If you have already seen the school of St. John, or do not like the 
 interruption, continue at page 365, 
 
360 GUIDE TO THE PBINCIPAL PICTURES IH 
 
 and order yourself to be taken to the church of the Frari. 
 Landing- just beyond it, your gondoliers will show you the 
 way, up the calle beside it, to the desolate little courtyard of 
 the School of St. John the Evangelist. It might be one of the 
 most beautiful scenes among the cities of Italy, if only the 
 good Catholics of Venice would employ so much of their 
 yearly alms in the honor of St. John the Evangelist as to main- 
 tain any old gondolier, past rowing, in this courtyard by way 
 of a Patinos, on condition that he should suffer no wildly 
 neglected children to throw stones at the sculptures, nor 
 grown-up creatures to defile them ; but with occasional ablu- 
 tion by sprinkling from garden water-engine, suffer the weeds 
 of Venice to inhabit among the marbles where they listed. 
 
 How beautiful the place might be, I need not tell jmn. 
 Beautiful it is, even in its squalid misery ; but too probably, 
 some modern designer of railroad stations will do it up with 
 new gilding and scrapings of its gray stone. The gods for- 
 bid ; understand, at all events, that if this happens to it, you 
 are no moi-e to think of it as an example of Giocondine art. 
 But, as long as it is let alone there, in the shafts and capitals 
 you will see, on the whole, the most characteristic example in 
 Venice of the architecture that Carpaccio, Cima, and John 
 Bellini loved. 
 
 As a rule, observe, square-piered, not round-pillared ; the 
 square piers either sculptured all up with floral tracery, or, 
 if plain, decorated half-way up, by a round panel of dark-col- 
 ored marble or else a bas-relief, usually a classic profile * the 
 capitals, of light leafage, playing or springing into joyful spi- 
 rals at the angles ; the mouldings and cornices on the whole 
 very flat or square cut — no solid round mouldings anywhere, 
 but all precise, rectangular, and shallow. The windows and 
 doors either square-headed or round — never pointed ; but, if 
 square-headed, having often a Greek gable or pediment above, 
 as here on the outer wall ; and, if round-headed, often com- 
 posed of two semicircles side by side, with a circle between ; * 
 
 * In returning to your boat, just walk round to the back of the church 
 of the Frari, and look at the windows of the Scuola di San Rocco, which 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. 
 
 361 
 
 the wall decoration being either of round inlaid marbles, 
 among floral sculpture, or of fresco. Little to be conceived 
 from words ; but if you will look well inside and outside of 
 the cortile of the Evangelist, you will come away with a very 
 definite primary notion of Giocondine work. 
 
 Then back, with straight speed to the Academy ; and before 
 landing there, since j^ou can see the little square in front of 
 it, from your boat, read on. 
 
 The little square has its name written up at the corner, you 
 see — “Field of Charity,” or rather of the Charity, meaning 
 the Madonna of Charity, and church dedicated to her. Of 
 which you see the mere walls, variously defaced, remaining 
 yet in their original form, traces of the great circular window 
 in the front yet left, also of the pointed windows at the sides 
 — filled up, many a year ago, and the square holes below cut 
 for modern convenience ; there being no space in the length 
 and breadth of Italy to build new square-holed houses on, the 
 Church of Charity must be used for makeshift. 
 
 Have you charity of imagination enough to cover this little 
 field with fresh grass — to tear down the iron bridge which 
 some accursed Englishman, I suppose, greed}" for filthy job, 
 persuaded the poor Venetians to spoil their Grand Canal with, 
 at its noblest bend- — and to fill the pointed lateral windows 
 with light tracery of quatrefoiled stone ? So stood, so bloomed, 
 the church and its field, in early fourteenth century — dismal 
 time ! the church in its fresh beauty then, built toward the 
 close of the thirteenth century, on the site of a much more 
 ancient one, first built of wood ; and, in 1119, of stone ; but 
 still very small, its attached monastery receiving Alexander 
 III. in 1177 ; here on the little flowery field landed the Pon- 
 tiff Exile, whose foot w’as to tread so soon on the Lion and 
 the Adder. 
 
 And some hundred years later, putting away, one finds not 
 
 will fix the form in your mind. It is an entirely bad one ; but took the 
 fancy of men, for a time, and of strong ones, too. But don’t stop long 
 just now to look at this later building ; keep the St. John’s cortile for 
 jour type of Giocondine work, pure. 
 
362 GUIDE TO THE PBINGIPAL PIGTUBE8 IN 
 
 why, her little Byzantine church, more gravely meditative 
 Venice, visited much by Dominican and Franciscan friars, and 
 more or less in cowled temper herself, built this graver and 
 simpler pile ; which, if any of my readers care for either 
 Turner or me, they should look at with some moments’ pause ; 
 for I have given Turner’s lovely sketch of it to Oxford, painted 
 as he saw" it fifty years ago, with bright golden sails grouped 
 in front of it where now is the ghastly iron bridge.* 
 
 Most probably (I cannot yet find any direct document of 
 it), the real occasion of the building of the church whose wallj 
 yet stand, was the founding of the Confraternita di S. Maria 
 della Carita, on St. Leonard’s day, 6th November, 1260, f 
 which brotherhood, in 1310, fought side by side with the school 
 of the Painters in St. Luke’s field, against one body of the 
 conspirators for Bajamoute, and drove them back, achieving 
 the right thenceforward of planting their purple standard 
 there, in St. Luke’s field, with their stemma (all this bears on 
 Carpaccio’s pictures presently, so have patience yet a minute 
 or two) ; and so increasing in number and influence, bought in 
 1344, from the Monks of the Church of Charity, the ground 
 on which you are presently going to see pictures ; and built 
 on it their cloister, dedicated also to St. Mary of Charity ; and 
 over the gate of it, by which you are going to enter, put St. 
 Mary of Charitj", as they best could get her carved, next year, 
 1345 ; and so you have her there, with cowled members of the 
 confraternity kneeling to her ; happy angels fluttering about 
 her ; the dark blue of her eyes not j"et utterly faded from 
 them. BluC'Cyed as Athena she — the Greek tradition yet 
 prevailing to that extent — a perfect type, the whole piece, of 
 
 * “Very convenient for tlie people,” say you, modern man of busi- 
 ness. Yes; very convenient to them also to pay two centesimi every 
 time they cross — six for three persons, into the pockets of that English 
 engineer ; instead of five for three persons, to one of their own boat- 
 men, who now take to begging, drinking, and bellowing for the 
 wretched hordes at the tables d’hote, whose ears have been rent by 
 railroad whistles till they don’t know a howl from a song — instead of 
 ferrying. 
 
 f Archivio Veneto. (Venezia, 1876.) Tom. XII. , Parte i., p. 112. 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF PINE ARTS. 36t] 
 
 purest central fourteenth-century Gothic thought and work 
 untouched, and iudubitable of date, being inscribed below its 
 bracket cornice, 
 
 MCCCXLV. I LO TEMPO DE MIS. 
 
 MAECHO ZULIAN EO FATO STO LAVOEIER. 
 
 To wit — “ 1345, in the time” (of the Guardianship) of 
 Messer Mark Julian, was made this labored thing.” 
 
 And all seemed to bid fair for Venice and her sacred schools • 
 Heaven surely pleased with these her endeavors, and labored 
 things. 
 
 Yes, wdth these, and such other, I doubt not. But other 
 things, it seems, had been done in Venice, with which Heaven 
 w^as not pleased ; assuming always that there is a Heaven, for 
 otherwise — what followed was of course only process of Dar- 
 winian development. But this ivas what foltowed. That 
 Madonna, with her haj3py angels and humble worshippers, was 
 carved as you see her over the Scuola cloister door — in 1345. 
 And “ on the 25th of January, 1347,* on the day, to wit, of 
 the conversion of St. Paul, about the hour of vespers, there 
 came a great earthquake in Venice, and as it were in all the 
 wmrld ; and fell many tops of bell-towers, and houses, and 
 cliimneys, and the church of St. Basil : and there was so great 
 fear that all the people thought to die. And the earth ceased 
 not to tremble for about forty days ; and when it remained 
 quiet, there came a great mortality, and the people died of 
 various evil. And the people were in so great fear, that father 
 W'Ould not go to visit son, nor son father. And this death 
 lasted about six months ; and it was said commonly that there 
 died tw'o parts out of three, of all the people of Venice.” 
 
 These words you may read (in Venetian dialect), after you 
 have entered the gate beneath the Madonna ; they are engraved 
 under the Gothic arch on your right hand ; with otber like 
 words, telling the various horror of that Plague ; and how the 
 guardian of the Scuola died by it, and about ten of his officers 
 with him, and three hundred of the brethren. 
 
 * 1348, in our present calendar. 
 
364 GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 Above the inscription, two angels hold the symbol of the 
 Scuola ; carved as you see, conspicuously also on the outer 
 sculptures in various places ; and again on the well in the 
 midst of the cloister. The first sign this, therefore, of all 
 chosen by the greater schools of Venice, of which, as aforesaid, 
 “ The first was that of St. Mary of Charity, which school has 
 its wax candles red, in sign that Charity should be glowing ; 
 and has for its bearing a yellow ”( meaning golden *) “ cross, 
 traversing two little circles also yellow ; with red and green 
 quartering the parts which the cross describes — those who in- 
 stituted such sign desiring to show thereby the union that 
 Charity should have with Faith and Hope.”f 
 
 The golden “ anchored ” cross stands for Faith, the golden 
 outer circle for Charity, the golden inner for Hope — all on 
 field quartered gules and vert, the colors of Charity and 
 Hope. ^ 
 
 Such the first symbol of Venetian Brotherhoods J — in read- 
 ing which, I delay you, that you may be better prepared to 
 understand the symbolism running through every sign and 
 color in Venetian art at this time, down even to its tinting of 
 wax candles ; art wdiich was indeed all the more symbolic for 
 being rude, and complicated much with the use of signals and 
 heraldries at sea, too distant for any art in them to be visible> 
 but serviceably intelligible in meaning. 
 
 How far the great Scuola and cloisters of the Carita, for 
 monks and confraternity together, reached from the gate under 
 which you are pausing, you may see in Durer’s wood-cut of 
 the year 1500 (Correr Museum), which gives the apse with 
 attached chapels ; and the grand double cloister reaching back 
 nearly to the Giudecca ; a water-wheel — as I suppose — out- 
 
 * Ex Cruce constat aurea, aeu flava ; ejus speciei, quam artis hujus- 
 modi Anctores “ ancoratam ’ vocant. 
 
 f In tabnlam Graecam insigni sodalitio S. M. Caritatis, Venetiarum, 
 ab amplissimo Cardinali Bessarione dono datam, Disserattio. — (St. Mark’s 
 library, 33331, page 146.) 
 
 X At least according to tbe authority above quoted ; as far as I have 
 consulted the original documents myself, I find the school of St. Theodore 
 primal. 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. 365 
 
 side, on the (now filled up and paved) canal, moved by the 
 tide, for molinary work in the kitchens. Of all which nothing- 
 now remains but these pillars and beams, between you and the 
 gallery staircase ; and the well with two brothers on each side 
 holding their Stemma, a fine free-hand piece of rough living 
 work. You will not, I think, find that you have ill spent your 
 hour of rest when you now return into the Carpaccio room, 
 where we will look first, please, at No. lY. (549), in which 
 many general points are better shown than in the rest. 
 
 Here is the great King of ideal England, under an octagonal 
 temple of audience ; all the scene being meant to show the 
 conditions of a state in perfect power and prosperity. 
 
 A state, therefore, that is at once old and young ; that has 
 had a history for centuries past, and will have one for cen- 
 turies to come. 
 
 Ideal, founded mainly on the Venice of his own day ; 
 mingled a little with thoughts of great Rome, and of great 
 antagonist Genoa : but, in all spirit and hope, the Venice of 
 1480-1500 is here living before you. And now, therefore, 
 you can see at once what she meant by a “ Campo,” allowing 
 for the conventional manner of representing grass, which of 
 course at first you will laugh at ; but which is by no means 
 deserving of your contempt. Any hack draughtsman of Dal- 
 ziel’s can sketch for j^ou, or any member of the Water-color or 
 Dudley Societies dab for you, in ten minutes, a field of hay 
 that you would fancy you could movv% and make cocks of. 
 But this green ground of Carpaccio’s, with implanted fiowers 
 and tufts of grass, is traditional from the first Greek-Christian 
 mosaics, and is an entirely systematic ornamental ground, and 
 to be understood as such, primarily, and as grass only sym- 
 bolically. Careless indeed, more than is usual with him — 
 much spoiled and repainted also ; but quite clear enough in 
 expression for us of the orderliness and freshness of a Venetian 
 campo in the great times ; garden and city you see mingled 
 inseparably, the wild strawberry growing at the steps of the 
 king’s court of justice, and their marble sharp and bright out 
 of the turf. Clean everything, and pure — no cigars in any- 
 body’s poisoned mouth — no voiding of perpetual excrement 
 
36C GUIDE TO THE PBINOIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 of saliva on the precious marble or living flowers. Perfect 
 peace and befittingness of behavior in all men and creatures. 
 Your very monkey in repose, perfect in his mediaeval dress ; 
 the Darwinian theory in all its sacredness, breadth, divinity, 
 and sagacity — but reposeful, not venturing to thrust itself into 
 political council. Crowds on the bridges and quays, but untu- 
 multuous, close set as beds of flowers, richly decorative in their 
 mass, and a beautiful mosaic of men, and of black, red, blue, 
 and golden bonnets. Euins, indeed, among the prosperity ; 
 but glorious ones — not shells of abandoned speculation, but 
 remnants of mighty state long ago, now restored to nature’s 
 peace ; the arches of the first bridge the city had built, broken 
 down by storm, yet what was left of them spared for memory’s 
 sake. (So stood for a little while, a few years ago, the broken 
 Ponte-a-Mare at Pisa ; so at Eome, for ages, stood the Ponte 
 Eotto, till the engineers and modern mob got at it, making 
 what was in my youth the most lovely and holy scene in Eome, 
 now a place where a swineherd could not stand without hold- 
 ing his nose, and which no woman can stop at.) 
 
 But here, the old arches are covered with sweet weeds, like 
 native rock, and (for once !) reflected a little in the pure water 
 under the meadowy hills. Much besides of noteworthy, if 
 you are jmurself worthy of noting it, you may find in this 
 lovely distance. But the picture, it may be complained, seems 
 for the most part — distance, architecture, and scattered, crowd; 
 while of foreground objects, we have principally cloaks, and 
 very curiously thin legs.* Well, yes— the distance is indeed 
 the prettiest part of this picture ; and since, in modern art and 
 drama, we have been accustomed, for anatomical and other 
 reasons, to depend on nothing else but legs, I admit the supply 
 of legs to be here scanty, and even of brachial, pectoral, and 
 other admirable muscles. If you choose to look at the faces 
 instead, you will find something in them ; nevertheless, Cnr- 
 paccio has been, on the whole, playing with himself, and with 
 us, in his treatment of this subject. For Carpaccio, is, in the 
 
 * Not in the least unnaturally thin, however, in the forms of persons 
 of sedentary life. , 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. 307 
 
 most vital and conclusive sense, a man of genius, who Avill not 
 at all supply you, nor can in the least supply himself, with 
 sulhimity and pathos to order ; but is sublime, or delightful, 
 or sometimes dull, or frequently grotesque, as Heaven wills 
 it ; or — profane persons will say — as the humor takes him. 
 And his humor here has been dominant. For since much de- 
 pends on the answer brought back from St. Ursula, besides 
 the young Prince’s happiness, one should have thought, the 
 return of the embassy might have been represented in a loftier 
 manner. But only two of the ambassadors are here ; the king 
 is occupied in hearing a cause which will take long — (see how 
 gravely his minister is reading over the documents in ques- 
 tion) ; meantime the young prince, impatient, going down 
 the steps of the throne, makes his own private inquiries, 
 proudly : “ Your embassy has, I trust, been received, gentle- 
 men, Avith a just understanding of our diplomatic relations ? ” 
 “ Your Koyal Highness,” the lowly and gravely bowing prin- 
 cipal ambassador replies, “ must j^ourself be the only fitting 
 judge of that matter, on full}^ hearing our report.” Meantime, 
 the charge d’affaires holds St. Ursula’s answer — behind his 
 back. 
 
 A piece of play, very nearly, the whole picture ; a painter 
 living in the midst of a prosperous city, happy in his oavii 
 power, entirely believing in God, and in the saints, and in 
 eternal life ; and, at intervals, bending his whole soul to the 
 expression of most deep and holy tragedy — such a man needs 
 must have his times of play ; which Carpaccio takes, in his 
 work. Another man, instead of painting this piece with its 
 monke}", and its little fiddler, and its jesting courtiers, would 
 have played some ape-tricks of his OAvn — spent an hour or two 
 among literal fiddlers, and living courtiers. Carpaccio is not 
 heard of among such — amuses himself still with pencil in hand, 
 and us also, pleasantly, for a little while. You shall be serious 
 enough, soon, with him, if you Avill. 
 
 But I find this Guide must run into greater division, for I 
 can’t get the end of it properly done yet for some days ; 
 during the winter the gallery was too cold for me to think 
 quietly in, and so I am obliged, as Fate always lately obliges 
 
36S GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 me, to do this work from pen to print — at speed ; so that, 
 quitting Carpaccio for the nonce, I will tell you a little more 
 about the general contents of the rooms ; and so afterward 
 take up St. Ursula’s pilgrimage, undisturbed.* Now, there- 
 fore, I will simply follow the order of the room circuit, noting 
 the pieces worth study, if you have proper time. 
 
 From before this picture which has so long held us, go 
 down the steps on the right of it, into the lower room. 
 
 Turning round immediately, you have good sight of two 
 Paul Veroneses, one on each side of the steps. The upper 
 group of the picture on your left (603), Madonna borne by 
 angels at her knees, and encompassed by a circlet of them, is 
 the loveliest piece of Veronese in these galleries, nor can you 
 see a better in the world ; but, considered as a whole, the 
 picture is a failure ; all the sub-celestial part of it being wholly 
 dull. Nevertheless, for essential study of Veronese’s faculty, 
 you cannot find anything better in Venice than that upper 
 group ; and the opposite picture, though confused, is worth 
 attentive pause from all painters. 
 
 597. Le Brun. Sent from Paris, you see, in exchange for 
 the Cena of Paul Veronese. 
 
 The Cena of Paul Veronese being worth — at moderate 
 estimate of its eternal and intrinsic art-value — I should say, 
 roughly, about ten good millions of sterling ducats, or twenty 
 ironclads ; and the Le Brun, worth, if it were put to proper 
 use, precisely what its canvas may now be worth to make a 
 packing-case of ; but, as hung here, in negative value, and 
 effectual mischief, in disgracing the rooms, and keeping fine 
 pictures invisibly out of the way — a piece of vital poverty and 
 calamity much more than equivalent to the presence of a dirty, 
 torn rag, which the public would at once know to be worth- 
 less, in its place instead. 
 
 569, 570. Standard average portrait-pieces, fairly repre- 
 
 * This I am now doing in a separate Guide to the works of Carpaccio 
 in Venice ; these two parts, now published, contain all I have to say 
 about the Academy. 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, 369 
 
 sentative of Tintoret’s quiet work, and of Venetian magis- 
 trates— -Camerlenglii di Comune. Compare 587 ; very beau- 
 tiful. 
 
 581, 582, 583. Spoils of the Church of the Carita, whose 
 ruins you have seen. Venice being of all cities the only one 
 which has sacked herself, not in revolution, but mere blun- 
 dering beggary ; suppressing every church that had blessed 
 her, and every society that had comforted. But at all events 
 you see the pictures here ; and the Cima is a fine one ; but 
 what time you give to this painter should be spent chiefly 
 with his John the Baptist at the Madonna dell’ Orto. 
 
 586. Once a Bonifazio of very high order ; sorrowfully 
 repainted with loss of half its life. But a picture, still, de- 
 serving honor. 
 
 From this room you find access either to the modern pict- 
 ures, or by the door on the left hand of the Cima, to the col- 
 lection of drawings. The well-known series by Kaphael and 
 Lionardo are of the very highest historical value and artistic 
 interest ; but it is curious to find, in Venice, scarcely a scratch 
 or blot remaining of elementary study by any great Venetian 
 master. Her painters drew little in black and white, and 
 must have thrown such sketches, when they made them, away 
 for mere waste paper. For all discussion of their methods 
 of learning to draw with color from the first, I must refer my 
 readers to my Art lectures. 
 
 The Lionardo drawings here are the finest I know ; none 
 in the Ambrosian library equal them in execution. 
 
 The staircase leading out of this room descends into the 
 Hall of Titian’s Assumption, where I have said nothing yet of 
 his last picture (33), nor of that called in the Guide-books an 
 example of his first style (35). 
 
 It has always been with me an intended piece of work to 
 trace the real method of Titian’s study, and the changes of 
 his mind. But I shall never do it now ; and am hitherto 
 
 * For reasons which any acute reader naay enough discover in my 
 lecture on Michael Angelo and Tintoret. 
 
 34 
 
370 GUIDE TO THE PRINCIPAL PICTURES IN 
 
 entirely unacquainted with his early work. If this be indeed 
 his, and a juvenile piece, it indicates a breadth of manner, and 
 conventionally artistic way of looking at nature, entirely pe- 
 culiar to him or to his era. The picture which he left unfin- 
 ished might most fittingly be called the Shadow of Death. It 
 is full of the profoundest metaphysical interest to me ; but 
 cannot be analyzed here. 
 
 In general, Titian is ill-represented in his own Venice. 
 The best example of him, by far, is the portrait group of the 
 Pesaro family in the Frari. The St. Mark in the Sacristy of 
 the Salute was, in my early days, entirely glorious ; but has 
 been daubed over into ruin. The roof of the Sacristy in the 
 Salute, with the fresco of St. Christopher,* and the portrait 
 of the Doge Grimani before Faith, in the Ducal Palace, are 
 all the remnants of him that are worth study here, since the 
 destruction in the Peter Martyr.f The St. John the Baptist 
 in this gallery (366), is really too stupid to be endured, and 
 the black and white scrabble of landscape in it is like a bad 
 copy of Euysdael. 
 
 45. The Miracle of St. Mark ; a fine, but much- overrated, 
 Tintoret. If any painter of real power wishes to study this 
 master, let him be content with the Paradise of the Ducal 
 Palace, and the School of St. Roch, where no harmful repaint- 
 ing has yet taken place. The once mighty pictures in the 
 Madonna dell’ Orto are destroyed by restoration ; and those 
 which are scattered about the other churches are scarcely 
 worth pursuit, while the series of St. Roch remains in its 
 purity. 
 
 In the next room to this (Sala III.) the pictures on the 
 
 * An admirable account of this fresco is given by Mr. Edward Cheney, 
 in “ Original Documents Relating to Venetian Painters and their Pictures 
 in the Eighteenth Century,” pp. 60, 61. 
 
 f Of the portrait of the Doge Andrea Gritti, in my own possession at 
 Oxford, I leave others to speak, when I can speak of it no more. But 
 it must be named here as the only fragment left of another great picture 
 destroyed by fire, which Tintoret had so loved and studied that he re- 
 placed it from memory. 
 
THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, 87l 
 
 ceiling, brought from the room of the State Inquisitors, are 
 more essential, because more easy, Tintoret-work, than the St. 
 Mark, and very delightful to me ; I only wish the Inquisitors 
 were alive to enjoy them again themselves, and inquire into a 
 few things happening in Venice, and especially into the relig- 
 ious principles of her “ Modern Painters.” 
 
 We have made the round of the rooms, all but the Pina- 
 coteca Contarini, Sala V. and VI., and the long gallery, Sala 
 X.-XIV., both containing many smaller pictures of interest ; 
 but of which I have no time, nor much care, to speak — except 
 in complaint that detestable daubs by Callot, Dujardin, and 
 various ignoti, should be allowed to disgrace the sixth sala, and 
 occupy some of the best of the very little good light there is 
 in the Academy ; thrusting the lovely little Tintoret, 179 — 
 purest work of his heart and fairest of his faculty — high be- 
 yond sight of all its delicious painting ; and the excellent quiet 
 portrait, 168, into an unregarded corner. I am always puzzled 
 by the smaller pictures of John Bellini ; many of them here, 
 of whose authorship there can be little doubt, being yet of 
 very feeble merit. 94 is fine ; and the five symbolical pictures, 
 234-238, in the inner room, Sala VI., are interesting to my- 
 self ; but may probably be little so to others. The fii*st is, 
 (I believe). Domestic Love, tbe world in her hand becoming 
 the color of Heaven ; the second, Fortitude quitting the ef- 
 feminate Dionysus ; the third (much the poorest and least in- 
 telligible), Truth, or Prudence ; the fourth, Lust ; and the fifth, 
 Fortune as Opportunity, in distinction from the greater and 
 sacred Fortune appointed of Heaven. 
 
 And now, if you are yet uiifatigued,* you had better go 
 back into the great room, and give thorough examination to 
 the wonderful painting, as such, in the greed Veronese, con- 
 sidering what all its shows and dexterities at last came to, and 
 reading, before it, his examination concerning it, given in 
 Appendix, which shows you that Venice herself felt what they 
 were likely to come to, though in vain ; and then, for contrast 
 with its reckless power, and for final image to be remembered 
 
 If you are, end with 179, and remember it well. 
 
372 THE VENICE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. 
 
 of sweet Italian art in its earnestness, return into the long 
 gallery (through the two great rooms, turning your back on 
 the Veronese, then out by the door opposite Titian’s huge 
 picture ; then out of the corridor by the first door on the right, 
 and walk down the gallery), to its little Sala X., where, high 
 on your left, 360, is the Beata Catherine Vigri’s St. Ursula ; 
 Catherine Vigri herself, it may be, kneeling to her. Truly a 
 very much blessed Catherine, and, I should say, far more than 
 half-way to a saint, knowing, however, of her, and her work, 
 only this picture. Of which I will only say in closing, as I 
 said of the Vicar’s picture in beginning, that it would be well 
 if any of us could do such things nowadays — and more especi- 
 ally, if our vicars and young ladies could. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The little collection of “ Documents relating to Venetian ” Painters 
 already referred to (p. 370), as made with excellent judgment by Mr. 
 Edward Cheney, is, I regret to say, “ communicated ” only to the author’s 
 friends, of whom I, being now one of long standing, emboldened also 
 by repeated instances of help received from him, venture to trespass on 
 the modest book so far as to reprint part of the translation which it gives 
 of the questioning of Paul Veronese. 
 
 “It is well known,” says Mr. Cheney in his prefatory remarks, “to 
 the students of Venetian history, that the Roman Inquisition was allowed 
 little influence, and still less power, in the states of the Signory ; and 
 its sittings were always attended by lay members, selected from the 
 Senate, to regulate and report its proceedings. 
 
 “The sittings of the Holy Office were held in the chapel of St. 
 Theodore, fronting the door leading from St. Mark's Church to the 
 Fondamenta di Canonica.” 
 
 On Saturday, the 8th July, 1573, Master Paul Caliari, of Verona, a 
 painter, residing in the parish of St. Samuel, v/as brought before the 
 Sacred Tribunal ; and being asked his name and surname, answered as 
 above ; and being asked of his profession, answered : 
 
 “ H. I invent and draw figures. 
 
 Do you knov/ the reason why you have been summoned ? 
 
 A. No, my lord. 
 
 Q. Can you imagine it ? 
 
 A. I can imagine it. 
 
 Q. Tell us what you imagine. 
 
 A. For the reason whicli the Reverend Prior of SS. Giovanni and 
 Paolo, whose name I know not, told me that he had been here, and that 
 your illustrious lordships had given him orders that I should snbstitnte 
 the figure of the Magdalen for that of a dog ; and I replied that I would 
 willingly have done this, or anything else for my own credit and the 
 advantage of the picture, but that I did not think the figure of the 
 
374 : 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Magdalen would be fitting (!!)* or would look well, for many reasons, 
 which I will always assign whenever the opportunity is given me. 
 
 Q. What picture is that which you have named ? 
 
 A. It is the picture representing the last)- supper that Jesus took with 
 His disciples in the house of Simon. 
 
 Q. Where is this picture ? 
 
 A, In the refectory of the Friars of SS. Giovanni and Paolo. 
 
 Q. Is it painted on the wall, on panel, or on cloth ? 
 
 A, On cloth. 
 
 Q. How many feet is it in height ? 
 
 A. It is about seventeen feet. 
 
 Q. How wide ? 
 
 A. About thirty-nine feet. 
 
 Q. In this supper of our Lord have you painted any attendants ? 
 
 A. Yes, my lord. 
 
 Q. Say how many attendants, and what each is doing. 
 
 A. First, the master of the house, Simon ; besides, I have placed be- 
 fow him a server, who I have supposed to have come for his own amuse- 
 
 * I must interpolate two notes of adimration. After all one has heard of 
 the terrors of the Inquisition, it seems, nevertheless, some people ventured to 
 di fier with it in opinion, on occasion. And the Inquisition was entirely right, 
 too. See next note. 
 
 t “ Cena ultima che,” etc. : the last, that is to say, of the two which Veronese 
 supposed Christ to have taken with this host ; but he had not carefully enough 
 examined the apparently parallel passages. They are confusing enough, and 
 perhaps the reader will be glad to refer to them in their proper order. 
 
 I. There is first, the feast given to Christ by St. Matthew after he was called ; 
 the circumstances of it told by himself; only saying “ the house” instead of 
 '•'■my house” (Matt. ix. 9-13). This is the feast at which the objection is 
 taken by the Pharisees — “ Why eateth your Master with publicans and sin- 
 ners ? ” the event being again related by St. Luke (v. 29), giving Matthew the 
 name of Levi. No other circumstance of interest takes place on this occasion. 
 
 II. “ One of the Pharisees desired Him that He would eat with him : and 
 He went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat ” (Luke viii. 86). 
 
 To this feast came the Magdalen, and “ stood at His feet, behind Him, 
 weeping.” And you know the rest. The same lesson given to the Pharisees 
 who forbade the feast of Matthew, here given — in how much more pathetic 
 force — to the Pharisee at whose feast Jesus now sat. Another manner of 
 sinner this, who stands uncalled, at the feast, weeping ; who in a little while 
 will stand weeping — not for herself. The name of the Pharisee host is given 
 in Christ’s grave address to him — “ Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee.” 
 
 III. The supper at Bethany, in the house of Simon “the Leper,” where 
 Lazarus sat at table, where Martha served, and where her sister Mary poured 
 the ointment on Christ’s head, “for my burial ” (Mark xiv. 3 ; Matt. xxvi. 7 ; 
 and John xii. 2, where in the following third verse doubtless some copyist, 
 confusing her with the Magdalen, added the clause of her wiping His feet with 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 375 
 
 ment to see the arrangement of the table, Tliere are besides several 
 others,* * * * § v/hicli, as tliere are many figures in the picture, I do not rec- 
 ollect. 
 
 Q. What is the meaning of those men dressed in the German 
 fashion V f each with a halbert in his hand ? 
 
 A. It is now necessary that I should say a few words.:]; 
 
 IVie Court. Say on. 
 
 A. We painters take the same license that is permitted to poets, and 
 jesters (!). I have jdaced those two halberdiers — the one eating, the 
 other drinking § — by the staircase, to be supposed ready to perform any 
 duty that may be required of them ; it appearing to me quite fitting that 
 the master of such a house, who was rich and great (as 1 have been 
 told), should have such attendants. 
 
 Q. That fellow dressed like a buffoon, with the parrot on his wrist— 
 for what purpose is he introduced into the canvas V 
 
 A. For ornament, as is usually done. |j 
 
 Q. At the table of the Lord whom have you placed ? 
 
 A. The twelve ajiostles. 
 
 her hair — so also, more palpably, in John xi. 2), Here the objection ia made 
 by Judas, and the lesson given — “ The poor ye have always with you.” 
 
 We cannot seriously suppose Simon the Leper to be the same person as Simon 
 the Pharisee ; still less Simon the Pharisee to be the same as Matthew the 
 publican : but in Veronese’s mind their three feasts had got confused, and ha 
 tiiinks of them as two only, and calls this which he represents here the last of 
 the two, though there is nothing whatever to identify it as first, last, or middle. 
 There is no Magdalen, no Mary, no Lazarus, no hospitable Levi, no supercili- 
 ous Simon. Nothing but a confused meeting of very mixed company ; half of 
 them straggling about the table Avithout sitting down ; and the conspicuous 
 brown dog, for whom the Inquisitors would have had him substitute the Mag- 
 dalen — which, if he had done, the picture w'ould have been right in all other 
 I articulars, the scarlet-robed figure opposite Christ then becoming Simon the 
 Pharisee ; but ho cannot be Matthew the apostle, for Veronese distinctly 
 names the twelve apostles after “ the master of the house and the text written 
 on the balustrade on the left is therefore either spurious altogether, or added 
 by Veronese to get rid of the necessity of putting in a Magdalen to satisfy his 
 examiners, or please the Prior of St. John and Paul. 
 
 * Yes, there certainly are “ several others” — some score of idlers about, I 
 should say. But this longer answer of the painter’s was probably little attend- 
 ed to, and ill reported by the secretary. 
 
 + My lords have suspicions of leaning tov/ard the principles — no less than 
 the taste — of Holbein ; and of meaning some mischief. 
 
 X He instantly feels the drift of this last question, and that it must not be 
 passed lightly. Asks leave to speak — (usually no license but of direct answer 
 being given). 
 
 § On the right. One has got all the eating and drinking to himself, however, 
 as far as I can see. 
 
 II Alas, everything is for ornament — if you would own it. Master Paul! 
 
376 
 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 Q. What is St. Peter doing, who is the first ? * * * § 
 
 A. He is cutting up a lamb, to send to the other end of the table. 
 
 Q. What is he doing, who is next to him ? 
 
 A. He is holding a plate to receive what St. Peter will give him. 
 
 Q. Tell us what he is doing, who is next to this last ? 
 
 A. He is using a fork as a toothpick, f 
 
 Q. Who do you really think were present at that supper ? 
 
 A. I believe Christ and His apostles were present ; but in the fore- 
 ground of the picture I have placed figures for ornament, of my own in- 
 vention. 
 
 Q. Were you commissioned by any person to paint Germans, and buf- 
 foons, and such like things in this picture ? 
 
 A. No, my lord ; my commission was to ornament the picture as I 
 judged best, which, being large, requires many figures, as it appears to 
 me. 
 
 Q. Are the ornaments that the painter is in the habit of introducing 
 in his frescoes and pictures suited and fitting to the subject and to the 
 principal persons represented, or does he really paint such as strike his 
 own fancy without exercising his judgment or his discretion ? X 
 
 A. I design my pictures with all due consideration as to what is fit- 
 ting, and to the best of my judgment. 
 
 Q. Does it appear to you fitting that at our Lord’s last supper § you 
 should paint buffoons, drunkards, Germans, jj dwarfs, and similar inde- 
 cencies ? 
 
 A, No, my lord. 
 
 Q. Why, then, have you painted them ? 
 
 A. I have done it because I supposed that these were not in the place 
 where the supper was served. 
 
 Q. Are you not aware that in Germany,^ and in other places infected 
 with heresy, they are in the habit of painting pictures full of scurrility 
 for the purpose of ridiculing and degrading the Holy Church, and thus 
 teaching false doctrines to the ignorant and foolish ? 
 
 A. Yes, my lord, it is bad ; but I return to what I said before ; I 
 thought myself obliged to do as others — my predecessors — had done 
 before me. 
 
 Q. And have your predecessors, then, done such things ? 
 
 A. Michael-Angelo, in the Papal Chapel in Rome, has painted our 
 
 * Very curious that no question is asked as to what Christ Himself is doing. 
 One would have greatly desired Veronese’s answer. 
 
 t Scarcely seen, between the two pillars. I must needs admit that Raphael 
 would have invented some more dignifiedly apostolic action. 
 
 X Admirably put, my lord. 
 
 § Not meaning the Cena, of course ; but what Veronese also meant. 
 
 II and ^ The gist of the business, at last. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 877 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ, His mother, St. John, and St. Peter, and all tlie 
 Court of Heaven, from the Virgin Mary downward, all naked, and in 
 various attitudes, with little reverence. 
 
 Q. Do you not ki\ovv that in a painting like the Last Judgment, where 
 drapery is not supposed, drosses are not required, and that disembodied 
 s])irits only are represented ; but there are neither buffoons, nor dogs, 
 nor armoi', nor any other absurdity ? And does it not appear to you 
 that neither by this nor any other example you have done light in 
 painting the picture in this manner, and that it can be proved right and 
 decent ? 
 
 A. Illustrious Lord, I do not defend it ; but I thought I was doing 
 right. I had not considered all these things, never intending to com- 
 mit any impropriety ; the more so as figures of buffoons are not supposed 
 to be in the same place where our Lord is. 
 
 Which examination ended, my lords decreed that the above-named 
 Master Paul should be bound to correct and amend the picture which 
 liad been under question, within three months, at his own expense, 
 under penalties to be imposed by the Sacred Tribunal.” 
 
 This sentence, liowever severe in terms, was merely a matter of form. 
 The examiners were satisfied there was no malice prepense in their 
 fanciful Paul : and troubled neither him nor themselves farther. He 
 did not so much as efface the inculpated dog ; and tlie only correction 
 or amendment he made, so far as I can see, was the addition of the in= 
 scriptiou, which marked the picture for the feast of Levi. 
 

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“PR/ETERITA” 
 
 OUTLINES OF SCENES AND THOUGHTS 
 PERHAPS WORTPIY OF MEMORY, 
 
 IN MY PAST LIFE 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE wiitteu these sketches of effort and incident is 
 former years for my friends ; and for those of the public 
 who have been pleased by my books. 
 
 I have written them therefore, frankly, garrulously, 
 and at ease ; speaking of what it gives me joy to remem- 
 ber at any length I like — sometimes very carefully of 
 what I think it may be useful for others to know; and 
 passing in total silence things which I have no pleasure 
 in reviewing, and which the reader would find no help in 
 the account of. My described life has thus become more 
 amusing than I expected to myself, as I summoned its 
 long past scenes for present scrutiny : its methods of 
 study, and general principles of work, I feel justified in 
 recommending to other students : and very certainly any 
 habitual readers of my books will understand them better, 
 for having knowledge as complete as I can give them of 
 the personal character which, without endeavor to con- 
 ceal, I yet have never taken pains to display, and even, 
 now and then, felt some freakish pleasure in exposing to 
 the chance of misinterpretation. 
 
 I write these few prefatory words on my father’s birth- 
 day, in what was once my nursery in his old house, — to 
 
6 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 which he brought my mother and me, sixty-two years 
 since, I being then four years old. What would other- 
 wise in the following pages have been little more than an 
 old man’s recreation in gathering visionary flowers in 
 fields of youth, has taken, as I wrote, the nobler -aspect 
 of a dutiful offering at the grave of parents who trained 
 my childhood to all the good it could attain, and whose 
 memory makes declining life cheerful in the hope of be- 
 ing soon again with them 
 
 Herne Hill, May 10 , 1885 . 
 
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I, 
 
 CHAP. PACK 
 
 I. The Springs of Wandel, ...... 13 
 
 II. Herne-hill Almond Blossoms, .... 30 
 
 III. The Banks of Tay, 44 
 
 IV. Under New Tutorships, 61 
 
 V. Parnassus and Plynlimmon, 74 
 
 VI. Schaffhausen and Milan, 88 
 
 yil. Papa and Mamma, 101 
 
 VIII. Vester, Camen^, 118 
 
 IX. The Col de la Faucille, 130 
 
 X. Quem tu, Melpomene, ...... 143 
 
 XI. Christ Church Choir, ....... 159 
 
 XII. Roslyn Chapel, ........ 177 
 
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. 
 
 CHAP. TAQX 
 
 I. Of Age, 197 
 
 II. Kome, 211 
 
 III. CuM^, 225 
 
 IV. Fontainebleau, 240 
 
 V. The Simplon, 256 
 
 VI. The Campo Santo, 273 
 
 VII. Macugnaga, 289 
 
 VIII. The State of Denmark, 305 
 
 IX. The Feasts of the Vandals, 318 
 
 X. Crossmount, 335 
 
 XI. L’HdTEii DU Mont Blanc, 351 
 
 XII. Otterburn, 371 
 
CONTENTS OF VOLUME III. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. The Grand Chartreuse, 383 
 
 II. Mont Velan, . . . 403 
 
 III. L’Esterelle, . • . 433 
 
 IV. Joanna’s Care, 434 
 
PRETERIT A. 
 
 VOLVME I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL. 
 
 I am, and my father was before me, a violent Tory of the 
 old school ; (Walter Scott’s school, that is to say, and 
 Homer’s,) I name these two out of the numberless great Tory 
 writers, because they were my own two masters. I had 
 Walter Scott’s novels, and the Iliad, (Pope’s translation,) for 
 my only reading when I was a child, on week-days : on Sun- 
 days their effect was tempered by Robinson Crusoe and the 
 Pilgrim’s Progress ; my mother having it deeply in her heart 
 to make an evangelical clergyman of me. Fortunately, I had 
 an aunt more evangelical than my mother ; and my aunt gave 
 me cold mutton for Sunday’s dinner, which — as I much pre- 
 ferred it hot— greatly diminished the influence of the Pil- 
 grim’s Progress, and the end of the matter was, that I got all 
 the noble imaginative teaching of Defoe and Bunyan, and yet 
 — am not an evangelical clergyman. 
 
 I had, however, still better teaching than theirs, and that 
 compulsorily, and every day of the week, 
 
 Walter Scott and Pope’s Homer were reading of my own 
 election, but my mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to 
 learn long chapters of the Bible by heart ; as well as to read 
 it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from 
 Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year : and to that 
 discipline — patient, accurate, and resolute — I owe, not only a 
 
14 
 
 PRMTEUITA. 
 
 knowledge of the book, which I find occfisionally serviceable, 
 but much of my general power of taking pains, and tlie best 
 part of my taste in literature. From Walter Scott’s novels I 
 might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other people’s 
 novels ; and Pope might, perhaps, have led me to take John- 
 son’s English, or Gibbon’s, as types of language ; but, once 
 knowing the 32d of Deuteronomy, the 119th Psalm, the 
 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and most 
 of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, and having always 
 a way of thinking with myself what words meant, it was not 
 possible for me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write 
 entirely superficial or formal English ; and the affectation of 
 trying to write like Hooker and George Herbert was the most 
 innocent I could have fallen into. 
 
 From my own chosen masters, then, Scott and Homer, I 
 learned the Toryism which my best after-thought has only 
 served to confirm. 
 
 That is to say a most sincere love of kings, and dislike of 
 everybody who attempted to disobey them. Only, both by 
 Homer and Scott, I was taught strange ideas about kings, 
 which I find for the present much obsolete ; for, I perceived 
 that both the author of the Iliad and the author of Waverley 
 made their kings, or king-loving persons, do harder work 
 than anybody else. Tydides or Idomeneus always killed 
 twenty Trojans to other people’s one, and Eedgauntlet 
 speared more salmon than any of the Solway fishermen, and 
 — which was particularly a subject of admiration to me — I 
 observed that they not only did more, but in proportion to 
 their doings, got less than other people — nay, that the best 
 of them were even ready to govern for nothing ! and let 
 their followers divide any quantity of spoil or profit. Of late 
 it has seemed to me that the idea of a king has become exactly 
 the contrary of this, and that it has been supposed the duty 
 of superior persons generally to govern less, and get more, 
 than anybody else. So that it was, perhaps, quite as well 
 that in those early days my contemplation of existent king- 
 ship was a very distant one. 
 
 The aunt who gave me cold mutton on Sundays was my 
 
THE 8PBIN0S OF WANDEL. 
 
 15 
 
 father’s sister : she lived at Bridge-end, in the town of Perth, 
 and had a garden full of gooseberry-bushes, sloping down to 
 the Tay, with a door opening to the water, which ran past it, 
 clear-brown over the pebbles three or four feet deep ; swift- 
 eddying, — an infinite thing for a child to look down into. 
 
 My father began business as a wine-merchant, with no capi- 
 tal, and a considerable amount of debts bequeathed him by 
 my grandfather. He accepted the bequest, and paid them 
 all before he began to lay by anything for himself, for which 
 his best friends called him a fool, and I, without expressing 
 any opinion as to his wisdom, which I knew in such matters 
 to be at least equal to mine, have written on the granite slab 
 over his grave that he was “an entirely honest merchant.” As 
 days went on he was able to take a house in Hunter Street, 
 Brunswick Square, No. 54, (the windows of it, fortunately for 
 me, commanded a view of a marvellous iron post, out of which 
 the water-carts were filled through beautiful little trap-doors, 
 by pipes like boa-constrictors ; and I was never weary of con- 
 templating that mystery, and the delicious dripping conse- 
 quent) ; and as years went on, and I came to be four or five 
 years old, he could command a postchaise and pair for two 
 months in the summer, by help of which, with my mother and 
 me, he went the round of his country customers (who liked 
 to see the principal of the house his own traveller) ; so that, 
 at a jog-trot pace, and through the panoramic opening of the 
 four windows of a post-chaise, made more panoramic still to 
 me because my seat was a little bracket in front, (for we used 
 to hire the chaise regularly for the two months out of Long- 
 Acre, and so could have it bracketed and pocketed as we liked,) 
 I sav/ all the high-roads, and most of the cross ones, of Eng- 
 land and Wales, and great part of lowland Scotland, as far as 
 Perth, where every other year we spent the whole summer ; 
 and I used to read the Abbot at Kinross, and the Monastery 
 in Glen Farg, which I confused with “ Glendearg,” and thought 
 that the White Lady had as certainly lived by the streamlet in 
 that glen of the Ochils, as the Queen of Scots in the island of 
 Loch Leven. 
 
 To my farther great benefit, as I grew older, I thus saw 
 
16 
 
 mMTERITA. 
 
 Dearly all the noblemen’s houses in England ; in reverent and 
 healthy delight of uncovetous admiration, — perceiving, as 
 soon as I could perceive any political truth at all, that it was 
 probably much happier to live in a small house, and have 
 Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick 
 Castle and have nothing to be astonished at ; but that, at all 
 events, it would not make Brunswick Square in the least 
 more pleasantly habitable, to pull Warwick Castle down. 
 And, at this day, though I have kind invitations enough to 
 visit America, I could not, even for a couple of months, live 
 in a country so miserable as to possess no castles. 
 
 Nevertheless, having formed my notion of kinghood chiefly 
 from the FitzJames of the Lady of the Lake, and of noblesse 
 from the Douglas there, and the Douglas in Marmion, a 
 painful wonder soon arose in my child-mind, why the castles 
 should now be always empty. Tantallon was there ; but no 
 Archibald of Angus : — Stirling, but no Knight of Snowdoun. 
 The galleries and gardens of England were beautiful to see 
 — but his Lordship and her Ladyship were always in town, 
 said the housekeepers and gardeners. Deep yearning took 
 hold of me for a kind of “Restoration,” which I began slowly 
 to feel that Charles the Second had not altogether effected, 
 though I always wore a gilded oak-apple very piously in my 
 button-hole on the 29th of May. It seemed to me that 
 Charles the Second’s Restoration had been, as compared with 
 the Restoration I wanted, much as that gilded oak-apple to a 
 real apple. And as I grew wiser, the desire for sweet pip- 
 pins instead of bitter ones, and Living Kings instead of dead 
 ones, appeared to me rational as well as romantic ; and grad- 
 ually it has become the main purpose of my life to grow pip- 
 pins, and its chief hope, to see Kings.* 
 
 I have never been able to trace these prejudices to any 
 royalty of descent : of my father’s ancestors I know nothing. 
 
 * The St. George’s Company was founded for the promotion of agri- 
 cultural instead of town life : and my only hope of prosperity for 
 England, or any other country in whatever life they lead, is in their 
 discovering and obeying men capable of Kinghood. 
 
THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL. 
 
 17 
 
 nor of my motlier’s more than that my maternal grandmother 
 was the landlady of the Old King’s Head in Market Street, 
 Croydon ; and I wish she were alive again, and I could paint 
 her Simone Memmi’s King’s Head, for a sign. 
 
 My maternal grandfather was, as I have said, a sailor, who 
 used to embark, like Robinson Crusoe, at Yarmouth, and 
 come back at rare intervals, making himself very delightful 
 at home. I have an idea he had something to do with the 
 herring business, but I am not clear on that point ; my 
 mother never being much communicative concerning it. He 
 spoiled her, and her (younger) sister, with all his heart, when 
 he was at home ; unless there appeared any tendency to 
 equivocation, or imaginative statements, on the part of the 
 children, which were always unforgivable. My mother being 
 once perceived by him to have distinctly told him a lie, he 
 sent the servant out forthwith to buy an entire bundle of new 
 broom twigs to whip her with. “They did not hurt me so 
 much as one ” (twig) “would have done,” said my mother, 
 “but I thought a good deal of it.” 
 
 My grandfather was killed at two-and-thirty, by trying to 
 ride, instead of walk, into Croydon ; he got his leg crushed 
 by his horse against a wall ; and died of the hurt’s mortifying. 
 My mother w^as then seven or eight years old, and, with her 
 sister, 'was sent to quite a fashionable (for Croydon) day- 
 school, Mrs. Rice’s, where my mother was taught evangelical 
 principles, and became the pattern girl and best needlewoman 
 in the school ; and where my aunt absolutely refused evan- 
 gelical principles, and became the plague and pet of it. 
 
 My mother, being a girl of great power, with not a little 
 pride, grew more and more exemplary in her entirely con- 
 scientious career, much laughed at, though much beloved, by 
 her sister ; who had more wit, less pride, and no conscience. 
 At last my mother, formed into a consummate housewife, was 
 sent for to Scotland to take care of my paternal grandfather’s 
 house ; who was gradually ruining himself ; and who at last 
 effectually ruined, and killed, himself. My father came up to 
 London ; was a clerk in a merchant’s house for nine years, 
 without a holiday ; then began business on his own account ; 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 PRu^TEBITA, 
 
 paid his father’s debts ; and married his exemplary Croydon 
 cousin. 
 
 Meantime my aunt had remained in Croydon, and married 
 a baker. By the time I was four years old, and beginning to 
 recollect things, — my father rapidly taking higher commer- 
 cial position in London, — there was traceable — though to me, 
 as a child, wholly incomprehensible — just the least possible 
 shade of shyness on the part of Hunter Street, Brunswick 
 Square, toward Market Street, Croydon. But whenever my 
 father was ill, — and hard work and sorrow had already set 
 their mark on him, — we all went down to Croydon to be 
 petted by my homely aunt ; and walk on Duppas Hill, and on 
 the heather of Addington. 
 
 My aunt lived in the little house still standing — or which 
 was so four months ago — the fashionablest in Market Street, 
 having actually two windows over the shop, in the second 
 story ; but I never troubled myself about that superior part of 
 the mansion, unless my father happened to be making draw- 
 ings in Indian ink, when I would sit reverently by and watch ; 
 my chosen domains being, at all other times, the shop, the 
 bakehouse, and the stones round the spring of crystal water 
 at the back door (long since let down into the modern sewer) ; 
 and my chief companion, my aunt’s dog, Towzer, whom she 
 had taken pity on when he was a snappish, starved vagrant ; 
 and made a brave and affectionate dog of : which was the kind 
 of thing she did for every living creature that came in her 
 way, all her life long. 
 
 Contented, by help of these occasional glimpses of the riv- 
 ers of Paradise, I lived until I was more than four years old 
 in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, the greater part of the 
 year ; for a few weeks in the summer breathing country air 
 by taking lodgings in small cottages (real cottages, not villas, 
 so-called) either about Hampstead, or at Dulwich, at “Mrs. 
 Ridley’s,” the last of a row in a lane which led out into the 
 Dulwich fields on one side, and was itself full of buttercups 
 in spring, and blackberries in autumn. But my chief remain- 
 ing impressions of those days are attached to Hunter Street. 
 My mother’s general principles of first treatment were, to 
 
THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL. 
 
 19 
 
 guard me with steady watchfulness from all avoidable pain or 
 danger ; and, for the rest, to let me amuse myself as I liked, 
 provided I was neither fretful nor troublesome. But the law 
 was, that I should find my own amuseineiit. No toys of any 
 kind were at first allowed ; — and the pity of my Croydon aunt 
 for my monastic poverty in this respect was boundless. On 
 one of my birthdays, thinking to overcome my mother’s reso- 
 lution by splendor of temptation, she bought the most radi- 
 ant Punch and Judy she could find in all the Soho bazaar — 
 as big as a real Punch and Judy, all dressed in scarlet and 
 gold, and that would dance, tied to the leg of a chair, I must 
 have been greatly impressed, for I remember well the look of 
 the two figures, as my aunt herself exhibited their virtues. 
 My mother was obliged to accept them ; but afterward qui- 
 etly told me it was not right that I should have them ; and I 
 never saw them again. 
 
 Nor did I painfully wish, what I was never permitted for 
 an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such 
 things as one saw in toy-shops. I had a bunch of keys to 
 play with, as long as I W'as capable only of pleasure in what 
 glittered and jingled ; as I grew older, I had a cart, and a 
 ball ; and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well- 
 cut wooden bricks. With these modest, but, I still think, 
 entirely sufficient possessions, and being always summarily 
 whipped if I cried, did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on 
 the stairs, I soon attained serene and secure methods of life 
 and motion ; and could pass my days contentedly in trac- 
 ing the squares and comparing the colors of my carpet ; — 
 examining the knots in the wood of the floor, or count- 
 ing the bricks in the opposite houses ; with rapturous in- 
 tervals of excitement during the filling of the water-cart, 
 through its leathern pipe, from the dripping iron post at 
 the pavement edge ; or the still more admirable proceed- 
 ings of the turncock, when he turned and turned till a 
 fountain sprang up in the middle of the street. But the 
 carpet, and what patterns I could find in bed-covers, dresses, 
 or wall-papers to be examined, were my chief resources, and 
 my attention to the particulars in these was soon so accurate, 
 
20 
 
 nORTUS INGUrSUS. 
 
 I left Eome yesterda}% and am on ni}^ way home ; but, 
 alas ! might as well be on my way home from Cochin China, 
 for any chance I have of speedily arriving. Meantime your 
 letters will reach me here with speed, and will be a great 
 comfort to me, if they don’t fatigue you. 
 
 “fkondes agkestes.’^ 
 
 Perugia, \ 2 th June. 
 
 I am more and more pleased at the thought of this gathering 
 of yours, and soon expect to tell you what the bookseller says. 
 
 Meantime I want you to think of the form the collection 
 should take with reference to my proposed re-publication. I 
 mean to take the botany, the geology, the Turner defence, and 
 the general art criticism of “ Modern Painters,” as four separate 
 books, cutting out nearly all the preaching, and a good deal 
 of the sentiment. Now what you find pleasant and helpful to 
 3"ou of general maxim or reflection, must be of some value ; 
 and I think therefore that your selection will just do for me 
 wdiat no other reader could have done, least of all I myself ; 
 keep together, that is to say, what may be right and true of 
 those youthful thoughts. I should like 3^0 u to add anything 
 that specially pleases 3''ou, of whatever kind ; but to keep the 
 notion of your book being the didactic one as opposed to the 
 other picturesque and scientific volumes, will I think help you 
 in choosing between passages when one or other is to be 
 rejected. 
 
 HOW I FELL AMONG THIEVES. 
 
 Assist, VUh June. 
 
 I have been having a bad time lately, and have no heart to 
 write to you. Very difficult and melancholy work, deciphering 
 Avhat remains of a great painter among stains of ruin and 
 blotches of repair, of five hundred years’ gathering. It makes 
 me sadder than idleness, which is saying much. 
 
 I was greatly flattered and petted by a saying in one of 
 3'our last letters, about the difficulty I had in unpacking my 
 
II0RTU8 INGLUSU8. 
 
 21 
 
 mind. That is true ; one of my chief troubles at present is 
 with the quantity of things I want to say at once. But you 
 don’t know how I find things I laid by carefully in it, all 
 jnouldy and moth-eaten when I take them out ; and what a 
 lot of mending and airing they need, and v/hat a wearisome 
 and bothering business it is compared to the early packing, — 
 one used to be so proud to get things into the corners neatly ! 
 
 I have been failing in my drawings, too, and I’m in a 
 horrible inn kept by a Garibaldian bandit ; and the various 
 sorts of disgusting dishes sent up to look like a dinner, and 
 to be charged for, are a daily increasing horror and amaze- 
 ment to me. They succeed in getting everything bad ; no 
 exertion, no invention, could produce such badness, I believe, 
 anywhere else. The hills are covered for leagues with olive- 
 trees, and the oil’s bad ; there are no such lovely cattle else- 
 where in the world, and the butter’s bad ; half the country 
 people are shepherds, but there’s no mutton ; half the old 
 women walk about with a pig tied to their waists, but there’s 
 no pork ; the vino grows wild anywliere, and the wine would 
 make my teeth drop out of my liead if I took a glass of it ; 
 there are no strawberries, no oranges, no melons, the cherries 
 are as hard as their stones, the beans only good for horses, 
 or Jack and the beanstalk, and this is the size of the biggest 
 asparagus — 
 
 I live here in a narrow street ten feet wide only, winding 
 up a hill, and it was full this morning of sheep as close as 
 they could pack, at least a thousand, as far as the eye could 
 reach,^ — tinkle tinkle, bleat bleat, for a quarter of an hour. 
 
 This letter is all upside down, and this first page written 
 last ; for I didn’t like sometliing I had written about myself 
 last night when I was tired, and have torn it off. 
 
 m PAiiADisi':. 
 
 Assisi, Sacristan’s Cell, 
 25(h June. 
 
22 
 
 PE^TEEITA. 
 
 of it, in direction to Mr. Burgess, presented some notable 
 points of correspondence ^?ith it, I thought it well he should 
 engrave them together, as they stood. 
 
 Ifjifi itK Or,} 
 
 aiad« wl»o Vl\irr^V«t 
 
 i*ea .sen^ ^ 
 
 UA-^ tiA.erzXsU-&-^^ ^ Ctt 
 
 My mother had, as she afterward told me, solemnly de- 
 voted me to God ” before I was born ; in imitation of Hannah. 
 
 Very good women are remarkably apt to make away with 
 their children prematurely, in this manner : the real mean- 
 ing of the pious act being, that, as the sons of Zebedee are 
 not (or at least they hope not), to sit on the right and left of 
 Christ, in His kingdom, their own sons may perhaps, they 
 think, in time be advanced to that respectable position in 
 eternal life ; especially if they ask Christ very humbly for it 
 every day ; and they always forget in the most naive way 
 that the position is not His to give ! 
 
 “ Devoting me to God,'*’ meant, as far as my mother knew 
 herself what she meant, that she would try to send me to 
 college, and make a clergyman of me : and I was accordingly 
 bred for “ the Church.” My father, who — rest be to his soul 
 — had the exceedingly bad habit of yielding to my mother in 
 large things and taking his own way in little ones, allowed 
 me, without saying a word, to be thus withdrawn from the 
 sherry trade as an unclean thing ; not without some pardon- 
 
THE SPlilNQB OF WANDER 
 
 23 
 
 able participation in my mother’s ultimate ^iews for me. 
 For, many and many a year afterward, I remember, wdiile he 
 was speaking to one of our artist friends, who admired 
 Eaphael, and greatly regretted my endeavors to interfere 
 v>^ith that popular taste, — while my father and he were con- 
 doling with each other on my having been impudent enough 
 to think I could tell the public about Turner and Eaphael, — = 
 instead of contenting myself, as I ought, with explaining the 
 way of their souls’ salvation to them — and what an amiable 
 clergyman was lost in me, — “ Yes,” said my father, with tears 
 in his eyes — (true and tender tears, as ever father shed,) “ he 
 would have been a Bishop.” 
 
 Luckily for me, my mother, under these distinct impres- 
 sions of her own duty, and with such latent hopes of my 
 future eminence, took me very early to church ; — v/here, in 
 spite of my quiet habits, and my mother’s golden vinaigrette, 
 alw’ays indulged to me there, and there only, wdth its lid un- 
 clasped that I might see the wreathed open pattern above the 
 sponge, I found the bottom of the pew so extremely dull a 
 place to keep quiet in, (my best story-books being also 
 taken away from me in the morning,) that, as I have some- 
 where said before, the horror of Sunday used even to cast its 
 prescient gloom as far back in the week as Friday — and all 
 the gloiy of Monday, with church seven days removed again, 
 was no equivalent for it. 
 
 Notwithstanding, I arrived at some abstract in my own 
 mind of the Eev. Mr. Howell’s sermons ; and occasionally, in 
 imitation of him, preached a sermon at homo over the red 
 sofa cushions ; — this performance being always called for by 
 my mother’s dearest friends, as the great accomplishment of 
 my childhood. The sermon was, I believe, some eleven 
 words long ; — very exemplary, it seems to me, in that respect 
 — and I still think must have been the purest gospel, for 
 I know it began with, “ People, be good.” 
 
 We seldom had company, even on week days ; and I was 
 never allowed to come down to dessert, until much later in 
 life — when I was able to crack nuts neatl^a I was then per- 
 mitted to come down to crack other people’s nuts for them 
 
24 : 
 
 PBuETERITA. 
 
 — (I Lope they liked tLe ministration) — but never to Lave 
 any myself ; nor anytLing else of dainty kind, eitLer tLen or 
 at otLer times. Once, at Hunter Street, I recollect my 
 motLer giving me tliree raisins, in tLe forenoon, out of tLe 
 store cabinet ; and I remember perfectly tLe first time I 
 tasted custard, in our lodgings in Norfolk Street — wLere -we 
 Lad gone wLile the Louse was being painted, or cleaned, or 
 sometLing. My fatber was dining in tLe front room, and 
 did not finisL Lis custard ; and my motLer brougLt me the 
 bottom of it into tlie back room. 
 
 But for tLe reader’s better understanding of sucL furtLer 
 progress of my poor little life as I may trespass on Lis 
 patience in describing, it is now needful tliat I give some ac- 
 count of my father’s mercantile position in London. 
 
 TLe firm of wLicL Le was Lead partner may be yet remem- 
 bered by some of tLe older city Louses, as carrying on tLeir 
 business in a small counting-Louse on tLe first floor of narrow 
 premises, in as narrow a tliorougLfare of East London, 
 — Billiter Street, the principal traverse from LeadenLall 
 Street into FencLurcL Street. 
 
 TLe names of tlie three partners were given in full on their 
 brass plate under the counting-Louse bell, — Buskin, Telford, 
 & Homecq. 
 
 Mr. Domecq’s name should Lave been the first, by rights, 
 for ray father and Mr. Telford were only Lis agents. He was 
 the solo proprietor of the estate which was the main capital 
 of the firm, — the vineyard of MacLarnudo, the most precious 
 hillside, for growth of white wine, in the Spanish peninsula. 
 The quality of the Macharnudo vintage essentially fixed the 
 standard of Xeres “sack,” or “dry,” — secco — sLerris, or 
 sherry, from the days of Henry the Fifth to our own ; — the 
 unalterable and unrivalled chalk-marl of it putting a strength 
 into the grape v/LicL age can only enrich and darken, — never 
 impair. 
 
 Mr. Peter Homecq was, I believe, Spanish born ; and partly 
 French, partly English bred ; a man of strictest honor, and 
 kindly disposition ; Low descended, I do not know ; Low Le 
 became possessor of Lis vineyard, I do not know ; what posi- 
 
THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL. 
 
 25 
 
 tion lie held, when young, in the firm of Gordon, Murphy, 
 & Compan}", I do not know ; but in their house he watched 
 their head clerk, my father, during his nine years of duty, 
 and when the house broke up, asked him to be his own agent 
 in England. My father saw that he could folly trust Mr. 
 Domecq’s honor, and feeling ; — but not so fully either his 
 sense, or his industry ; and insisted, though taking only his 
 agent’s commission, on being both nominally, and practical!}*, 
 the head-partner of the firm. 
 
 Mr. Domecq lived chiefly in Paris ; rarely visiting his 
 Spanish estate, but having perfect knowledge of the proper 
 processes of its cultivation, and authority over its laborers 
 almost like a chief ’s over his clan. He kept the wines at the 
 highest possible standard ; and allowed my father to manage 
 all matters concerning their sale, as he thought best. The 
 second partner, Mr. Henry Telford, brought into the business 
 what capital was necessary for its London branch. The 
 premises in Billiter Street belonged to him ; and he had a 
 pleasant country house at Widmore, near Bromley ; a quite 
 far-away Kentish village in those days. 
 
 He was a perfect type of an English country gentleman of 
 moderate fortune ; unmarried, living wnth three unmarried 
 sisters, — who, in the refinement of their highly educated, un- 
 pretending, benevolent, and felicitous lives, remain in my 
 memory more like the figures in a beautiful story than real- 
 ities. Neither in story, nor in reality, have I ever again heard 
 of, or seen, anything like Mr. Henry Telford ; — so gentle, so 
 humble, so affectionate, so clear in common sense, so fond of 
 horses, — and so entirely incapable of doing, thinking, or saying, 
 anything that had the slightest taint in it of the race-course or 
 the stable. 
 
 Yet I believe he never missed any great race ; passed 
 the greater part of his life on horseback ; and hunted during 
 the whole Leicestershire season ; but never made a bet, never 
 had a serious fall, and never hurt a horse. Between him and 
 my father there was absolute confidence, and the utmost 
 friendship that could exist without community of pursuit. 
 My father was greatly proud of Mr. Telford’s standing among 
 
26 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 the country gentlemen ; and Mr. Telford was affectionately 
 respectful to my father’s steady industry and infallible com- 
 mercial instinct. Mr. Telford’s actual part in the conduct of 
 the business was limited to attendance in the counting-house 
 during two months at Midsummer, when my father took his 
 holiday, and sometimes for a month at the beginning of the 
 3mar, Avhen he travelled for orders. At these times Mr. Tel- 
 ford rode into London daily from Widmore, signed what 
 letters and bills needed signature, read the papers, and rode 
 home again ; any matters needing deliberation were referred 
 to my father, or awaited his return. All the family at Wid- 
 more would have been limitlessly kind to my mother and me, 
 if the}" had been permitted any opportunity ; but my mother 
 always felt, in cultivated society, — and was too proud to feel 
 with patience, — the defects of her own early education ; and 
 therefore (which was the true and fatal sign of such defect) 
 never familiarly visited any one whom she did not feel to be, 
 in some sort, her inferior. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr. Telford had a singularly important influ- 
 ence in my education. By, I believe, his sister’s advice, he 
 gave me, as soon as it was published, the illustrated edition 
 of Eogers’ “Italy.” This book was the first means I had of 
 looking carefully at Turner’s work : and I might, not without 
 some appearance of reason, attribute to the gift the entire 
 direction of my life’s energies. But it is the great error of 
 thoughtless biographers to attribute to the accident which 
 introduces some new phase of character, all the circumstances 
 of character which gave the accident importance. The essen- 
 tial point to be noted, and accounted for, was that I could 
 understand Turner’s work when I saw it; — not by what 
 chance, or in what year, it was first seen. Poor Mr. Telford, 
 nevertheless, was always held by papa and mamma primarily 
 responsible for my Turner insanities. 
 
 In a more direct, though less intended way, his help to me 
 was important. For, before my father thought it right to hire 
 a carriage for the above-mentioned Midsummer holiday, Mr. 
 Telford always lent us his own travelling chariot. 
 
 Now the old English chariot is the most luxurious of travel- 
 
THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL. 
 
 27 
 
 ling carriages, for two persons, or even for two persons and 
 so much of a third personage as I possessed at three years 
 old. The one in question was hung high, so that we could see 
 well over stone dykes and average hedges out of it ; such ele- 
 vation being attained by the old-fashioned folding-steps, with 
 a lovel}^ padded cushion fitting into the recess of the door, — 
 steps which it was one of my chief travelling delights to see 
 the hostlers fold up and dovm ; though my delight was pain- 
 fully alloyed by envious ambition to be allowed to do it 
 myself : — but I never was, — lest I should pinch my fingers. 
 
 The “ dickey,” — (to think that I should never till this 
 moment have asked mj'self the derivation of that word, and 
 now be unable to get at it !) — being typically, that com- 
 manding seat in her Majesty’s mail, occupied by the Guard ; 
 and classical, even in modern literature, as the scene of Mr. 
 Bob Sawyer’s arrangements with Sam, — was thrown far back 
 in Mr. Telford’s chariot, so as to give perfectly comfortable 
 room for the legs (if one chose to travel outside on fine 
 da}'S), and to afford beneath it spacious area to the boot, 
 a storehouse of rearward miscellaneous luggage. Over which 
 • — with all the rest of for\vard and superficial luggage — my 
 nurse Anne presided, both as guard and packer ; unrivalled, 
 she, in the flatness and precision of her in-laying of dresses, 
 as in turning of pancakes ; the fine precision, observe, mean- 
 ing also the easy wit and invention of her art ; for, no more 
 in packing a trunk than commanding a campaign, is preci- 
 sion possible without foresight. 
 
 Among the people whom one must miss out of one’s life, 
 dead, or worse than dead, by the time one is past fifty, I can 
 only say for my own part, that the one I practically and truly 
 miss most, next to father and mother, (and putting losses of 
 imaginary good out of the question,) is this Anne, my father’s 
 nurse, and mine. She was one of our ‘ many,’* (our many 
 being ahvays but few,) and from her girlhood to her old age, 
 the entire ability of her life was given to serving us. She had 
 a natural gift and speciality for doing disagreeable things ; 
 
 * Formerly “ Meinie,” ^‘attendant company.” 
 
28 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 above all, tlie service of a sick room ; so tliat sbe was never 
 quite in her glory unless some of us were ill. She had also 
 some parallel speciality for saying disagreeable things ; and 
 might be relied upon to give the extremely darkest view of 
 any subject, before proceeding to ameliorative action upon it. 
 And she had a very creditable and republican aversion to do- 
 ing immediately, or in set terms, as she was bid ; so that when 
 my mother and she got old together, and my mother became 
 very imperative and particular about having her teacup set on 
 one side of her little round table, Anne would observantly^ and 
 punctiliously put it always on the other ; wdiich caused my 
 mother to state to me, every morning after breakfast, gravely, 
 that, if ever a woman in this world was possessed by the Devil, 
 Anne was that woman. But in spite of these momentary and 
 petulant aspirations to liberality and independence of char- 
 acter, poor Anne remained very servile in soul all her days ; 
 and was altogether occupied, from the age of fifteen to seventy- 
 two, in doing other people’s wills instead of her own, and 
 seeking other people’s good instead of her own : nor did I 
 ever hear on any occasion of her doing harm to a human 
 being, except by saving two hundred and some odd pounds 
 for her relations ; in consequence of which, some of them, 
 after her funeral, did not speak to the rest for several 
 months. 
 
 The dickey then aforesaid, being indispensable for our guard . 
 Anne, was made wide enough for two, that my father might 
 go outside also Avhen the scenery and day were fine. The en- 
 tire equipage was not a light one of its kind ; but, the lug- 
 gage being carefully limited, went gayly behind good horses 
 on the then perfectly smooth mail roads ; and posting, in 
 those days, being universal, so that at the leading inns in 
 every country town, the cry “ Horses out ! ” down the yard, 
 as one drove up, was answered, often instantly, always within 
 five minutes, by the merry trot through the archway of the 
 booted and bright-jacketed rider, with his caparisoned pair, 
 — there was no driver’s seat in front : and the four large, 
 admirably fitting and sliding wdndows, admitting no drop of 
 rain when they were up, and never sticking as they were let 
 
THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL. 
 
 29 
 
 clown, formed one large moving oriel, out of which one saw 
 the country round, to the full half of the horizon. My own 
 prospect was more extended still, for my seat Avas the little 
 box containing my clothes, strongly made, with a cushion on 
 one end of it ; set upright in front (and well forward), be- 
 tween my father and mother. I was thus not the least in 
 their way, and my horizon of sight the widest possible. 
 When no object of particular interest presented itself, I 
 trotted, keeping time with tlie post-boy on my trunk cushion 
 for a saddle, and whipped my father’s legs for horses ; at 
 first theoretically only, with dexterous motion of wrist ; but 
 ultimately in a cjuito practical and efficient manner, m}’’ father 
 having jiresented me with a silver-mounted postillion’s whip. 
 
 The Midsummer holiday, for better enjoyment of which Mr. 
 Telford provided us with these luxuries, began usually on the 
 fifteenth of May, or thereabouts; — my father’s birthday was 
 the tenth ; on that day I was always allowed to gather the 
 gooseberries for his first gooseberry pie of the year, from the 
 tree between the buttresses on the north wall of the Herne 
 Hill garden ; so that we could not leave before that festa. 
 The holiday itself consisted in a tour for orders through half 
 the English counties ; and a visit (if the counties lay north- 
 ward) to my aunt in Scotland. 
 
 Tlie mode of journeying was as fixed as that of our home 
 life. We went from forty to fifty miles a day, starting always 
 early enough in the morning to arrive comfortably to four- 
 o’clock dinner. Generally, therefore, getting off at six o’clock, 
 a stage or two were done before breakfast, with the dew on 
 the grass, and first scent from the hawthorns ; if in the course 
 of the midday drive there were any gentleman’s house to be 
 seen, — or, better still, a lord’s — or, best of all, a duke’s, — my 
 father baited the horses, and took my mother and me rever- 
 ently through the state rooms ; always speaking a little under 
 our breath to the housekeeper, major domo, or other authority 
 in charge ; and gleaning worshipfully what fragmentary illus- 
 trations of the history and domestic ways of the family might 
 fall from their lips. 
 
 In analyzing above, page 16 , the effect on my mind of all 
 
30 
 
 PB^TERITA, 
 
 tliis, I have perhaps a little antedated the supposed resultant 
 impression that it was probably happier to live in a small 
 house than a large one. Bat assuredly, while I never to this 
 day pass a lattice-windowed cottage without wishing to be its 
 cottager, I never yet saw the castle which I envied to its lord ; 
 and although in the course of these many worshipful pilgrim- 
 ages I gathered curiously extensive knov/ledge, both of art and 
 natural scenery, afterward infinitely useful, it is evident to 
 me in retrospect that my own character and affections were 
 little altered by them ; and that the personal feeling and 
 native instinct of me had been fastened, irrevocably, long 
 before, to things modest, humble, and pure in peace, under 
 the low red roofs of Croydon, and by the cress-set rivulets in 
 which the sand danced and minnows darted above the Springs 
 of Wandel. 
 
 CHAPTEK II. 
 
 HEENE-HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS. 
 
 When I was about four years old my father found himself 
 able to buy the lease of a house on Herne Hill, a rustic emi- 
 nence four miles south of the “ Standard in Cornhill ; ” of 
 which the leafy seclusion remains, in all essential points of 
 character, unchanged to this day : certain Gothic splendors^ 
 lately indulged in by our wealthier neighbors, being the only 
 serious innovations ; and these are so graciously concealed by 
 the fine trees of their grounds, that the passing viator remains 
 unappalled by them ; and I can still walk up and down the 
 piece of road between the Fox tavern and the Herne Hill sta- 
 tion, imagining myself four years old. 
 
 Our house was the northernmost of a group which stand 
 accurately on the top or dome of the hill, where the ground is 
 for a small space level, as the snows are, (I understand,) on 
 the dome of Mont Blanc ; presently failing, however, in wdiat 
 may be, in the London clay formation, considered a precipi- 
 tous slope, to our valley of Chamouni (or of Dulwich) on the 
 
HERNE-HILL ALMOND BL0880M8. 
 
 31 
 
 east ; and with a softer descent into Cold Harbour Lane^' on 
 the west : on the south, no less beautifully declining to the 
 dale of the Effra, (doubtless shortened from Effrena, signifying 
 tbe “Unbridled” river ; recentl}^, I regret to say, bricked over 
 for the convenience of Mr. BifSn, chemist, and others) ; while 
 on the north, prolonged indeed with slight depression some 
 half mile or so, and receiving, in the parish of Lambeth, the 
 chivalric title of “ Champion Hill,” it plunges down at last to 
 efface itself in the plains of Peckham, and the rural barbarism 
 of Goose Green. 
 
 The group, of which our house was the quarter, consisted 
 of two precisely similar partner-couples of houses, gardens 
 and all to match ; still the two highest blocks of buildings 
 seen from Norwood on the crest of the ridge ; so that the 
 house itself, three-storied, with garrets above, commanded, 
 in those comparatively smokeless days, a very notable view 
 from its garret windows, of the Norwood hills on one side, 
 and the winter sunrise over them ; and of the valley of the 
 Thames on the other, with Windsor telescopically clear in the 
 distance, and Harrow, conspicuous always in fine weather to 
 open vision against the summer sunset. It had front and 
 back garden in sufficient proportion to its size ; the front, 
 richly set with old evergreens, and well-grown lilac and la- 
 burnum ; the back, seventy yards long by twenty wide, re- 
 nowned over all the hill for its pears and apples, which had 
 been chosen with extreme care by our predecessor, (shame- 
 on me to forget the name of a man to whom I owe so much !) 
 — and possessing also a strong old mulberry tree, a tall white- 
 heart cherry tree, a black Kentish one, and an almost un- 
 broken hedge, all round, of alternate gooseberry and currant 
 bush ; decked, in due season, (for the ground was wholly 
 beneficent,) with magical splendor of abundant fruit : fresh 
 green, soft amber, and rough-bristled crimson bending the 
 spinous branches ; clustered pearl and pendant ruby joyfully 
 discoverable under the large leaves that looked like vine. 
 
 * Said in tlie History of Croydon to be a name wbicli lias long puzzled 
 antiquaries, and nearly always found near Roman military stations. 
 
rRMTERITA. 
 
 The differences of primal importance which I observed be- 
 tween the nature of this garden, and that of Eden, as I had 
 imagined it, were, that, in this one, all the fruit was for- 
 bidden ; and there were no companionable beasts : in other 
 respects the little domain answered every purpose of Paradise 
 to me ; and the climate, in that cycle of our years, allowed 
 me to pass most of my life in it. My mother never gave me 
 more to learn than she knew I could easily get learnt, if I set 
 myself honestly to work, by twelve o’clock. She never allowed 
 anything to disturb me when my task was set ; if it was not 
 said rightly by twelve o’clock, I was kept in till I knew it, and 
 in general, even when Latin Grammar came to supplement 
 the Psalms, I was my own master for at least an hour before 
 half-past one dinner, and for the rest of the afternoon. 
 
 My mother, herself finding her chief personal pleasure in 
 her flowers, was often planting or pruning beside me, at least 
 if I chose to stay beside her, I never thought of doing any- 
 thing behind her back which I would not have done before 
 her face ; and her presence was therefore no restraint to me ; 
 but, also, no particular .pleasure, for, from having always been 
 left so much alone, I had generally my own little affairs to see 
 after ; and, on the whole, by the time I was seven years old, was 
 already getting too independent, mentally, even of my father 
 and mother ; and, having nobody else to be dependent upon, 
 began to lead a very small, perky, contented, conceited, Cock- 
 •Eobinson-Crusoe sort of life, in the central point which it 
 appeared to me, (as it must naturally appear to geometrical 
 animals,) that I occupied in the universe. 
 
 This was partly the fault of my father’s modesty ; and part- 
 ly of his pride. He had so much more confidence in my 
 mother’s judgment as to such matters than in his own, that 
 he never ventured even to help, much less to cross her, in the 
 conduct of my education ; on the other hand, in the fixed 
 purpose of making an ecclesiastical gentleman of me, with 
 the superfinest of manners, and access to the highest circles 
 of fleshly and spiritual society, the visits to Croydon, where 
 I entirely loved my aunt, and 3"oung baker-cousins, became 
 rarer and more rare : the society of our neighbors on the hill 
 
^ ERNE-HILL ALMOND BLOS>'^OMS. 
 
 could not be had without breaking up our regular and sweet- 
 ly selfish manner of living ; and on the whole, I had nothing 
 animate to care for, in a childish way, but myself, some nests 
 of ants, wbich the gardener would never leave undisturbed for 
 me, and a sociable bird or two ; though I never had the sense 
 or perseverance to make one really tame. But that w.as part- 
 ly because, if ever I managed to bring one to be the least 
 trustful of me, the cats got it. 
 
 Under these circumstances, what powers of imagination I 
 possessed, either fastened themselves on inanimate things — ■ 
 the sky, the leaves, and pebbles, observable within the wails 
 of Eden, or caught at any opportunity of flight into regions 
 of romance, compatible with the objective realities of existence 
 in the nineteenth century, within a mile and a quarter of 
 Camberwell Green. 
 
 Herein my father, happily, though with no definite inten- 
 tion other than of pleasing me, when he found he could do so 
 without infringing any of my mother’s rules, became my 
 guide. I was particularly fond of watching him shave ; and 
 was always allowed to come into his room in the morning 
 (under the one in which I am now writing), to be the motion- 
 less witness of that operation. Over his dressing-table hung 
 one of his own water-color drawings, made under the teaching 
 of the elder Nasmyth. I believe, at the High School of Edin- 
 burgh. It was done in the early manner of tinting, which, 
 just about the time when my father was at the High School, 
 Dr. Munro W'as teaching Turner ; namely, in grey under-tints 
 of Prussian blue and British ink, washed with warm color 
 afterward on the lights. It represented Conway Castle, with 
 its Frith, and, in the foreground, a cottage, a fisherman, and 
 a boat at the water’s edge."^ 
 
 When my father had finished shaving, he always told me a 
 story about this picture. The custom began Muthout any 
 initial purpose of his, in consequence of my troublesome curi- 
 osity whether the fisherman lived in the cottage, and where 
 
 * This drawing is still over the chimney-piece of my bedroom at 
 Brantwood. 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 he was going to in the boat. It being settled, for peace, 
 sake, that he did live in the cottage, and was going in the 
 boat to fish near the castle, the plot of the drama afterward 
 gradually thickened ; and became, I believe, involved with 
 that of the tragedy of Douglas, and of the Castle Spectre, in 
 both of which pieces my father had performed in private 
 theatricals, before my mother, and a select Edinburgh audi- 
 ence, when he was a boy of sixteen, and she, at grave twenty, a 
 model housekeeper, and very scornful and religiously sus- 
 picious of theatricals. But she was never weary of telling me, 
 in later years, how beautiful my father looked in his High- 
 land dress, with the high black feathers. 
 
 In the afternoons, when my father returned (always punc- 
 tuail}") from his business, he dined, at half-past four, in the 
 front parlor, my mother sitting beside him to hear the events of 
 the day, and give counsel and encouragement with respect to 
 the same ; — chiefly the last, for my father was apt to be vexed if 
 orders for sherry fell the least short of their due standard, 
 even for a day or two. I was never present at this time, how- 
 ever, and only avouch what I relate by hearsay and probable 
 conjecture ; for between four and six it would have been a 
 grave misdemeanor in me if I so much as approached the 
 parlor door. After that, in summer time, we were all in the 
 garden as long as the day lasted ; tea under the white-heart 
 cherry tree ; or in winter and rough weather, at six o’clock in 
 the drawing-room, — I having my cup of milk, and slice of bread- 
 and-butter, in a little recess, with a table in front of it, wholly 
 sacred to me ; and in which I remained in the evenings as an 
 Idol in a niche, while my mother knitted, and my father read 
 to her, — and to me, so far as I chose to listen. 
 
 The series of the Waverley novels, then drawing toward its 
 close, was still the chief source of delight in all households 
 caring for literature ; and I can no more recollect the time 
 when I did not know them than when I did not know the 
 Bible ; but I have still a vivid remembrance of my father’s 
 intense expression of sorrow mixed with scorn, as he threw 
 down “Count Robert of Paris,” after reading three or four 
 pages ; and knew that the life of Scott was ended : the scorn 
 
HEBNE-IIILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS. 
 
 being a very complex and bitter feeling in him, — parti}', in- 
 deed, of the book itself, but chiefly of the wretches who were 
 tormenting and selling the wrecked intellect, and not a little, 
 deep down, of the subtle dishonesty which had essentially 
 caused the ruin. My father never could forgive Scott his 
 concealment of the Ballantyne partnershij^. 
 
 Such being the salutary pleasures of Herne Hill, I have next 
 with deeper gratitude to chronicle what I owed to my mother 
 for the resolutely consistent lessons which so exercised me in 
 the Scriptures as to make every word of them familiar to my 
 ear in habitual music, — ^yet in that familiarity reverenced, as 
 transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct.^' 
 
 This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal 
 authority ; but simply by compelling me to read the book 
 thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with 
 fluenc}^, she began a course of Bible work with me, which 
 never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses 
 W'ith me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, and 
 correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the 
 verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It 
 might be beyond me altogether ; that she did not care about ; 
 but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I 
 should get hold of it by tlie right end. 
 
 In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and 
 went straight through, to the last verse of the Apocalypse ; 
 hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all ; and began again 
 at Genesis the next day. If a name was hard, the better the 
 exercise in pronunciation,— if a chapter was tiresome, the 
 better lesson in patience, — if loathsome, the better lesson in 
 faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. Af- 
 ter our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to their 
 length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interruption 
 from servants allowed, — none from visitors, who either joined 
 in the reading or had to stay upstairs, — and none from any 
 visitings or excursions, except real travelling,) I had to learn 
 a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost. 
 
 * Compare tlie 52d paragrapli of chapter iii. of Bible of Amiens. 
 
36 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 something of what was already known ; and, with the chap- 
 ters thus gradually possessed from the first word to the last, I 
 had to learn the whole bod}'^ of the fine old Scottish para- 
 phrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse ; and 
 to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first culti- 
 vation of my ear in sound. 
 
 It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my 
 mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and 
 which was, to my child’s mind, chiefly repulsive — the 119th 
 Psalm — has now become of all the most precious to me, in its 
 overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God, 
 in opposition to the abuse of it by modern preachers of what 
 they imagine to be His gospel. 
 
 But it is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long 
 morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise, — toil on both 
 sides equal — by which, year after year, my mother forced me to 
 learn these paraphrases, and chapters, (the eighth of 1st Kings 
 being one — try it, good reader, in a leisure hour !) allov, dng 
 not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced ; while 
 every sentence was required to be said over and over again 
 till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect a 
 struggle between us of about three weeks, concerning the 
 accent of the “of ” in the lines 
 
 “ Shall any following spring revive 
 The ashes of the urn ?” — 
 
 I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true 
 instinct for rhythm, (being wholly careless on the subject both 
 of urns and their contents,) on reciting it with an accented of. 
 It was not, I say, till after three weeks^ labor, that my mother 
 got the accent lightened on the “ of ” and laid on the ashes, to 
 her mind. But had it taken three years, she would have done 
 it, having once undertaken to do it. And, assuredly, had she 
 not done it, — well, there’s no knowing what would have 
 happened ; but I am very thankful she did. 
 
 I have just opened my oldest (in use) Bible, — a small, 
 closely, and very neatly printed volume it is, printed in 
 Edinburgh by Sir D, Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers to 
 
HERNE-niLL ALMOND BLOSSOMS. 
 
 37 
 
 the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, in 1816. Yellow, now, 
 with age, and flexible, but not unclean, with much use, except 
 that the lower corners of the pages at 8th of 1st Kings, and 
 32d Deuteronomy, are worn somewhat thin and dark, the 
 learning of these two chapters having cost me much pains. 
 My mother’s list of the chapters with which, thus learned, she 
 established my soul in life,* has just fallen out of it. I will 
 take what indulgence the incurious reader can give me, for 
 printing the list thus accidentally occurrent : 
 
 Exodus chapters 
 
 2 Samuel “ 
 
 1 Kings “ 
 
 Psalms ' ** 
 
 Proverbs ** 
 
 Isaiah “ 
 
 Matthew 
 
 Acts “ 
 
 1 Corinthians “ 
 James “ 
 
 Revelation 
 
 15th and 20th. 
 
 1st, from 17th verse to the end. 
 
 8th. 
 
 23d, 32d, 90th, 91st, 103d, 112th 
 119th, 139th. 
 
 2d, 3d, 8th, 12th. 
 
 68th. 
 
 6th, 6th, 7th. 
 
 26th. 
 
 13th, 15th. 
 
 4th. 
 
 6th, 6th 
 
 And truly, though I have picked up the elements of a lit- 
 tle further knowledge — in mathematics, meteorology, and the 
 like, in after life, — and owe not a little to the teaching of 
 many people, this maternal installation of my mind in that 
 property of chapters, I count very confidently the most 
 precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my 
 education. 
 
 And it is perhaps already time to mark what advantage and 
 mischief, by the chances of life up to seven years old, had | 
 been irrevocably determined forme. 
 
 * This expression in Fors has naturally been supposed by some 
 readers to mean that my mother at this time made me vitally and 
 evangelically religious. The fact was far otherwise. I meant only that 
 she gave me secure ground for all future life, practical or s^uritual. See 
 
 the paragraph next following. 
 
38 
 
 PR^^TEUITA, 
 
 I will first count my blessings (as a not unwise friend once 
 recommended me to do, continually ; whereas I have a bad 
 trick of always numbering the thorns in my fingers and not 
 the bones in them). 
 
 And for best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had 
 been taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, 
 and word. 
 
 I never had heard my fathers or mother’s voice once raised 
 in any question with each other ; nor seen an angiy, or even 
 slightly hurt or offended, glance in the eyes of either. I had 
 never heard a servant scolded ; nor even suddenly, passion- 
 ately, or in any severe manner, blamed. I had never seen a 
 moment’s trouble or disorder in any household matter ; nor 
 anything whatever either done in a hurry, or undone in due 
 time. I had no conception of such a feeling as anxiety ; my 
 father’s occasional vexation in the afternoons, when he had 
 onty got an order for twelve butts, after expecting one for 
 fifteen, as I have just stated, was never manifested to me ; and 
 itself related only to the question whether his name would 
 be a step higher or lower in the year’s list of sherry ex- 
 porters; for he never spent more than half his income, and 
 therefore found himself little incommoded by occasional 
 variations in the total of it. I had never done any wrong that 
 I knew of — beyond occasionally delaying the commitment to 
 heart of some improving sentence, that I might watch a wasp 
 on the window pane, or a bird in the cherry tree ; and I had 
 never seen any grief. 
 
 Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had received the 
 perfect understanding of the natures of Obedience and Faith. 
 I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother, simply as 
 a ship her helm ; not only without idea of resistance, but 
 receiving the direction as a part of my own life and force, 
 a helpful law, as necessary to me in every moral action as the 
 law of gravity in leaping. And my practice in Faith was soon 
 complete : nothing was ever promised me that was not given ; 
 nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, and nothing 
 ever told me that was not true. 
 
 Peace, obedience, faith ; these three for chief good ; next 
 
HERNE-EILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS. 
 
 30 
 
 to these, the habit of fixed attention with both eyes and 
 mind — on which I will not further enlarge at this moment, 
 this being the main practical faculty of my life, causing 
 Mazzini to say of me, in conversation authentically reported, 
 a year or two before his death, that I had “ the most analytic 
 mind in Europe.” An opinion in which, so far as I am 
 acquainted with Europe, I am myself entirely disposeu co 
 concur. 
 
 Lastly, an extreme perfection in palate and all other bodily 
 senses, given by the utter prohibition of cake, wine, comfits, 
 or, except in carefullest restriction, fruit ; and by fine prepa- 
 ration of what food was given me. Such I esteem the main 
 blessings of my childhood ; — next, let me count the equally 
 dominant calamities. 
 
 First, that I had nothing to love. 
 
 My parents were— in a sort — visible powers of nature to 
 Jie, no more loved than the sun and the moon : only I should 
 have been annoyed and puzzled if either of them had gone 
 out ; (how much, now, when both are darkened !) — still less 
 did I love God ; not that I had any quarrel with Him, or fear 
 of Him ; but simply found what people told me was His ser- 
 vice, disagreeable ; and what people told me was His book, not 
 entertaining. I had no companions to quarrel with, neither ; 
 nobody to assist, and nobody to thank. Not a servant was 
 ever allowed to do anything for me, but what it was their duty 
 to do ; and why should I have been grateful to the cook for 
 cooking, or the gardener for gardening, — when the one dared 
 not give me a baked potato without asking leave, and the 
 other would not let my ants’ nests alone, because they made 
 the walks untidy ? The evil consequence of all this was not, 
 however, what might perhaps have been expected, that I grew 
 up selfish or unaffectionate ; but that, when affection did 
 come, it came with violence utterly rampant and unmanage- 
 able, at least by me, who never before had anything to man- 
 age. 
 
 For (second of chief calamities) I had nothing to endure. 
 Hanger or pain of any kind I knew not : my strength was 
 never exercised, my patience never tried, and my courage 
 
40 
 
 PRMTEBITA. 
 
 ne\er fortified. Not that I was ever afraid of anything, — • 
 either ghosts, thunder, or beasts; and one of the nearest 
 approaches to insubordination which I was ever tempted into 
 as a child, was in passionate effort to get leave to play with 
 the lion’s cubs in Womb well’s menagerie. 
 
 Thirdly. I was taught no precision nor etiquette of man- 
 ners ; it was enough if, in the little society we saw, I remained 
 unobtrusive, and replied to a question without shyness : but 
 the shyness came later, and increased as I grew conscious of the 
 rudeness arising from the want of social discipline, and found 
 it impossible to acquire, in advanced life, dexterity in any 
 bodily exercise, skill in any pleasing accomplishment, or ease 
 and tact in ordinary behavior. 
 
 Lastly, and chief of evils. My judgment of right and 
 wrong, and powers of independent action,^ were left entirely 
 undeveloped ; because the bridle and blinkers were never 
 taken off me. Children should have their times of being off 
 duty, like soldiers ; and when once the obedience, if required, 
 is certain, the little creature should be very early put for 
 periods of practice in complete command of itself ; set on the 
 barebacked horse of its own will, and left to break it by its 
 own strength. But the ceaseless authority exercised over my 
 youth left me, when cast out at last into the world, unable 
 for some time to do more than drift with its vortices. 
 
 My present verdict, therefore, on the general tenor of my 
 education at that time, must be, that it was at once too formal 
 and too luxurious ; leaving my character, at the most im- 
 portant moment for its construction, cramped indeed, but not 
 disciplined ; and only by protection innocent, instead of by 
 practice virtuous. My mother saw this herself, and but too 
 clearh^, in later years ; and whenever I did anything wrong, 
 stupid, or hard-hearted, — (and I have done many things that 
 were all three,) — always said, “It is because you were too 
 much indulged.” 
 
 Thus far, with some omissions, I have merely reprinted the 
 
 ^Action, observe, I say here : in thought I was too independent, as 
 I said above. 
 
EEBNE-niLL ALMOND BLOSSOMS. 
 
 41 
 
 account of these times given in “ Fors : ” and I fear the sequel 
 may be more trivial, because much is concentrated in the 
 foregoing broad statement, which I have now to continue by 
 slower steps ; — and yet less amusing, because I tried always 
 ill “ Fors ” to say things, if I could, a little piquantly ; and the 
 rest of the things related in this book will be told as plainly as 
 I can. But whether I succeeded in writing piquantly in Fors 
 or not, I certainl}" wrote often obscurely ; and the description 
 above given of Herne Hill seems to me to need at once some 
 reduction to plainer terms. 
 
 The actual height of the long ridge of Herne Hill, above 
 Thames, — at least above the nearly Thames-level of its base at 
 Camberwell Green, is, I conceive, not more than one hundred 
 and fifty feet: but it gives the whole of this fall on both 
 sides of it in about a quarter of a mile ; forming, east and 
 west, a succession of quite beautiful pleasure-ground and 
 gardens, instantly dry after rain, and in which, for children, 
 running down is pleasant jfiay, and rolling a roller up, vigor- 
 ous work. The view from the ridge on both sides was, before 
 railroads came, entirely lovely : westward at evening, almost 
 sublime, over softl}^ wreathing distances of domestic wood ; — 
 Thames herself not visible, nor any fields except immediately 
 beneath ; but the tops of twenty square miles of politely in- 
 habited groves. On the other side, east and south, the Nor- 
 wood hills, partly rough wdth furze, partly wooded with birch 
 and oak, partly in pure green bramble copse, and rather steep 
 pasture, rose with the promise of all the rustic loveliness of 
 Surrey and Kent in them, and with so much of space and 
 height in their sweep, as gave them some fellowship with bills 
 of true hill-districts. Fellowship now inconceivable, for the 
 Crystal Palace, without ever itself attaining any true aspect of 
 size, and possessing no more sublimity than a cucumber frame 
 between two chimneys, yet by its stupidity of hollow bulk, 
 dwarfs the hills at once ; so that now one thinks of them no 
 more but as three long lumps of clay, on lease for building. 
 But then, the Nor-wood, or North wood, so called as it was 
 seen from Croydon, in o])position to the South wood of the 
 Surrey downs, drew itself in sweeping crescent good five miles 
 
4:2 
 
 PBJSTERITA, 
 
 round Dulwich to the south, broken by lanes of ascent, 
 Gipsy Hill, and others ; and from the top, commanding views 
 toward Hartford, and over the plain of Croydon, — in con- 
 templation of which I one day frightened my mother out of 
 her wits by saying “ the eyes were coming out of my head!” 
 She thought it was an attack of coup-de-soleil. 
 
 Central in such amphitheatre, the crowning glory of Herne 
 Hill was accordingly, that, after walking along its ridge south- 
 ward from London through a mile of chestnut, lilac, and 
 apple trees, hanging over the wooden palings on each side— 
 suddenly the trees stopped on the left, and out one came on 
 the top of a field sloping down to the south into Dulwich 
 valley — open field animate with cow and buttercup, and 
 below, the beautiful meadows and high avenues of Dulwich ; 
 and beyond, all that crescent of the Norwood hills ; a footpath, 
 entered by a turnstile, going down to the left, always so warm 
 that invalids could be sheltered there in March, when to walk 
 elsewhere would have been death to them ; and so quiet, that 
 whenever I had anything difficult to compose or think of, I 
 used to do it rather there than in our own garden. The 
 great field was separated from the path and road only by 
 light wooden open palings, four feet high, needful to keep 
 the cows in. Since I last composed, or meditated there, vari- 
 ous improvements have taken place ; first the neighborhood 
 wanted a new church, and built a meagre Gothic one with a 
 useless spire, for the fashion of the thing, at the side of the 
 field ; then they built a parsonage behind it, the two stopping 
 out half the view in that direction. Then the Crystal Palace 
 came, for ever spoiling the view through all its compass, and 
 bringing every show-day, from London, a flood of pedestrians 
 dowm the footpath, who left it filthy with cigar ashes for the 
 rest of the W'eek : then the railroads came, and expatiating 
 roughs by every excursion train, who knocked the palings 
 about, roared at the cows, and tore down what branches of 
 blossom they could reach over the palings on the enclosed 
 side. Then the residents on the enclosed side built a brick 
 wall to defend themselves. Then the path got to be insufihr- 
 ably hot as well as dirty, and was gradually abandoned to the 
 
EERNE-HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS. 
 
 43 
 
 ! roughs, with a policeman on watch at the bottom. Finally, 
 1 this year, a six foot high close paling has been put down the 
 :j other side of it, and the processional excursionist has the lib- 
 erty of obtaining what notion of the country air and pros- 
 l’ pect he may, between the wall and that, with one bad cigar 
 
 ii before him, another behind him, and another in his mouth. 
 
 1 
 
 I do not mean this book to be in any avoidable way dis- 
 i| agreeable or querulous ; but expressive generally of my native 
 |j disposition — which, though I say it, is extremely amiable, 
 
 I when I’m not bothered : I will grumble elsewhere when I 
 i; must, and only notice this injury alike to the resident and ex- 
 li cursionist at Herne Hill, because questions of right-of-way 
 I are now of constant occurrence ; and in most cases, the mere 
 path is the smallest part of the old Eight, truly understood. 
 The Eight is of the cheerful view and sweet air which the path 
 commanded. 
 
 Also, I may note in passing, that for all their talk about 
 Magna Charta, very few Englishmen are aware that one of the 
 main provisions of it is that Law should not be sold ; and it 
 seems to me that the law of England might preserve Banstead 
 and other downs free to the poor of England, without charg- 
 ing me, as it has just done, a hundred pounds for its tempo- 
 I rary performance of that otherwise unremunerative duty, 
 i I shall have to return over the ground of these early years, 
 
 I to fill gaps, after getting on a little first ; but will yet venture 
 i here the tediousness of explaining that my saying in Herne 
 ' Hill garden all fruit was forbidden,” onl}" meant, of course, 
 || forbidden unless under defined restriction ; which made the 
 various gatherings of each kind in its season a sort of harvest 
 I festival ; and which had this further good in its apparent 
 j severity, that, although in the at last indulgent aeras, the 
 i| peach which my mother gathered for me when she was sure 
 I it was ripe, and the cherry pie for which I had chosen the 
 I cherries red all round, were, I suppose, of more ethereal 
 I flavor to me than they could have been to children allowed 
 
 “To no one will We sell, to no one will We deny or defer. Right or 
 Justice.” 
 
44 
 
 PR^TEBITA, 
 
 to pluck and eat at . their will ; still, the unalloyed and long 
 continuing pleasure given me by our fruit-tree avenue was in 
 its blossom, not in its bearing. For the general epicurean 
 enjoyment of existence, potatoes well browned, green peas 
 well boiled, — broad beans of the true bitter, — and the pots 
 of damson and currant for whose animal filling we were 
 dependent more on the greengrocer than the garden, were a 
 hundredfold more important to me than the dozen or two of 
 nectarines of which perhaps I might get the halves of three, 
 — (the other sides mouldy) — or the bushel or two of pears 
 which w’ent directly to the storeshelf. So that, very early in- 
 deed in my thoughts of trees, I had got at the principle 
 given fifty years afterward in Proserpina, that the seeds and 
 fruits of them were for the sake of the flowers, not the 
 flowers for the fruit. The first joy of the year being in its 
 snowdrops, the second, and cardinal one, was in the almond 
 blossom, — every other garden and woodland gladness follow- 
 ing from that in an unbroken order of kindling flower and 
 shadowy leaf ; and for many and many a year to come, — un- 
 til indeed, the whole of life became autumn to me, — my chief 
 prayer for the kindness of heaven, in its flowerful seasons, 
 was that the frost might not touch the almond blossom. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE B.^KS OF TAY. 
 
 The reader has, I hope, observed that in all I have hitherto 
 said, emphasis has been laid only on the favorable conditions 
 which surrounded the child 'svhose history I am writing, and 
 on the docile and impressionable quietness of its temper. 
 
 No claim has been made for it to any special power or ca- 
 pacity ; for, indeed, none such existed, except that patience in 
 looking, and precision in feeling, which afterward, with due 
 industry, formed my analytic power. 
 
 In all essential qualities of genius, except these, I w^as de- 
 ficient ; my memory only of average power. I have literally 
 
THE BANKS OF TAY. 
 
 45 * 
 
 never known a child so inc.apable of acting a part, or telling 
 a tale. On the other hand, I have never known one whose 
 thirst for visible fact was at once so eager and so methodic. 
 
 I find also that in the foregoing accounts, modest as I 
 meant them to be, liigher literature is too boastfully spoken 
 of as my first and exclusive study. My little Pope’s “ Iliad,” 
 and, in any understanding of them, my Genesis and Exodus, 
 were certainly of little account with me till after I was ten. 
 My calf milk of books was, on the lighter side, composed of 
 “Dame Wiggins of Lee,” “ The Peacock at Home,” and the like 
 nursery rhymes ; and on the graver side, of Miss Edgeworth’s 
 “Frank,” and “ Harry and Lucy,” combined with “Joyce’s 
 Scieiititic Dialogues.” The earliest dated efforts I can find, in- 
 dicating incipient motion of brain-molecules, are six “poems” 
 on subjects selected from those works ; between the fourth and 
 fifth of which my mother has written ; “ January, 1826. This 
 book begun about September or October, 1826, finished 
 about January, 1827.” The whole of it, therefore, v/as written 
 and printed in imitation of book-print, in seventh year. 
 The book is a little red one, ruled with blue, six inches high by 
 four wide, containing forty-five leaves pencilled in imitation 
 of print on both sides, — the title- 2 :>age, written in the form 
 here aj^proximately imitated, 46, on the inside of the cover. 
 
 Of tlie 2 ^ 1 ’oinised four volumes, it aj^pears that (according 
 to my practice to this day) I accomplished but one and a 
 quarter, the first volume consisting only of forty leaves, the 
 rest of the book being occu^fied b}’’ the aforesaid six “ poems,” 
 and the forty leaves losing ten of their pages in the “copper 
 2 )lates,” of which the one, j^urporting to rejDresent “Harry’s 
 new road,” is, I believe, my first effort at mountain drawing. 
 The 2 :>assage closing the first volume of this work is, I think, 
 for several reasons, worth preservation. I 2 )rint it, therefore, 
 Vvith its own divisions of line, and three variations of size in 
 imitated type. Punctuation must be left to the reader’s kind 
 conjecture. The hyphens, it is to be noticed, were put long 
 or short, to make the print even, not that it ever succeeds in 
 being so, but the variously s^Daced lines here imitate it pretty 
 well. 
 
PR^TmiTA. 
 
 4 -^ 
 
 HARRY AND LUCY 
 
 CONCLUDED 
 
 BEING THE LAST 
 
 PART OF 
 
 EARLY LESSONS 
 
 in four volumes 
 vol I 
 
 with coppef 
 plates 
 
 PRINTED and composed by a little boy 
 and also drawn. 
 
THE BANKS OF TAT, 
 
 47 
 
 Harry knew very well- 
 what it was and went 
 on with his drawing but 
 Lucy soon called him aw- 
 ay and bid him observe 
 a great black cloud from- 
 the north which seemed ra 
 ther electrical. Harry ran 
 
 for an electrical apparatus which 
 his father had given him and the- 
 cloud electrified his apparatus positively 
 after that another cloud came which 
 electrified his apparatus negatively 
 and then a long train of smaller 
 ones but before this cloud came 
 
PR^TERITA, 
 
 4S 
 
 a great cloud of dust rose from 
 the ground and followed the pos 
 itive cloud and at length seemed 
 to come in contact with it and 
 when the other cloud came 
 a flash of lightning was seen 
 to dart through the cloud of 
 dust upon which the negative 
 cloud spread very much and 
 dissolved in rain which pres 
 ently cleared the sky 
 
 After this phenomenon was over 
 and also the surprise Harry began 
 to wonder how electricity 
 could get where there was- 
 so much water but he soon- 
 
 observed a 
 
 rainbow 
 
 and a- 
 
 rising 
 
 mist 
 
 under 
 
 it which 
 
 his 
 
 fancy 
 
 soon 
 
 transform 
 
 ed into a female form. He 
 then remembered the witch of 
 the waters at the Alps who 
 was raised from them by- 
 takeing some water in the- 
 
THE BANKS OF TAY. 
 
 4D 
 
 hand and throwing it into 
 the air pronouncing some 
 unintelligable words. And 
 though it was a tale it- 
 affected Harry now when 
 he saw in the clouds some- 
 end of Harry thing 
 and Lucy like it. 
 
 The several reasons aforesaid, which induce me to reprint 
 this piece of, too literally, “ composition,” are — the first, that 
 it is a tolerable specimen of my seven years old spelling ; — 
 tolerable only, woi fair, since it was extremely unusual with me 
 to make a mistake at all, whereas here there are two (takeing 
 and unintelligable), which I can only account for by supposing 
 I was in too gi*eat a hurry to finish my volume ; — the second, 
 that the adaptation of materials for my stoiy out of “ Joyce’s 
 Scientific Dialogues”"^ and “Manfred,” is an extremely per- 
 
 '“ Tlie original passage is as follows, vol. vi., edition of 1821, p. 
 188: — 
 
 “ Dr. Franklin mentions a remarkable a]:)pearance which occurred to 
 Mr. Wilke, a considerable electrician. On the 20th of July, 1758, at 
 three o’clock in the afternoon, he observed a great cpiantity of dust 
 rising from the ground, and covering a field, and part of the town in 
 which he then was. There was no wind, and the dust moved gently 
 toward the east, where there appeared a great black cloud, which 
 electrified his apparatus positively to a very high degree. This cloud 
 went toward the west, the dust followed it, and continued to rise 
 higher and higher, till it composed a thick pillar, in the form of a 
 sugar-loaf, and at length it seemed to be in contact with the cloud. At 
 some distance from this, there came another great cloud, with a long 
 stream of smaller ones, which electrified his apparatus negatively; and 
 when they came near the positive cloud, a fiash of lightning was seen 
 to dart through the cloud of dust, upon which the negative clouds 
 spread very much, and dissolved in I’crin, which presently cleared the 
 atmosphere.” 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 PBJETEBITA. 
 
 feet type of the interwoven temper of my mind, at the be- 
 ginning of days just as much as at their end — which has 
 always made foolish scientific readers doubt my books because 
 there was love of beauty in them, and foolish sesthetic readers 
 doubt my books because there was love of science in them ; 
 — the third, that the extremely reasonable method of final 
 judgment, upon which I found my claim, to the sensible 
 reader’s respect for these dipartite writings, cannot be better 
 illustrated than by this proof, that, even at seven years old, 
 no tale, however seductive, could “ affect ” Harry, until he 
 had seen — in the clouds, or elsewhere — “something like it.” 
 Of the six poems which follow, the first is on the Steam- 
 engine, beginning, 
 
 “When furious up from mines the water pours, 
 
 And clears from rusty moisture all the ores 
 
 and the last on the Eainbow, “in blank verse,” as being of a 
 didactic character, with observations on the ignorant and 
 unreflective dispositions of certain people. 
 
 “ But those that do not know about that light, 
 
 Reflect not on it ; and in all that light, 
 
 Not one of all the colors do they know.” 
 
 It was only, I think, after my seventh year had been ful- 
 filled in these meditations, that my mother added the Latin 
 lesson to the Bible-reading, and accurately established the 
 daily routine Avhich was sketched in the foregoing chapter. 
 But it extremely surprises me, in trying, at least for my own 
 amusement, if not the reader’s, to finish the sketch into its 
 corners, that I can’t recollect now what used to happen first 
 in the morning, except breakfasting in the nursery, and, if my 
 Croydon cousin Bridget happened to be staying with us, 
 quarrelling with her which should have the brownest bits of 
 toast. That must have been later on, though, for I could not 
 have been promoted to toast at the time I am thinking of. 
 Nothing is well clear to me of the day’s course, till, after my 
 
THE BANKS OF TAY. 
 
 51 
 
 father had gone to the City by the coach, and my mother’s 
 household orders being qiiickty given, lessons began at half- 
 past nine, with the Bible readings above described, and the 
 two or three verses to be learned by heart, with a verse of 
 paraphrase ; — then a Latin declension or bit of verb, and eight 
 w^ords of vocabulary from “Adam’s Latin Grammar,” (the best 
 that ever was,) and the rest of the day Avas my own. Arith- 
 metic was wholesomely remitted till much later ; geography 
 I taught myself fast enough in my own way ; histoiy w^as 
 never thought of, beyond what I chose to read of Scott’s “Tales 
 of a Grandfather.” Thus, as aforesaid, by noon I Avas in the 
 garden on fine days, or left to my oAvn amusements on wet 
 ones ; of which I have farther at once to note that nearly as 
 soon Jis I could craAvl, my toy-bricks of lignum vitse had been 
 constant companions ; and I am graceless in forgetting by 
 Avhat extravagant friend, ^ greatly suspect my Croydon aunt,) 
 I was afterAvard gifted with a two-arched bridge, admirable 
 in fittings of voussoir and keystone, and adjustment of the 
 level courses of masonry Avith bevelled edges, into Avhich they 
 dovetailed, in the style of Waterloo Bridge. Well-made cen- 
 trings, and a course of inlaid steps doAvn to the Avater, made 
 this model largely, as accurately, instructive : and I was never 
 weary of building, t<?ibuilding, — (it Avas too strong to be 
 throwm doAvn, but had alwa^^s to be taken down,) — and re- 
 building it. This inconceivably passive — or rather impassive 
 — contentment in doing, or reading, the same thing over and 
 over again, I perceive to have been a great condition in my 
 future pov/er of getting thoroughly to the bottom of mat- 
 ters. 
 
 Some 2^eople AA^ould say that in getting these toys lay the 
 chance that guided me to an early love of architecture ; but I 
 never saw or heard of another child so fond of its toy bricks, 
 except Miss Edgeworth’s Frank. To be sure, in this present 
 age, — age of universal brickfield though it be, — people don’t 
 give their children toy bricks, but toy puff-puffs ; and the little 
 things are abvays taking tickets and arriving at stations, Avith- 
 out ever fathoming — none of them AAdll take pains enough to 
 do that^ — the principle of a puff-puff ! And what good could 
 
52 
 
 PR2ETEBITA. 
 
 they get of it if they did, — unless they could learn also, that 
 no principle of Puff-puff would ever supersede the principle 
 of Breath ? 
 
 But I not only mastered, with “Harry and Lucy,” the entire 
 motive principle of puff-puff ; but also, by help of my well-cut 
 bricks, very utterly the laws of practical stability in towers 
 and arches, by the time I was seven or eight years old : and 
 these studies of structure were farther animated by my 
 invariable habit of watching, with the closest attention, the 
 proceedings of any bricklayers, stone-sawyers, or paviors, — 
 whose work my nurse would allow me to stop to contemplate 
 in our walks ; or, delight of delights, might be seen at ease 
 from some fortunate Avindow of inn or lodging on our jour- 
 neys. In those cases the day was not long enough for my 
 rapture and riveted observation. 
 
 Constantly, as aforesaid, in the garden when the weather 
 was fine, my time there was passed chiefly in the same kind of 
 close watching of the Avays of plants. I had not the smallest 
 taste for groAving them, or taking care of them, any more 
 than for taking care of the birds, or the trees, or the sky, or 
 the sea. My Avhole time passed in staring at them, or into 
 them. In no morbid curiosity, but in admiring wonder, I 
 pulled every flower to pieces till I knew all that could be seen 
 of it Avith child’s eyes ; and used to lay up little treasures of 
 seeds, by way of pearls and beads, — never with any thought of 
 soAving them. The old gardener only came once a week, for 
 what sweeping and weeding needed doing ; I Avas fain to learn 
 to sweep the Avalks with him, but Avas discouraged and shamed 
 by his always doing the bits I had done over again. I Avas 
 extremely fond of digging holes, but that form of gardening 
 Avas not alloAved. Necessarily, I fell always back into my 
 merely contemplative mind, and at nine years old began a 
 poem, called “Eudosia,” — I forget AAholly where I got hold of 
 this name, or Avhat I understood by it, — “On the Universe,” 
 though I could understand not a little by it, now. A couplet 
 or two, as the real beginning at once of “Deucalion ” and “Pro- 
 serpina,” may be perhaps allowed, together with the preceding, 
 a place in this grave memoir ; the rather that I am again 
 
THE BANKS OF TAY. 
 
 53 
 
 enabled to give accurate date — September 28th, 1828 — for the 
 beginning of its “First book,” as follows; — 
 
 “ Wlien first the wratli of heaven o’erwhelmed the world, 
 
 And o’er the rocks, and hills, and mountains, hurl’d 
 The waters’ gathering mass ; and sea o’er shore, — 
 
 Then mountains fell, and vales, unknown before. 
 
 Lay where tliey were. Far different was the Earth 
 When first the Hood came down, than at its second birth. 
 
 Now for its produce ! — Queen of flowers, O rose, 
 
 From whose fair colored leaves such odor flows. 
 
 Thou must now be l)efore thy subjects named, 
 
 Both for thy beauty and thy sweetness famed. 
 
 Thou art the flower of England, and the flow r 
 Of Beauty too— of Venus' odrous bower. 
 
 And thou wilt often shed sweet odors round, 
 
 And often stooping, hide thy head on ground.'*' 
 
 And then the lily, towering up so proud, 
 
 And raising its gay head among the various crowd, 
 
 There the black spots upon a scarlet ground, 
 
 And there the taper- pointed leaves are found.” 
 
 In 220 lines, of such quality, the first book ascends from 
 the rose to the oak. The second begins — to my surprise, and 
 in extremely exceptional violation of my above-boasted custom 
 — with an ecstatic apostrophe to what I had never seen 1 
 
 “ I sing the Pine, which clothes high Switzer’s f head, 
 
 And high enthroned, grows on a rocky bed. 
 
 On gulphs so deep, on cliffs that are so high. 
 
 He that would dare to climb them, dares to die.” 
 
 TIjIs enthusiasm, however, only lasts — mostly exhausting 
 itself in a description, verified out of “ Harry and Lucy,” of the 
 slide of Alpnach, — through 76 lines, w^hen the verses cease, 
 and the book being turned upside down, begins at the other 
 end with the information that “ Rock-crystal is accompanied 
 by Actynolite, Axinite, and Epidote, at Bourg d’Oisaus in 
 
 * An awkward way — chiefly for the rhyme’s sake — of saying that roses 
 are often too heavy for their stalks, 
 f Switzer, clearly short for Switzerland. 
 
54 
 
 PR^TEEITA. 
 
 Daiiphiny.” But the garden-meditations never ceased, and 
 it is impossible to say how much strength was gained, or 
 how much time uselessly given, except in pleasure, to these 
 quiet hours and foolish rhymes. Their happiness made all 
 the duties of outer life irksome, and their unprogressive rev- 
 eries might, the reader may think, if my mother had wished, 
 have been changed into a beginning of sound botanical 
 knowledge. But, while there were books on geology and 
 mineralogy which I could understand, all on botany were 
 then, — and they are little mended now, — harder than the 
 Latin grammar. The mineralogy was enough for me seri- 
 ously to work at, and I am inclined finally to aver that the 
 garden-time could not have been more rightly passed, unless 
 in weeding. 
 
 At six punctually I joined my father and mother at tea, 
 being, in the drawing-room, restricted to the inhabitation of 
 the sacred niche above referred to, a recess beside the fire- 
 place, well lighted from the lateral window in the summer 
 evenings, and by the chimney-piece lamp in winter, and out 
 of all inconvenient heat, or hurtful draught. A good writing- 
 table before it shut me well in, and carried my plate and 
 cup, or books in service. After tea, my father read to my 
 mother what pleased themselves, I picking up what I could, 
 or reading what I liked better instead. Thus I heard all the 
 Shakespeare comedies and historical plays again and again, — 
 all Scott, and all “Don Quixote,” a favorite book of my father’s, 
 and at which I could then laugh to ecstasy ; now, it is one of 
 the saddest, and, in some things, the most offensive of books 
 to me. 
 
 My father was an absolutely beautiful reader of the best 
 poetry and prose ; — of Shakespeare, Pope, Spenser, Byron, 
 and Scott ; as of Goldsmith, Addison, and Johnson. Lighter 
 ballad poetry he had not fineness of ear to do justice to : his 
 sense of the strength and wisdom of true meaning, and of 
 the force of rightly ordered syllables, made his delivery of 
 “Hamlet,” “Lear,” “Caesar,” or “Marmion,” melodiously grand 
 and just ; but he had no idea of modulating the refrain of a 
 ballad, and had little patience with the tenor of its sentiment. 
 
THE BANKS OF TAY. 
 
 55 
 
 He looked always, iu the matter of what he read, for heroic 
 will and consummate reason : never tolerated the morbid love 
 of misery for its own sake, and never read, either for his own 
 pleasure or my instruction, such ballads as “Burd Helen,” the 
 “Twa Corines,” or any other rhyme or story which sought its 
 interest in vain love or fruitless death. 
 
 But true, pure, and ennobling sadness began very early to 
 mingle its undertone with the constant happiness of those 
 days ; — a ballad music, beautiful in sincerity, and hallowing 
 them like cathedral chant. Concerning which, — I must go 
 back now to the days I have only heard of with the hearing 
 of the ear, and yet of which some are to me as if mine eyes 
 had seen them. 
 
 It must have been a little after 1780 that my paternal 
 grandmother, Catherine Tweeddale, ran away wnth my pater- 
 nal grandfather when she was not quite sixteen ; and my 
 aunt Jessie, my father’s only sister, was born a year after- 
 ward ; a few weeks after which event, my grandmother, not 
 yet seventeen, was surprised, by a friend who came into her 
 room unannounced, dancing a threesome reel, with two chairs 
 for her partners ; she having found at the moment no other 
 way of adequately expressing the pleasure she took in this 
 mortal life, and its gifts and promises. 
 
 The latter failed somewhat afterward ; and my aunt Jessie, 
 a very precious and perfect creature, beautiful in her dark- 
 eyed, Highland way, — utterly religious, in her quiet Puritan 
 way, — and very submissive to Fates mostly unkind, was mar- 
 ried to a somewhat rough tanner, with a fairly good business 
 in the good town of Perth : and, when I was old enough to 
 be taken first to visit them, my aunt and my uncle the tanner 
 lived in a square-built gray stone house in the suburb of 
 Perth known as “Bridge-End,” the house some fifty yards 
 north of the bridge ; its garden sloping steeply to the Tay, 
 which eddied, three or four feet deep of sombre crystal, round 
 the steps where the servants dipped their pails. 
 
 A mistaken correspondent in “Fors” once complained of my 
 coarse habit of sneering at people of no ancestry. I have no 
 0 uch habit ; though not always entirely at ease in writing of 
 
56 
 
 PRMTERITA. 
 
 my uncles the baker and the tanner. And my readers may 
 trust me when I tell them that, in now remembering my 
 dreams in the house of the entirely honest chief baker of 
 Market Street, Croydon, and of Peter, — not Simon, — the tan- 
 ner, whose house was by the riverside of Perth, I would not 
 change the dreams, far less the tender realities, of those early 
 diiys, for anything I hear now remembered by lords or dames, 
 of their days of childhood in castle halls, and by sweet lawns 
 and lakes in park-walled forest. 
 
 Lawn and lake enough indeed I had, in the North Inch of 
 Perth, and pools of pausing Tay, before Rose Terrace, (where 
 I used to live after my uncle died, briefly apoplectic, at Bridge- 
 End,) in the peace of the fair Scotch summer days, with my 
 wddowed aunt, and my little cousin Jessie, then traversing a 
 bright space between her sixth and ninth year ; dark-eyed 
 deeply, ^ like her mother, and similarly pious ; so that she 
 and I used to compete in the Sunday evening Scriptural ex- 
 aminations ; and be as proud as two little peacocks because 
 Jessie’s elder brothers, and sister Mary, used to get “put 
 down,” and either Jessie or I was always “Dux.” We agreed 
 upon this that we would be married when we were a little 
 older ; not considering it to be preparatorily necessary to 
 be in any degree wiser. 
 
 Strangely, the kitchen servant-of-all-work in the house at 
 Rose Terrace was a very old “ Mause,” — before, my grand- 
 father’s servant in Edinburgh, — who might well have been the 
 prototype of the Mause of “ Old Mortality,” f but had even a 
 
 * As opposed to tlie darkness of mere iris, making the eyes like black 
 cherries. 
 
 f Vulgar modern Puritanism has shown its degeneracy in nothing 
 more tlian in its incapability of understanding Scott’s exquisitely finished 
 portraits of the Covenanter. In Old Mortality alone, there are four 
 which cannot be surpassed; the typical one, Elspeth, faultlessly sublime 
 and pure ; the second, Ephraim Macbriar, giving the too common phase 
 of the character, which is touched with ascetic insanity ; the third, 
 Mause, colored and made sometimes ludicrous by Scottish conceit, but 
 utterly strong and pure at heart ; the last, Balfour, a study of supreme 
 interest, showing the effect of the Puritan faith, sincerely held, on a 
 naturally and incurably cruel and base spirit. Add to these four studies. 
 
THE BANKS OF TAK 
 
 57 
 
 more solemn, fearless, and patient faith, fastened in her by 
 extreme suffering ; for she had been nearly starved to death 
 when she was a girl, and had literally picked the bones out 
 of cast-out dust-heaps to gnaw ; and ever afterward, to see 
 the waste of an atom of food was as shocking to her as blas- 
 phemy. “Oh, Miss Margaret ! ” she said once to my mother, 
 who had shaken some crumbs off a dirt}^ plate out of the win- 
 dow, “ I had rather you had knocked me down.” She would 
 make her dinner upon anything in the house that the other 
 servants wouldn’t eat ; — often upon potato skins, giving her 
 own dinner away to any poor person she saw ; and would 
 always stand during the whole church service, (though at least 
 seventy years old when I knew her, and very feeble,) if she 
 could persuade any wild Amorite out of the streets to take 
 her seat. Pier v.uinkled and worn face, moveless in resolution 
 and patience, incapable of smile, and knit sometimes perhaps 
 too severely against Jessie and me, if we wanted more creamy 
 milk to our porridge, or jumped off our favorite box on Sunday, 
 — (“ Never mind, John,” said Jessie to me, once, seeing me in 
 an unchristian state of provocation on this subject, “ when we’re 
 married, we’ll jump off boxes all day long, if we like ! ”) — may 
 have been partly instrumental in giving me that slight bias 
 against Evangelical religion, which I confess to be sometimes 
 traceable in my later works ; but I never can be thankful 
 enough for having seen in our own “ Old Manse,” the Scottish 
 Puritan spirit in its perfect faith and force ; and been enabled 
 tliercfore afterward to trace its agency in the reforming 
 policy of Scotland, with the reverence and honor it deserves. 
 
 My aunt, a pure dove-priestess, if ever there was one, of 
 Highland Dodona, was of a far gentler temper ; but still, to 
 me, remained at a wistful distance. She had been much sad- 
 dened by the loss of three of her children before her hus- 
 band’s death. Eittle Peter, especially, had been the corner- 
 stone of her love’s building ; and it was thrown down swiftly : 
 
 from this single novel, those in the Heart of Midlothian, and Nicol 
 Jarvie and Andrew Fairservice from Eob Roy, and you have a series 
 of theological analyses far beyond those of any other philosophical work 
 that I know, of any period. 
 
58 
 
 PR^ETERITA. 
 
 — white swelling came in the knee ; he suffered much, and 
 grew weaker gradually, dutiful always, and loving, and wholly 
 patient. She wanted him one day to take half a glass of port 
 wine, and took him on her knee, and put it to his lips. Not 
 now, mamma ; in a minute,” said he; and put his head on her 
 shoulder, and gave one long, low sigh, and died. Then there 
 was Catharine ; and — I forget the other little daughter’s name, 
 I did not see them ; my mother told me of them ; — eagerly 
 always about Catharine, who had been her own favorite. My 
 aunt had been talking earnestly one day with her husband 
 about these two children ; planning this and that for their 
 schooling and what not : at night, for a little while she could 
 not sleep ; and as she lay thinking, she saw the door of the 
 room open, and tw'o spades come into it, and stand at the foot 
 of her bed. Both the children were dead within brief time 
 afterward. I was about to write “within a fortnight ” — but I 
 cannot be sure of remembering my mother’s words accurately. 
 
 But when I was in Perth, there w’ere still — Mary, her eldest 
 daughter, who looked after us children when Mause was too 
 busy ; James and John, William and Andrew ; (I can’t think 
 whom the unapostolic William was named after). But the 
 boys were then all at school or college, — the scholars, William 
 and Andrew, only came home to tease Jessie and me, and eat 
 the biggest jargonel pears ; the collegians were wholly ab- 
 stract ; and the two girls and I played in our quiet ways on 
 the North Inch, and by the “Lead,” a stream “led” from the 
 Tay past Rose Terrace into the town for molinary purposes ; 
 and long ago, I suppose, bricked over or choked with rubbish ; 
 but then lovelj^ and a perpetual treasure of flowing diamond 
 to us children. Mary, by the way, was ascending toward 
 twelve — fair, blue-eyed, and moderately pretty ; and as pious 
 as Jennie, without being quite so zealous. 
 
 My father rarely stayed with us in Perth, but went on 
 business travel through Scotland, and even my mother became 
 a curiously unimportant figure at Rose Terrace. I can’t 
 understand how she so rarely walked with us children ; she 
 and my aunt seemed always to have their own secluded ways. 
 Mary, Jessie, and I were allowed to do what we liked on the 
 
THE BANKS OF TAT, 
 
 59 
 
 Inch : and I don’t remember doing any lessons in these Perth 
 times, except the above-described competitive divinity on 
 Sunday. 
 
 Had there been anybody then to teach me anything about 
 plants or pebbles, it had been good for me ; as it was, I 
 passed my days much as the thistles and tansy did, only with 
 perpetual w^atching of all the ways of running water, — a sin- 
 gular awe developing itself in me, both of the pools of Tay, 
 where the water changed from brown to blue-black, and of 
 the precipices of Kinnoull ; partly out of my own mind, and 
 partly because the servants always became serious wdieii we 
 went up Kinnoull way, especially if I w^anted to stay and look 
 at the little crystal spring of Bower’s Well. 
 
 “But you say you were not afraid of anything?” writes a 
 friend, anxious for the unassailable veracity of these memoirs. 
 Well, I said, not of ghosts, thunder, or beasts, — meaning to 
 specify the commonest terrors of mere childhood. Every day, 
 as I grew wiser, taught me a reasonable fear ; else I had not 
 above described m3"self as the most reasonable person of my 
 acquaintance. And by the swirls of smooth blackness, broken 
 by no fleck of foam, where Ta}^ gathered herself like Medusa,* 
 I never passed without awe, even in those thoughtless days ; 
 neither do I in the least mean that I could walk among tomb- 
 stones in the night (neither, for that matter, in the day), as if 
 they were only paving stones set upright. Far the contrary ; 
 but it is important to the reader’s confidence in writings 
 wdiich have seemed inordinately impressional and emotional, 
 that he should know I waas never subject to — I should per- 
 haps rather say, sorrow^full}^, never capable of—any manner 
 of illusion or false imagination, nor in the least liable to have 
 my nerves shaken by surprise. When I w'as about five years 
 old, having been on amicable terms for a while with a black 
 Newfoundland, then on probation for watch-dog at Herne 
 Hill ; after one of our long summer journeys my first thought 
 on getting home was to go to see Lion. My mother trusted me 
 to go to the stable with our one serving-man, Thomas, giving 
 
 * I always think of Tay as a goddess river, as Greta a nymph one. 
 
60 
 
 PRu^TERITA. 
 
 him strict orders that I was not to be allowed within stretch 
 of the dog’s chain. Thomas, for better security, carried me 
 in his arms. Lion was at his dinner, and took no notice of 
 either of us ; on which I besought leave to pat him. Foolish 
 Thomas stooped toward him that I might, when the dog 
 instantly flew at me, and bit a piece clean out of the corner of 
 my lip on the left side. I was brought up the back stairs, 
 bleeding fast, but not a whit frightened, except lest Lion 
 should be sent away. Lion indeed had to go ; but not 
 Thomas : my mother was sure he was sorry, and I think 
 blamed herself the most. The bitten side of the (then really 
 pretty) mouth, was spoiled for evermore, but the wound, drawn 
 close, healed quickly ; the last use I made of my movable 
 lips before Dr. Aveline drew them into ordered silence for a 
 while, was to observe, “Mamina, though I can’t speak, I can 
 play upon the fiddle.” But the house was of another opinion, 
 and I never attained any proficiency upon that instrument 
 worthy of my genius. Not the slightest diminution of my 
 love of dogs, nor the slightest nervousness in managing them, 
 was induced by the accident. 
 
 I scarcely know whether I was in any real danger or not 
 when, another day, in the same stable, quite by myself, I 
 went head foremost into the large water-tub kept for the 
 garden. I think I might have got awkwardly wedged if I had 
 tried to draw my feet in after me : instead, I used the small 
 watering-pot I had in my hand to give myself a good thrust 
 up from the bottom, and caught the opposite edge of the tub 
 with my left hand, getting not a little credit afterward for 
 my decision of method. Looking back to the few chances 
 that have in any such manner tried my head, I believe it has 
 never failed me when I wanted it, and that I am much more 
 likely to be confused by sudden admiration than by sudden 
 danger. 
 
 The dark pools of Tay, which have led me into this boast- 
 ing, were under the high bank at the head of the North Inch, 
 — the path above them being seldom traversed by us children 
 unless at harvest time, when we used to go gleaning in the 
 fields beyond ; Jessie and I afterward grinding our corn in 
 
UNDER NEW TUT0B8UIPS, 
 
 61 
 
 the kitchen pepper-mill, and kneading and toasting for our- 
 selves cakes of pepper bread, of quite unpurchasable quality, 
 "^n the general course of this my careful narration, I rebut 
 v’ith as much indignation as may be permitted without ill 
 maimers, the charg<" of partiality to anything merely because 
 it was seen when I was young. I hesitate, however, in record- 
 ing as a constant truth for the world, the impression left on 
 me ^dlen I went gleaning wdth Jessie, that Scottish sheaves 
 are more golden tlian are bound in other lands, and that no 
 harvests elsewhere visible to human eyes are so like the “corn 
 of heaven ” ^ as those of Strath-Tay and Strath-Earn. 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 UNDER NEW TUTORSHIPS. 
 
 "When I was about eight or nine I had a bad feverish ill- 
 ness at Dunkeld, during which I believe I was in some 
 danger, and am sure I was very uncomfortable. It came on 
 after a long v/alk in which I had been gathering quantities of 
 foxgloves and pulling them to pieces to examine their seeds, 
 and there were hints about their having poisoned me ; very 
 absurd, but which extended the gathering awm from river 
 eddies to foxglove dells. Not long after that, when we were 
 back at home, my cousin Jessie fell ill, and died very slowly, 
 of w^ater on the brain. I ivas very sorry, not so much in any 
 strength of early affection, as in the feeling that the happy, 
 happy days at Perth were for ever ended, since there was no 
 more Jessie. 
 
 Before her illness took its fatal form, — before, indeed, I 
 believe it had at all declared itself — my aunt dreamed one of 
 her foresight dreams, simple and plain enough for anyone’s 
 interpretation ; — that she was approaching the ford of a dark 
 river, alone, wdien little Jessie came running up behind lier, 
 and passed her, and went tlirough hrst. Then she passed 
 
 * Psalm Ixxviii. 24. 
 
62 
 
 PRMTEniTA, 
 
 through herself, and looking back from the other side, saw 
 her old Mause approaching from the distance to the bank of 
 the stream. And so it was, that Jessie, immediately after- 
 ward, sickened rapidly and died ; and a few months, or it 
 might be nearty a year afterward, my aunt died of decline ; 
 and Mause, some two or three years later, having had no care 
 after her mistress and Jessie were gone, but when she might 
 go to them. 
 
 I was at Plymouth with my father and mother when my 
 Scottish aunt died, and had been very happy with my nurse 
 on the hill east of the town, looking out on the bay and 
 breakwater ; and came in to find my father, for the first time 
 I had ever seen him, in deep distress of sobbing tears. 
 
 I Avas very sorry that my aunt was dead, but, at that time 
 (and a good deal since, also,) I lived mostly in the present, 
 like an animal, and my principal sensation Avas, — What a pity 
 it Avas to pass such an uncomfortable evening — and we at 
 Plymouth ! 
 
 The deaths of Jessie and her mother of course ended our 
 Scottish days. The only surviving daughter, Mary, was 
 thenceforward adopted by my father and mother, and brought 
 up Avith me. She Avas fourteen when she came to us, and I 
 four years younger ; — so with the Perth days, closed the first 
 decade of my life. Mary was a rather pretty, blue-eyed, 
 clumsily-made girl, very amiable and affectionate in a quiet 
 Avay, AAuth no parts, but good sense and good principle, 
 honestly and inoffensively pious, and equal tempered, but 
 wdth no pretty girlish ways or fancies. She became a serene 
 additional neutral tint in the household harmony ; read 
 alternate verses of the Bible Avith my mother and me in the 
 mornings, and Avent to a day school in the forenoon. When 
 we travelled she took someAvhat of a governess position to- 
 Avard me, we being allowed to explore places together with- 
 out my nurse ; — but we generally took old Anne too for 
 better company. 
 
 It began now to be of some importance what church I Avent 
 to on Sunday morning. My father, who was still much 
 broken in health, could not go to the long Church of England 
 
UNDER NEW TUTORSHIPS, 
 
 63 
 
 service, and, mother being evangelical, he went content- 
 edly, or at least submissively, with her and me to Beresford 
 Chapel, Walworth, where the Rev. D. Andrews preached, 
 regularly, a somewhat eloquent, forcible, and ingenious ser- 
 mon, not tiresome to him : — the prayers were abridged from 
 the Church Service, and we, being the grandest people in the 
 congregation, were allowed — though, as I now remember, not 
 without offended and reproachful glances from the more con- 
 scientious worshippers — to come in when even -those short 
 prayers were half over. Mary and I used each to write an 
 abstract of the sermon in the afternoon, to please ourselves, 
 
 ■ — Mary dutifully, and I to show how well I could do it. We 
 never went to church in afternoon or evening. I remember 
 yet the amazed and appalling sensation, as of a vision pre- 
 liminary to the Day of Judgment, of going, a year or two 
 later, first into a church by candlelight. 
 
 We had no family worship, but our servants were better 
 cared for than is often the case in ostentatiously religious 
 houses. My mother used to take them, when girls, from 
 families known to her, sister after sister, and we never had 
 a bad one. 
 
 On the Sunday evening my father would sometimes read 
 us a sermon of Blair’s, or it might be, a clerk or a customer 
 would dine with us, when the conversation, in mere necessary 
 courtesjg would take generally the direction of sherry. Mary 
 and I got through the evening how we could, over the “Pil- 
 grim’s Progress,” Bunyan’s “Holy War,” “Quarles’s Em- 
 blems,” “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,” Mrs. Sherwood’s “Lady 
 of the Manor,” — a very awful book to me, because of the 
 stories in it of wicked girls wlio had gone to balls, dying 
 immediately after of fever, — and Mrs. Sherwood’s “Henry 
 Milner,” — of which more presently, — the Youth’s Magazine^ 
 “Alfred Campbell the Young Pilgrim,” and, though I’ather as 
 a profane indulgence, permitted because of the hardness of 
 our hearts, Bingiey’s “Natural History.” We none of us 
 cared for singing hymns or psalms as such, and were too 
 honest to amuse ourselves with them as sacred music, besides 
 that we did not find their music amusing. 
 
G4 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 My father and mother, though due cheques for charities 
 were of course sent to Dr. Andrews, and various civilities at 
 Christmas, in the way of turkeys or boxes of raisins, intimated 
 their satisfaction with the style of his sermons and purity of 
 his doctrine, — had yet, with their usual shyness, never asked 
 for his acquaintance, or even permitted the state of their 
 souls to be inquired after in j^astoral visits. Mary and 
 I, however, were charmed merely by the distant effect of 
 him, and used to walk with Anne up and down in Walworth, 
 merely in hope of seeing him pass on the other side of the 
 way. At last, one daj", when, by extreme favor of Fortune, 
 he met us in a great hurry on our own side of it, and nearly 
 tumbled over me, Anne, as he recovered himself, dropped 
 him a low courtesey ; whereupon he stopped, inquired who we 
 were, and was extremely gracious to us ; and we, coming home 
 ill a fever of delight, announced, not much to my mother’s 
 satisfaction, that the Doctor had said he would call some 
 day ! And so, little by little, the blissful acquaintance was 
 made. I might be eleven or going on twelve by that time. 
 Miss Andrews, the elder sister of the “Angel in the House,” 
 was an extremel}^ beautiful girl of seventeen ; she sang “ Tam- 
 bourgi, Tambourgi with great spirit and a rich voice, W’eiit 
 at blackberry time on rambles with us at the Norw'ood Spa, 
 and made me feel generally that there was something in 
 girls that I did not understand, and that was curiously agree- 
 able. And at last, because I was so fond of the Doctor, and 
 he had the reputation (in Walworth) of being a good scholar, 
 my father thought he might pleasantly initiate me in Greek, 
 such initiation having been already too long deferred. The 
 Doctor, it afterward turned out, knew little more of Greek than 
 the letters, and declensions of nouns ; but he wrote the letters 
 prettily, and had an accurate and sensitive ear for rhythm. 
 He began me with the odes of Anacreon, and made me scan 
 both them and my Virgil thoroughly, sometimes, by way of 
 interlude, reciting bits of Shakespeare to me with force and 
 propriety. The Anacreontic metre entirely pleased me, nor 
 
 * Hebrew Melodies, 
 
UNDER NEW TUTORSHIPS. 
 
 C5 
 
 less the Anacreontic sentiment. I learned half the odes by 
 heart merely to please myself, and learned with certainty, 
 what in later study of Greek art it has proved extremely ad- 
 vantageous to me to know, that the Greeks liked doves, swal- 
 lows, and roses just as well as I did. 
 
 In the intervals of these unlaborious Greek lessons, I went 
 on amusing myself — partly in writing English doggerel, 
 partly in map drawing, or copying Cruikshank’s illustrations 
 to Grimm, which I did with great, and to most peoj^le now 
 incredible, exactness, a sheet of them being, by good hap, 
 well preserved, done when I was between ten and eleven. 
 But I never saw any boy’s work in my life showing so little 
 original faculty, or grasp by memory. I could literally draw 
 nothing, not a cat, not a mouse, not a boat, not a bush, “ out 
 of my head,” and there was, luckily, at present no idea on the 
 part either of parents or preceptor, of teaching me to draw 
 out of other people’s heads. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mary, at her day school, was getting drawing 
 lessons with the other girls. Her report of the pleasantness 
 and zeal of the master, and the frank and somewhat unusual 
 execution of the drawings he gave her to coj)y, interested my 
 father, and he was still more pleased by Mary’s copying, for 
 a proof of industry while he was away on his 'winter’s journey 
 — copying, in pencil, so as to produce the effect of a vigorous 
 engraving, the little water-color by Prout of a wayside cottage, 
 which was the foundation of our future w^ater-color collection, 
 being then our only possession in that kind — of other kind, 
 two miniatures on ivory completed our gallery. 
 
 I perceive, in thinking over the good work of that patient 
 black and white study, that Mary could have drawn, if she had 
 been well taught and kindly encouraged. But her power of 
 patient copying did not serve her in drawing from nature, and 
 when, that same summer, I between ten and eleven (1829), we 
 went to stay at Matlock in Derbyshire, all that she proved able 
 to accomplish w^as an outline of Caxton’s New Bath Hotel, in 
 which our efforts in the direction of art, for that year, ended. 
 
 But, in the glittering white broken spar, specked wdth 
 galena, by which the walks of the hotel garden were made 
 
6G 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 bright, and in the shops of the pretty village, and in many 
 a happy walk among its cliffs, I pursued my mineralogical 
 studies on fluor, calcite, and the ores of lead, with indescriba- 
 ble rapture when I was allowed to go into a cave. My father 
 and mother showed far more kindness than I knew, in yield- 
 ing to my subterranean passion ; for my mother could not 
 bear dirty places, and my father had a nervous feeling that 
 the ladders would break, or the roof fall, before we got out 
 again. They went with me, nevertheless, wherever I wanted 
 to go, — my father even into the terrible Speedwell mine 
 at Castleton, where, for once, I was a little frightened my- 
 self. 
 
 From Matlock we must have gone on to Cumberland, for 
 I find in my father’s writing the legend, “ Begun 28th No- 
 vember, 1880, finished 11th January, 1832,” on the fly-leaf of 
 the “Itcriad,” a poem in four books, which I indited, be- 
 tween those dates, on the subject of our journey among 
 the Lakes, and of which some little notice may be taken 
 farther on. 
 
 It must have been in the spring of 1831 that the important 
 step was taken of giving me a drawing master. Mary showed 
 no gift of representing any of the scenes of our travels, and 
 I began to express some wish that I could draw myself. 
 Whereupon, Mary’s pleasant drawing master, to whom ray 
 father and mother were equitable enough not to impute Mary’s 
 want of genius, was invited to give me also an hour in the 
 week. 
 
 I suppose a drawing master’s business can only become es- 
 tablished by his assertion of himself to the public as the pos- 
 sessor of a style ; and teaching in that only. Nevertheless, 
 Mr. Runciman’s memory sustains disgrace in my mind in that 
 he gave no impulse nor even indulgence to the extraordinary 
 gift I had for drawing delicately with the pen point. Any 
 work of that kind was done thenceforward only to please my- 
 self. Mr. Runciman gave me nothing but his own mannered 
 and inefficient drawings to copy, and greatly broke the force 
 both of my mind and hand. 
 
 Yet he taught me much, and suggested more. He taught 
 
UNDER NEW TUTORSHIPS. 
 
 07 
 
 me perspective, at once accurately and simpl}^ — an invaluable 
 bit of teaching*. He compelled me into a swiftness and facility 
 of hand which I found afterward extremely useful, though 
 Avhat I have just called the “force,” the strong* accuracy of my 
 line, Avas lost. He cultivated in me, — indeed founded, — the 
 habit of looking for the essential points in the things draAvu, 
 so as to abstract them decisively, and he explained to me the 
 meaning and importance of composition, though he himself 
 could not compose. 
 
 A very happy time folloAved, for about two years. 
 
 I was, of course, far behind Mary in touch-skill of pencil 
 drawing, and it Avas good for her that this superiority was 
 acknoAvledged, and due honor done her for the steady 
 pains of her unimpulsive practice and unwearied atten- 
 tion. For, as she did not write poems like me, nor collect 
 spars like me, nor exhibit any prevailing vivacity of mind 
 in any direction, she was gradually sinking into far too 
 subordinate a position to my high-mightiness. But I could 
 make no pretence for some time to rival her in free-hand 
 copying, and my first attempts from nature were not felt by 
 my father to be the least flattering to his vanity. 
 
 These were made under the stimulus of a journey to Hover 
 with the forethought of which my mother comforted mo 
 through an illness of 1829. I find my quite first sketch-book, 
 an extremely inconvenient upright small octaA-^o in mottled 
 and flexible cover, the paper pure white, and ribbedly gritty, 
 filled with outlines, irregularly defaced by impulsive efforts at 
 finish, in arbitrary places and corners, of Hover and Tun- 
 bridge Castles and the main tower of Canterbury Cathedral. 
 These, with a really good study, supplemented by detached 
 detail, of Battle Abbey, I have set aside for preservation ; the 
 really first sketch I ever made from nature being No. 1, of a 
 street in Sevenoaks. I got little satisfaction and less praise 
 by these works ; but the native architectural instinct is in- 
 stantly developed in these, — highly notable for anyone wdio 
 cares to note such nativities. Two little pencillings from 
 Canterbury south porch and central tower, I have given to 
 Miss Gale, of Burgate House, Canterbury ; the remnants of 
 
C8 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 the book itself to Mrs. Talbot, of Tjn-3’'-Ffynon, Barmouth, 
 both very dear friends. 
 
 But, before everything, at this time, came my pleasure in 
 merely watching the sea. I was not allowed to row, far less 
 to sail, nor to walk near the harbor alone ; so that I learned 
 nothing of shipping, or anything else worth learning, but 
 spent four or five hours every day in simply staring and won- 
 dering at the sea, — an occupation which never failed me till 
 I was forty. "Whenever I could get to a beach it was enough 
 for me to have the waves to look at, and hear, and pursue 
 and fly from. I never took to natural history of shells, or 
 shrimps, or weeds, or jelly-fish. Pebbles? — yes if there 
 
 were any ; otherwise, merely stared all day long at the tum- 
 bling and creaming strength of the sea. Idiotically, it now 
 appears to me, wasting all that priceless youth in mere dream 
 and trance of admiration ; it had a certain strain of Byron- 
 esque passion in it, which meant something : but it was a 
 fearful loss of time. 
 
 The summer of 1832 must, I think, have been passed at 
 home, for my next sketch-book contains only some efforts at 
 tree-drawing in Dulwich, and a view of the bridge over the now 
 bricked-up “Effra,” by which the Norwood road then crossed 
 it at the bottom of Herne Hill: the road itself, just at the 
 place where, from the top of the bridge, one looked up and 
 down the streamlet, bridged now into putridly damp shade 
 by the railway, close to Herne Hill Station. This sketch was 
 the first in which I was ever supposed to show any talent for 
 drawing. But on my thirteenth (?) birthday, 8th February, 
 1832, my father’s partner, Mr. Henry Telford, gave me 
 Eogers’ “Italy,” and'determined the main tenor of my life. 
 
 At that time I had never heard of Turner, except in the well- 
 remembered saying of Mr. Bunciman’s, that “ the world had 
 lately been much dazzled and led away by some splendid 
 ideas thrown out by Turner.” But I had no sooner cast eyes 
 on the Rogers vignettes than I took them for my only masters, 
 and set myself to imitate them as far as I possibly could by 
 fine pen shading. 
 
 I have told this story so often that I begin to doubt its 
 
UNDER NEW TUTORSHIPS. 
 
 69 
 
 time. It is curiously tiresome that Mr. Telford did not him- 
 self write my name in the book, and my father, who writes in 
 it, “ The gift of Henry Telford, Esq.,” still more curiousty, 
 for him, puts no date : if it was a year later, no matter ; there 
 is no doubt however that early in the spring of 1838 Prout 
 published his sketches in Flanders and German 3 ^ I well re- 
 member going with my father into the shop where subscribers 
 entered their names, and being referred to the specimen print, 
 the turreted window over the Moselle, at Coblentz. We got 
 the book home to Herne Hill before the time of our usual 
 annual tour ; and as my mother watched m}^ father’s pleasure 
 and mine in looking at the wonderful places, she said, why 
 should not we go and see some of them in reality ? My father 
 hesitated a little, then with glittering eyes said — whj’’ not ? 
 And there were two or three weeks of entirely rapturous 
 and amazed preparation. I recollect that very evening bring- 
 ing down my big geography book, still most precious to me ; 
 (I take it down now, and for the first time put my own initials 
 under my father’s name in it) — and looking with Mary at the 
 outline of Mont Blanc, copied from Saussure, at p. 201, and 
 reading some of the very singular information about the Alps 
 which it illustrates. So that Switzerland must have been at 
 once included in the j^lans, — soon prosperously, and with re- 
 sult of all manner of good, by God’s help fulfilled. 
 
 We went by Calais and Brussels to Cologne ; up the Ehine 
 to Strasburg, across the Black Forest to Schaffliausen, then 
 made a sweep through North Switzerland by Basle, Berne, 
 Interlachen, Lucerne, Zurich, to Constance, — following up the 
 Bhine still to Coire, then over Splugen to Como, Milan, and 
 Genoa ; meaning, as I now remember, for Home. But, it 
 being June already, the heat of Genoa warned us of impru- 
 dence : we turned, and came back over the Simplon to 
 Geneva, saw Chamouni, and so home by Lyons and Dijon. 
 
 To do all this in the then only possible way, with post- 
 horses, and, on the lakes, with oared boats, needed careful 
 calculation of time each day. My father liked to get to our 
 sleeping place as early as he could, and never would stop the 
 horses for me to draw anything (the extra pence to postilion 
 
70 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 for waiting being also an item of weight in his mind) thus I 
 got into the bad habit, yet not without its discipline, of mak* 
 ing scrawls as the carriage went along, and working them up 
 “out of my head ” in the evening. I produced in this man- 
 ner, throughout the journey, some thirty sheets or so of small 
 pen and Indian ink drawings, four or five in a sheet ; some 
 not inelegant, all laborious, but for the most part one just 
 like another, and without exception stupid and characterless 
 to the last degree. 
 
 With these flying scrawls on the road, I made, when stay- 
 ing in towns, some elaborate pencil and pen outlines, of which 
 perhaps half a dozen are worth register and preservation. 
 My father’s pride in a study of the doubly-towered Eenais- 
 sance church of Dijon was great. A still more laborious 
 Hotel de Ville of Brussels remains with it at Brantwood. The 
 drawing of that Hotel de Ville by me now at Oxford is a copy 
 of Front’s, which I made in illustration of the volume in which 
 I wrote the beginning of a rhymed history of the tour. 
 
 For it had excited all the poor little faculties that were in me 
 to their utmost strain, and I had certainly more passionate hap- 
 piness, of a quality utterly indescribable to people who never 
 felt the like, and more, in solid quantity, in those three months, 
 than most people have in all their lives. The impression of the 
 Alps first seen from Schafl'hausen of Milan, and of Geneva, 
 I will try to give some account of afterward, — my first busi- 
 ness now is to get on. 
 
 The winter of ’ 33, and what time I could steal to amuse 
 myself in, out of ’34, were spent in comparing, writing fair, 
 and drawing vignettes for the decoration of the aforesaid 
 poetical account of our tour, in imitation of Bogers’ “Italy.” 
 The drawings were made on separate pieces of paper and 
 pasted into the books ; many have since been taken out, others 
 are there for which the verses were never written, for I had 
 spent my fervor before I got up the Bhine. I leave the un- 
 finished folly in Joanie’s care, that none but friends may see 
 it. 
 
 Meantime, it having been perceived by my father and 
 mother that Dr. Andrews could neither prepare me for the 
 
UNDER NEW TUTORSHIP!:^. 
 
 71 
 
 University, nor for the duties of a bishopric, I was sent as a day 
 scholar to the private school kept by the Rev. Thomas Dale, in 
 Grove Lane, within walking distance of Herne Hill. Walking 
 down with my father after breakfast, carrying my blue bag of 
 books, I came home to half-past one dinner, and prepared my 
 lessons in the evening for next day. Under these conditions 
 I saw little of my fellow- scholars, the two sons of Mr. Dale, 
 Tom and James ; and three boarders, the sons of Colonel 
 Matson, of Woolwich ; of Alderman Key, of Denmark Hill ; 
 and a fine lively boy, Willoughby Jones, afterward Sir W., 
 and only lately, to my sorrow, dead. 
 
 Finding me in all respects what boys could only look upon 
 as an innocent, they treated me as I suppose they would have 
 treated a girl ; they neither thrashed nor chaffed me, — find- 
 ing, indeed, from the first that chaff had no effect on me. 
 Generally I did not understand it, nor in the least mind it if 
 I did, the fountain of pure conceit in my own heart sustain- 
 ing me serenely against all deprecation, whether by master or 
 companion. I was fairly intelligent of books, had a good 
 quick and holding memoiy, learned whatever I was bid as 
 fast as I could, and as well ; and since all the other boys 
 learned always as little as they could, though I was far in re- 
 tard of them in real knowledge, I almost always knew the 
 day’s lesson best. I have already described, in the first chap- 
 ter of “Fiction Fair and Foul,” Mr. Dale’s rejection of my clearly 
 known old grammar as a “Scotch thing.” In that one action 
 he rejected himself from being my master ; and I thencefor- 
 W’ard learned all he told me only because I had to do it. 
 
 While these steps were taken for my classical advancement, 
 a master was found for me, still in that unlucky Walworth, 
 to teach me mathematics. Mr. Rowbotham was an extremely 
 industrious, deserving, and fairly well-informed person in his 
 own branches, who, with his wife, and various impediments 
 and inconveniences in the way of children, kept a “young 
 gentleman’s Academy” near the Elephant and Castle, in one 
 of the first houses which have black plots of grass in front, 
 fenced by iron railings from the Walworth Road. 
 
 He knew Latin, German, and French grammar ; was able 
 
72 
 
 PB^ETERITA. 
 
 to teach the “use of the globes” as far as needed in a 
 preparatory school, and was, up to far beyond the point need- 
 ed for me, a really sound mathematician. For the rest, utterly 
 unacquainted with men or their history, with nature and its 
 meanings ; stupid and disconsolate, incapable of any manner 
 of mirth or fancy, thinking mathematics the only proper 
 occupation of human intellect, asthmatic to a degree causing 
 often helpless suffering, and hopelessly poor, spending his 
 evenings, after his school-drudgery was over, in writing man- 
 uals of arithmetic and algebra, and compiling French and 
 German grammars, wdiich he allowed the booksellers to 
 cheat him out of, — adding perhaps, with all his year's lamp- 
 labor, fifteen or twenty pounds to his income ; — a more 
 wretched, innocent, patient, insensible, unadrnirable, uncom- 
 fortable, intolerable being never was produced in this era of 
 England by the culture characteristic of her metropolis. 
 
 Under the tuition, twice a week in the evening, of Mr. Kow- 
 botham, (invited always to substantial tea with us before the 
 lesson as a really efficient help to his hungry science, after the 
 walk up Herne Hill, painful to asthma,) I prospered fairly in 
 1834, picking up some bits of French grammar, of which I 
 had really felt the want, — I had before got hold, somehow, of 
 w'ords enough to make my way about with, — and I don’t 
 know how, but I recollect, at Paris, going to the Louvre un- 
 der charge of Salvador, (I wanted to make a sketch from 
 Eembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus,) and on Salvador’s applica- 
 tion to the custode fQr permission, it appeared I was not old 
 enough to have a ticket, — fifteen was then the earliest admis- 
 sion-age ; but seeing me look woebegone, the good-natured 
 custode said he thought if I went in to the “ Board,” or what- 
 ever it was, of authorities, and asked for permission m^’self, 
 they would give it me. Whereupon I instantly begged to be 
 introduced to the Board, and the custode taking me in un- 
 der his coat lappets, I did verily, in what broken French was 
 feasible to me, represent my case to several gentlemen of 
 an official and impressive aspect, and got my permission, 
 and outlined the Supper at Emmaus with some real success 
 in expression, and was extremely proud of myself. But 
 
UNDER NEW TUTORSHIPS, 
 
 73 
 
 my narrow knowledge of the language, tliougli tliug avail- 
 able for business, left me sorrowful and ashamed after 
 the fatal dinner at Mr. Domecq’s, when the little Elise, then 
 just nine, seeing that her elder sisters did not choose to 
 trouble themselves with me, and being herself of an entirely 
 benevolent and pitiful temper, came across the drawing-room 
 to me in my desolation, and leaning an elbow on my knee, set 
 herself deliberately to chatter to me mellifluously for an hour 
 and a half by the time-piece, — requiring no answer, of which 
 she saw I was incapable, but satisfied with my grateful and 
 respectful attention, and admiring interest, if not exactly al- 
 ways in what she said, at least in the waay she said it. She 
 gave me the entire history of her school, and of the objection- 
 able characters of her teachers, and of the delightful charac- 
 ters of her comi^anions, and of the mischief she got into, and 
 the surreptitious enjoyments they devised, and the joys of 
 coming back to the Champs Ely sees, and the general likeness 
 of Paris to the Garden of Eden. And the hour and a half 
 seemed but too short, and left me resolved, anyhow, to do my 
 best to learn French. 
 
 So, as I said, I progressed in this study to the contentment 
 of Mr. Rowbotham, went easy through the three first books 
 of Euclid, and got as far as quadratics in Algebra. But there 
 I stopped, virtually, for ever. The moment I got into sums 
 of series, or symbols expressing the relations instead of the 
 real magnitudes of things, —partly in want of faculty, partly 
 in an already well-developed and healthy hatred of things 
 vainly bothering and intangible, — I jibbed — or stood stunned. 
 Afterward at Oxford they dragged me through some conic 
 sections, of which the facts representable b}^ drawing became 
 afterward of extreme value to me ; and taught me as much 
 trigonometry as made my mountain work, in plan and eleva- 
 tion, unaccusable. In elementary geometry I was always 
 happy, and, for a boy, strong ; and my conceit, developing 
 now every hour more venomously as I began to perceive the 
 weakness of my masters, led me to spend nearly every 
 moment I could command for study in my own way, through 
 the year 1835, in trying to trisect an angle. For some time 
 
74 
 
 PEMTEniTA. 
 
 afterward I had the sense to reproach myself for the waste 
 of thoughtful hours in that year, little knowing or dreaming 
 how many a year to come, from that time forth, was to be 
 worse wasted. 
 
 While the course of my education was thus daily gathering 
 the growth of me into a stubborn little standard bush, various 
 frost-stroke was stripping away from me the poor little flowers 
 — or herbs — of the forest, that had once grown, happily for 
 me, at my side. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PARNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON. 
 
 I have allowed, in the last chapter, my record of boyish 
 achievements and experiments in art to run on to a date much 
 in advance of the early years which were most seriously 
 eventful for me in good and evil. I resume the general story 
 of them with the less hesitation, because, such as it is, nobody 
 else can tell it; while, in later years, my friends in some 
 respects know me better than I know myself. 
 
 The second decade of my life was cut away still more 
 sharply from the perfectly happy time of childhood, by the 
 death of my Croydon aunt ; death of “cold ” literally, caught 
 in some homely washing operations in an east wind. Her 
 brown and white spaniel. Dash, lay beside her body, and on 
 her coffin, till they were taken away from him; then he w^as 
 brought to Herne Hill, and I think had been my companion 
 some time before Mary came to us. 
 
 With the death of my Croydon aunt ended for me all the 
 days by Wandel streams, as at Perth by Tay; and thus 
 ■when I was ten years old, an exclusively Herne Hill-top life 
 set in (when we were not travelling), of no very beneficial 
 character. 
 
 My Croydon aunt left four sons — John, William, George, 
 and Charles ; and two daughters — Margaret and Bridget. All 
 handsome lads and pretty lasses ; but Margaret, in early 
 youth, met with some mischance that twisted her spine, and 
 
PARNAS8U8 AND PLYNLIMMON. 
 
 Y5 
 
 hopelessly deformed her. She was clever, and witty, like her 
 mother ; but never of any interest to me, though I gave a kind 
 of brotherly, rather than cousinly, affection to all my Croydon 
 cousins. But I never liked invalids, and don’t to this dav ; 
 and Margaret used to wear her hair in ringlets, which I 
 couldn’t bear the sight of. 
 
 Bridget was a very different creature ; a black-eyed, or, with 
 precision, dark hazel-eyed, slim-made, lively girl ; a little too 
 sharp in the features to be quite pretty, a little too wiry- 
 jointed to be quite graceful ; capricious, and more or less sel- 
 fish in temper, yet nice enough to be once or twice asked to 
 Perth with us, or to stay for a month or two at Herne Hill ; 
 but never attaching herself much to us, neither us to her. I 
 felt her an inconvenience in my nurseiy arrangements, the 
 nursery having become my child’s study as I grew studious ; 
 and she had no mind, or, it might be, no leave, to work with 
 me in the garden. 
 
 The four boys v/ere all of them good, and steadily active. 
 The eldest, John, with wider business habits than the rest, 
 w^ent soon to push his fortune in Austmlia, and did so ; the 
 second, William, prospered also in London. 
 
 The third brother, George, was the best of boys and men, 
 but of small wit. He extremely resembled a rural George the 
 Fourth, with an expansive, healthy, benevolent eagerness of 
 simplicity in his face, greatly bettering him as a type of 
 British character. He went into the business in Market Street, 
 with his father, and both were a great joy to all of us in their 
 affectionateness and truth : neither of them in all their lives 
 ever did a dishonest, unkind, or otherwise faultful thing — but 
 still less a clever one 1 For the present, I leave them happily 
 filling and driving their cart of quartern loaves in morning 
 round from Market Street. 
 
 The fourth, and youngest, Charles, was like the last-born in 
 a fairy tale, ruddy as the boy David, bright of heart, not 
 wanting in common sense, or even in good sense ; and affec- 
 tionate, like all the rest. He took to his schooling kindly, and 
 became grammatical, polite, and presentable in our high 
 Herne Hill circle. His elder brother, John, had taken care of 
 
7G 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 liis education in more important matters : very early in the 
 child’s life he put him on a barebacked pony, 'with the simple 
 elementary instruction that he should be thrashed if he came 
 off. And he stayed on. Similarly, for first lesson in swim- 
 ming, he pitched the boy like a pebble into the middle of the 
 Croydon Canal, jumping in, of course, after him ; but I be- 
 lieve the lad squattered to the bank without help, and became 
 when he w^as only “ that high ” a fearless master of horse and 
 wave. 
 
 My mother used to tell these two stories with the greater 
 satisfaction, because, in her own son’s education, she had 
 sacrificed her pride in his heroism to her anxiety for his 
 safety ; and never allowed me to go to the edge of a pond, or 
 be in the same field with a pony. As ill-luck also would have 
 it, there was no manner of farm or marsh near us, which might 
 of necessity modify these restrictions ; but I have already noted 
 with thankfulness the good I got out of the tadpole-haunted 
 ditch in Croxted Lane ; while also, even between us and 
 tutorial Walworth, there was one Elj’sian field for me in the 
 neglected grass of Camberwell Green. There was a pond in 
 the corner of it, of considerable size, and unknown depth, — 
 probably, even in summer, full three feet in the middle ; the 
 sable opacity of its waters adding to the mystery of danger. 
 Large, as I said, for a pond, perhaps sixty or seventy yards 
 the long way of the Green, fifty the short ; while on its 
 western edge grew a stately elm, from whose boughs, it was 
 currently reported, and conscientiously believed, a wicked 
 boy had fallen into the pond on Sunday, and forthwith the 
 soul of him into a deeper and darker pool. 
 
 It waas one of the most valued privileges of my early life to 
 be permitted by my nurse to contemplate this judicial pond 
 with awe, from the other side of the way. The loss of it, by 
 the sanitary conversion of Camberwell Green into a bouquet 
 for Camberwell’s button-hole, is to this day matter of peren- 
 nial lament to me. 
 
 In the carrying out of the precautionary la'ws above de- 
 scribed I was, of course, never allowed, on my visits to Croy- 
 don, to go out with my cousins, lest they should lead me into 
 
PARNA8SUS AND FLYNLIMMON. 
 
 77 
 
 mischief; and no more adventurous joys were ever possible 
 to me there, than my walks with Anne or my mother v/here 
 the stream from Scarborough pond ran across the road ; or 
 on the crisp turf of Duppas Hill ; my watchings of the pro- 
 cess of my father’s drawings in Indian ink, and my own uii- 
 tired contemplations of the pump and gutter on the other 
 side of the so-called street, but really lane, — not more than 
 twelve feet from wall to wall. So that, when at last it was 
 thought that Charles, with all his good natural gifts and 
 graces, should be brought from Croydon town to London 
 city, and initiated into the lofty life and work of its burgess 
 orders ; and when, accordingly, he was, after various taking 
 of counsel and making of inquiry, apprenticed to Messrs. 
 Smith, Elder, & Co., of 65, Cornhill, with the high privilege 
 of coming out to dine at Herne Hill every Sunday, the new 
 and beaming presence of cousin Charles became a vivid ex- 
 citement, and admirable revelation of the activities of youth 
 to me, and I began to get really attached to him. 
 
 I was not myself the sort of creature that a boy could care 
 much for,- — or indeed any human being, except papa and 
 mamma, and Mrs. Kichard Gray (of whom more presently) ; 
 being indeed nothing more than a conceited and unentertain- 
 ingly troublesome little monke}^ But Charles was always 
 kind to me, and naturally answered with some cousinly or 
 even brotherly tenderness my admiration of him, and delight 
 in him. 
 
 At Messrs. Smith & Elder’s he was an admittedly exemplary 
 apprentice, rapidly becoming a serviceable shopman, taking- 
 orders intelligentlj*, and knowung well both his books and his 
 customers. Ah all right-minded apprentices and good shop- 
 men do, he took personal pride in everything produced by 
 the firm ; and on Sundays always brought a volume or two in 
 his pocket to show us the character of its most ambitious 
 publications ; especially choosing, on my behalf, any which 
 chanced to contain good engravings. In this way I became 
 familiar with Stanfield and Harding long before I possessed a 
 single engraving myself from either of them ; but the really 
 most precious, and continuous in deep effect upon me, of all 
 
78 
 
 PR^TEBITA, 
 
 gifts to my cliiklliood, was from my Croydon aunt, of the 
 Forget-me-not ” of 1827, with a beautiful engraving in it of 
 Front’s “ Sepulchral monument at Verona.” 
 
 Strange, that the true first impulse to the most refined 
 instincts of my mind should have been given by my totally 
 uneducated, but entirely good and right-minded, mother’s 
 sister. 
 
 But more magnificent results came of Charles’s literary con- 
 nection, through the interest we ail took in the embossed and 
 gilded small octavo which Smith & Elder published annually, 
 by title “ Friendship’s Oiiering.” This was edited by a pious 
 Scotch missionary, and minor — very much minor — key, poet, 
 Thomas Pringle ; mentioned once or twice with a sprinkling 
 of honor in Lockhart’s “Life of Scott.” A strictly conscientious 
 and earnest, accurately trained, though narrowly learned, 
 man, with all the Scottish conceit, restlessness for travel, and 
 petulant courage of the Parks and Livingstones ; with also 
 some pretty tinges of romance and inklings of philosophy to 
 mellow him, he was an admitted, though little regarded, 
 member of the best literary circles, and acquainted, in the 
 course of catering for his little embossed octavo, with ever}’^- 
 body in the outer circles, and lower, down to little me. He 
 had been patronized by Scott ; was on terms of polite corre- 
 spondence with Wordsworth and Kogers ; of familiar inter- 
 course with the Ettrick Shepherd ; and had himself written a 
 book of poems on the subject of Africa, in which antelopes 
 were called springboks, and other African manners and cus- 
 toms carefully observed. 
 
 Partly to oblige the good-natured and lively shopboy, who 
 told wonderful things of his little student cousin ; — partly in 
 the look-out for thin compositions of tractable stucco, where- 
 with to fill interstices in the masonry of “ Friendship’s 
 Offering,” Mr. Pringle visited us at Herne Plill, heard the 
 traditions of my literary life, expressed some interest in its 
 farther progress, — and sometimes took a copy of verses away 
 in his pocket. He was tlie first person who intimated to my 
 father and mother, with some decision, that there were as yet 
 no wholly trustworthy indications of my one day occupyiug 
 
PARNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON. 
 
 79 
 
 a liiglier place in English literature than either Milton or 
 Byron ; and accordingly I think none of us attached much 
 importance to his. opinions. But he had the sense to recog- 
 nize, through the parental vanity, my father’s high natural 
 powers, and exquisitely romantic sensibility ; nor less my 
 mother’s tried sincerity in the evangelical faith, which he 
 had set himself apart to preach : and he thus became an 
 honored, though never quite cordially welcomed, guest on 
 occasions of state Sunday dinner ; and more or less an adviser 
 thenceforward of the mode of my education. He himself 
 found interest enough in my real love of nature and ready 
 faculty of rhyme, to induce him to read and criticise for me 
 some of my verses with attention ; and at last, as a sacred 
 Eleusinian initiation and Delphic pilgrimage, to take me 
 in his hand one day when he had a visit to pay to the poet 
 Rogers. 
 
 The old man, previously warned of my admissible claims, in 
 Mr. Pringle’s sight, to the beatitude of such introduction, was 
 sufficiently gracious to me, though the cultivation of germi- 
 nating genius was never held by Mr. Rogers to be an industry 
 altogether delectable to genius in its zenith. Moreover, I was 
 unfortunate in the line of observations by which, in return for 
 his notice, I endeavored to show myself w’orthy of it. I con- 
 gratulated him with enthusiasm on the beauty of the engrav- 
 ings by which his poems were illustrated, — but betrayed, I 
 fear me, at the same time some lack of an equally vivid interest 
 in the composition of the poems themselves. At all events, 
 Mr. Pringle — I thought at the time, somewhat abruptly — 
 diverted the conversation to subjects connected with Africa. 
 These were doubtless more calculated to interest the polished 
 minstrel of St. James’s Place ; but again I fell into misdemean- 
 ors by allowing my own attention, as my wandering eyes too 
 frankly confessed, to determine itself on the pictures glowing 
 from the crimson-silken walls ; and accordingly, after we had 
 taken leave, Mr. Pringle took occasion to advise me that, in 
 future, when I was in the company of distinguished men, I 
 sliould listen more attentively to their conversation. 
 
 These, and such other — (I have elsewhere related the Ettrick 
 
so 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 Sheplierd’s favoring visit to us, also obtained by Mr. Pringle) 
 — glorifications and advancements being the reward of my 
 literary efforts, I was nevertheless not beguiled by them into 
 any abandonment of the scientific studies which were indeed 
 natural and delightful to me. I have above registered their 
 beginnings in the sparry walks at Matlock : but my father’s 
 business also took him often to Bristol, where he placed my 
 mother, v/ith Mary and me, at Clifton. Miss Edge^vorth’s 
 stor}" of “Lazy Lawrence,” and the visit to Matlock by Harry and 
 Lucy, gave an almost romantic and visionary charm to miner- 
 alogy in those dells ; and the piece of iron oxide with bright 
 Bristol diamonds, — No. 51 of the Brantwood collection, — was 
 I think the first stone on which I began my studies of silica. 
 The diamonds of it were bright with many an association be- 
 sides, since from Clifton we nearly always crossed to Chep- 
 stow, — the rapture of being afloat, for half an hour even, on 
 that mudd}" sea, concentrating into these impressive minutes 
 the pleasures of a year of other boys’ boating, — and so round by 
 Tintern and Malvern, where the hills, extremely delightful in 
 themselves to me because I was allowed to run free on them, 
 there being no precipices to fall over nor streams to fall into, 
 •were also classical to me through Mrs. Sherwood’s “ Henry 
 Milner,” a book which I loved long, and respect still. So that 
 there was this of curious and precious in the means of my 
 education in these years, that my romance was always ratified 
 to me by the seal of localit}^ — and every charm of locality 
 spiritualized by the glow and the passion of romance. 
 
 There was one district, however, that of the Cumberland 
 lakes, which needed no charm of association to deepen the 
 appeal of its realities. I have said somewhere that my first 
 memory in life was of Friar’s Crag on Berwentwater ; — mean- 
 ing, I suppose, my first memory of things afterward chiefly 
 precious to me ; at all events, I knew Keswick before I knew 
 Perth, and after the Perth days were ended, my mother and 
 I stayed either there, at the Boyal Oak, or at Lowwood Inn, 
 or at Coniston Waterhead, while my father went on his busi- 
 ness journeys to Whitehaven, Lancaster, Newcastle, and other 
 northern towns. The inn at Coniston was then actually at 
 
PABNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON, 
 
 81 
 
 the upper end of the lake, the road from Ambleside to the vil- 
 lage passing just between it and the water ; and the view of 
 the long reach of lake, with its softly wooded lateral hills, had 
 for my father a tender charm which excited the same feeling as 
 that with which he afterward regarded the lakes of Italy. Low- 
 wood Inn also was then little more than a country cottage, — 
 and Ambleside a rural village ; and the absolute peace and bliss 
 which anyone who cared for grassy hills and for sweet waters 
 might find at every footstep, and at every turn of crag or bend 
 of bay, was totally unlike anything I ever saw, or read of, 
 elsewhere. 
 
 first sight of bolder scenery was in Wales ; and I have 
 written, — more than it would be wise to print, — about the 
 drive from Hereford to Rliaiadyr, and under Plynlimmon to 
 Pont-y-Monacli : the joy of a walk with my father in the Sun- 
 da}^ afternoon toward Hafocl, dashed only with some alarmed 
 sense of the sin of being so happy among the hills, instead of 
 writing out a sermon at home ; — my father’s presence and 
 countenance not wholly comforting me, for we bot h of us had 
 alike a subdued consciousness of being profane and rebellious 
 characters, compared to mj’’ mother. 
 
 From Pont-y-Monach we went north, gathering pebbles on 
 the beach at Aberystwith, and getting up Cader Idris with 
 help of ponies : — it remained, and rightly, for many a year 
 after, a king of mountains to me. Followed Harlech and its 
 sands, Festiniog, the pass of Aberglaslyn, and marvel of Menai 
 Straits and Bridge, which Hooked at, then, as Miss Edgeworth 
 had taught me, wuth reverence for the mechanical skill of 
 man, — little thinking, poor innocent, what use I should see 
 the creature putting his skill to, in the half century to 
 come. 
 
 The Menai Bridge it was, remember, good reader, not tube ; 
 
 • — but the trim plank roadway swinging smooth between its 
 iron cobwebs from tower to tower. 
 
 And so oil to Llanberis and up Snowdon, of which ascent I 
 remember, as the most exciting event, the finding for the first 
 time in my life a real “ mineral ” for myself, a piece of copper 
 pyrites ! But the general impression of Welsh mountain form 
 
82 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 was so true and clear that subsequent journeys little changed 
 or deepened it. 
 
 And if only then my father and mother had seen the real 
 strengths and weaknesses of their little John ; — if they had 
 given me but a shaggy scrap of a Welsh pony, and left me in 
 charge of a good Welsh guide, and of his wife, if I needed any 
 coddling, they would have made a man of me there and then, 
 and afterward the comfort of their own hearts, and probably 
 the first geologist of my time in Europe. 
 
 If only! But they could no more have done it than thrown 
 me like my cousin Charles into Croydon Canal, trusting me 
 to find my way out by the laws of nature. 
 
 Instead, they took me back to London, and my father spared 
 time from his business hours, once or twice a week, to take me 
 to a four-square, sky-lighted, saw^dust-floored prison of a riding- 
 school in Moorfields, the smell of which, as we turned in at 
 the gate of it, was a terror and horror and abomination to me : 
 and there I was put on big horses that jumped, and reared, 
 and circled, and sidled ; and fell ofTthem regularly whenever 
 they did any of those things ; and was a disgrace to my family, 
 and a burning shame and misery to myself, till at last the 
 riding-school was given up on my spraining my right-hand 
 forefinger (it has never come straight again since), — and a 
 Avell-broken Shetland pony bought for me, and the two of us 
 led about the Norwood roads by a riding-master with a lead- 
 ing string. I used to do pretty well as long as we went straight, 
 and then get thinking of something, and fall off when we 
 turned a corner. I might have got some inkling of a seat in 
 Heaven’s good time, if no fuss had been made about me, nor 
 inquiries instituted whether I had been off or on ; but as my 
 mother, the moment I got home, made searching scrutiny into 
 the day’s disgraces, I merely got more and more nervous and 
 helpless after every tumble ; and this branch of my education 
 was at last abandoned, my parents consoling themselves, as 
 best they might, in the conclusion that my not being able to 
 learn to ride was the sign of my being a singular genius. 
 
 The rest of the year was passed in such home employment 
 as I have above described ; — but either in that or the preced- 
 
PARNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON, 
 
 83 
 
 ing year, my mineralogical taste received a nev/ and very im- 
 portant impulse from a friend who entered afterward inti- 
 mately into our family life, but of whom I have imt yet 
 spoken. 
 
 My illness at Dunkeld, above noticed, was attended by two 
 physicians, — my mother, — and Dr. Grant. The Doctor must 
 then have been a youth who had just obtained his diploma. 
 I do not know the origin of his acquaintance with my parents ; 
 but I know that my father had almost paternal influeiice over 
 him ; and was of service to him, to wTat extent I know not, 
 but certainly continued and effective, in beginning the world. 
 And as I grew older I used often to hear expressions of much 
 affection and respect for Dr, Grant from my father and 
 mother, coupled with others of regret or blame that he did 
 not enough bring out his powers, or use his advantages. 
 
 Ever after the Dunkeld illness. Dr. Grant’s name was associ- 
 ated in my mind with a brown powder — rhubarb — or the like 
 — of a gritty and acrid nature, which, bj^ his orders, I had then 
 to take. The name thenceforward always sounded to me 
 gr-r-ish and granular ; and a certain dread, not amounting 
 to dislike — but, on the contrary, affectionate, (for me ) — made 
 the Doctor’s presence somewhat solemnizing to me ; the 
 rather as he never jested, and had a brownish, partly austere, 
 and sere, wrinkled, and — rhubarby, in fact, sort of a face. 
 For the rest, a man entirely kind and conscientious, much 
 affectionate to my father, and acknowledging a sort of ward- 
 to-guardian’s duty to him, together with the responsibility of 
 a medical adviser, acquainted both with his imagination and 
 his constitution. 
 
 I conjecture that it must have been owing to Dr. Grant’s 
 being of fairly good family, and in every sense and every 
 reality of the word a gentleman, that, soon after coming up to 
 London, he got a surgeon’s appointment in one of His Majes- 
 ty’s frigates commissioned for a cruise on the west coast of 
 South America. Fortunately the health of her company gave 
 the Doctor little to do professionally ; and he was able to give 
 most of his time to the study of the liatural history of the 
 coast of Chili and Peru. One of the results of these shore 
 
81 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 expeditions was the finding such a stag-beetle as had never 
 before been seen. It had peculiai* or colossal nippers, and — 
 I forget what “ chiasos means in Greek, but its jaws were 
 chiasof. It was brought home beautifully packed in a box of 
 cotton ; and, when the box was opened, excited the admii-a- 
 tion of all beholders, and w^as called the “ Chiasognathos 
 Griintii.” A second result was his collection of a very perfect 
 series of Valparaiso humming-birds, out of which he spared, 
 for a present to my mother, as many as filled with purple and 
 golden flutter two glass cases as large as Mr. Gould’s at the 
 British Museum, wBich became resplendent decorations of the 
 drawing-room at Herne Hill, — were to me, as I grew older, 
 conclusive standards of plume texture and color, — and are 
 now placed in the best lighted recess of the parish school at 
 Coniston. 
 
 The third result was more important still. Dr. Grant had 
 been presented by the Spanish masters of mines with charac- 
 teristic and rich specimens of the most beautiful veinstones 
 of Copiapo. It was a mighty fact for me, at the height of 
 my child’s interest in minerals, to see our own parlor table 
 loaded with foliated silver and arborescent gold. Not only 
 the man of science, but the latent miser in me, was developed 
 largely in an hour or two ! In the pieces which Dr. Grant gave 
 me, I counted my treasure grain by grain ; and recall to-day, 
 ill acute sympathy with it, the indignation I felt at seeing no 
 instantly reverential change in cousin Charles’s countenance, 
 when I informed him that the film on the surface of an unpre- 
 suming specimen, amounting in quantity to about the six- 
 teenth part of a sixpence, was “ native silver ! ” 
 
 Soon after his return from this prosperous voyage, Dr. 
 Grant settled himself in a respectable house half-way down 
 Richmond Hill, where gradually he obtained practice and ac- 
 cepted position among the gentry of that town and its parkly 
 neighborhood. And every now and then, in the summer 
 mornings, or the gayly frost-white winter ones, we used, papa 
 and mamma, and Mary and I, to drive over Clapham and 
 Wandsworth Commons to a breakfast picnic with Dr. Grant 
 at the “ Star and Garter.” Breakfasts much impressed on my 
 
PARNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON. 
 
 85 
 
 mind, partly by the pretty view from the windows ; but more, 
 because while ray orthodox breakfast, even in travelling, v/as 
 of stale baker’s bread, at these starry picnics I was allowed 
 new French roll. 
 
 Leaving Dr. Grant, for the nonce, under these pleasant and 
 dignifiedly crescent circumstances, I must turn to the friends 
 who of all others, not relatives, were most powerfully iiiliiieii- 
 tial on my child life, — Mr. and Mrs. Richard Gra}?'. 
 
 Some considerable time during my father’s clerkdoin had 
 been passed by him in Spain, in learning to know sherry, and 
 seeing the ways of making and storing it at Xerez, Cadiz, and 
 Lisbon. At Lisbon he became intimate with another young 
 Scotsman of about his own age, also employed, I conceive, as 
 a clerk, in some Spanish house, but himself of no narrow 
 clerkly mind. On the contrary, Richard Gray Vvnnt far beyond 
 my father in the romantic sentiment, and scholarly love of 
 good literature, which so strangely mingled with my father’s 
 steady business habits. Equally energetic, industrious, and 
 high-principled, Mr. Gray’s enthusiasm was nevertheless ir- 
 regularly, and too often uselessly, comscant ; being to my 
 father’s, as Carlyle says of French against English fire at Det- 
 tingen, “ faggot against anthracite.” Yet, I will not venture 
 absolutely to maintain that, under Richard’s erratic and effer- 
 vescent influence, an expedition to Cintra, or an assistance at 
 a village festa, or even at a bull-fight, might not sometimes, to 
 that extent, invalidate my former general assertion that, during 
 nine years, my father never had a holiday. At all events, the 
 young men became close and affectionate friends ; and the 
 connection had a softening, cheering, and altogether beneficial 
 effect on my father’s character. Nor was their brotherly 
 friendship any whit flawed or dimmed, when, a little while 
 before leaving Spain, Mr. Gray married an extremely good and 
 beautiful Scotch girl, Mary Monro. 
 
 Extremely good, and, in the gentlest way entirelj^ simple, 
 meek, loving, and serious ; not clever enough to be any way 
 naughty, but saved from being stupid by a vivid nature, full 
 of enthusiasm like her husband’s. Both of them evangelically 
 pious, in a vivid, not virulent, way ; and each of them sacredly, 
 
80 
 
 PR^TEIUTA. 
 
 no less than passionately, in love with the other, they were the 
 entirely best-matched pair I have yet seen in this match- 
 making world and dispensation. Yet, as fate would have it, 
 they had the one grief of having no children, which caused it, 
 in years to come, to-be Mrs. Gray’s principal occupation in life 
 to spoil me. By the time I was old enough to be spoiled, Mr, 
 Gray, having fairly prospered in business, and come to Lon- 
 don, was established, wdth his wife, her mother, and her 
 mother’s white French poodle. Petite, in a dignified house 
 in Camberwell Grove. An entirely happy family ; old Mrs. 
 Monro as sweet as her daughter, perhaps slightly wiser ; 
 Bichard rejoicing in them both with all his heart ; and Petite, 
 having, perhaps, as much sense as any two of them, delighted 
 in, and beloved by all three. 
 
 Their house v/as near the top of the Grove, — which was a 
 real grove in those daj’S, and a grand one, some three-quar- 
 ters of a mile long, steepishly down hill, — beautiful in per- 
 spective as an unprecedently “ long-drawn aisle ; ” trees, elm, 
 w^ych elm, sycamore and aspen, the branches meeting at top ; 
 the houses on each side with trim stone pathways up to 
 them, through small plots of well-mown grass ; three or four 
 storied, mostly in grouped terraces, — w^ell-built, of sober- 
 colored brick, with high and steep slated roof — not gabled, 
 but polygonal ; all well to do, "well kept, well broomed, digni- 
 fiedly and pleasantly vulgar, and their own Grove-world all in 
 all to them. It was a pleasant mile and a furlong or tw^o’s 
 v/alk from Herne Hill to the Grove ; and whenever Mrs. Gray 
 and my mother had anything to say to each other, they walked 
 — up the hill or down — to say it ; and Mr. Gray’s house was 
 always the same to ns as our own at any time of day or night. 
 But our house not at all so to the Grays, having its formalities 
 inviolable ; so that during the whole of childhood I had the 
 sense that we were, in some way or other, always above our 
 friends and relations, — more or less patronizing everybody, 
 favoring them by our advice, instructing them by our exam- 
 ple, and called upon, by what was due both to ourselves, and 
 the constitution of society, to keep them at a certain distance. 
 
 With one exception ; which I have deep pleasure in re- 
 
PARNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON 
 
 87 
 
 niembering. In the first chapter of the “ Antiquary,” the 
 landlord at Queen’s Ferry sets down to his esteemed guest a 
 bottle of Kobert Cockburri’s best port ; with which Fobert 
 Cockburn duly supplied Sir Walter himself, being at that 
 time, if not the largest, the leading importer of the finest 
 Portugal wine, as my father of Spanish. But Mr. Cockburn 
 was primarily an old Edinburgh gentleman, and only b}^ 
 condescension a wine-merchant ; a man of great power and 
 pleasant sarcastic wit, moving in the first circles of Edin- 
 burgh ; attached to my father by many links of association 
 with the “ auld toun,” and sincerely respecting him. He was 
 much the stateliest and truest piece of character who ever 
 sate at our merchant feasts. 
 
 Mrs. Cockburn was even a little higher, — as representative 
 of the Scottish lady of the old school, — indulgent yet to the 
 new. She had been Lord Byron’s first of first loves ; she 
 was the Marj' Buff of Lachin-y-Gair. When I first remem- 
 ber her, still extremely beautiful in middle age, full of sense ; 
 and, though with some mixture of proud severity, extremely 
 kind. 
 
 They had two sons, Alexander and Archibald, both in busi- 
 ness wdth their father, both clever and energetic, but both 
 distinctly resolute — as indeed their parents desired — that 
 the}'" would be gentlemen first, salesmen second : a character 
 much to be honored and retained among us ; nor in their 
 case the least ambitious or affected : gentlemen they wmre, — 
 born so, and more at home on the hills than in the counting- 
 liouse, and withal attentive enough to their business. The 
 house, nevertheless, did not become all that it might have 
 been in less well-bred hands. 
 
 The two sons, one or other, often dined with us, and were 
 more distinctly friends than most of our guests. Alexander 
 had much of his father’s humor ; Archibald, a fine, young, 
 dark Highlander, w^as extremely delightful to me, and took 
 some pains wdth me, for the sake of my love of Scott, telling 
 me anything about fishing or deer-stalking that I cared to 
 listen to. For, even from earliest days, I cared to listen to 
 the adventures of other people, though I never coveted any 
 
88 
 
 PB^TERITA, 
 
 for myself. I read all Captain Marryat’s novels, without ever 
 wishing to go to sea ; traversed the field of Waterloo without 
 the slightest inclination to be a soldier ; went on ideal fishing 
 with Isaac Walton without ever casting a fly ; and knew 
 Cooper’s “ Deerslayer ” and “ Pathfinder ” almost by heart, 
 without handling anything but a popgun, or having any paths 
 to find beyond the solitudes of Gipsy Hill. I used some- 
 times to tell myself stories of campaigns in which I was an 
 ingenious general, or caverns in which I discovered veins of 
 gold ; but these were merely to fill vacancies of fancy, and 
 had no reference whatever to things actual or feasible. I 
 already disliked growing older, — never expected to be wiser, 
 and formed no more plans for the future than a little black 
 silkworm does in the middle of its first mulberry leaf. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SCHAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN. 
 
 The visit to the field of Waterloo, spoken of by chance in 
 last chapter, must have been when I was five years old, — on 
 the occasion of papa and mamma’s taking a fancy to see Paris 
 in its festivities following the coronation of Charles X. We 
 stayed several weeks in Paris, in a quiet family inn, and then 
 some days at Brussels, — but I have no memory whatever of 
 intermediate stages. It seems to me, on revision of those 
 matin times, that I was very slow in receiving impressions, 
 and needed to stop two or three days at least in a place, 
 before I began to get a notion of it ; but the notion, once 
 got, was, as far as it went, always right ; and since I had no 
 occasion afterward to modify it, other impressions fell away 
 from that principal one, and disappeared altogether. Hence 
 what people call my prejudiced views of things, — which are, 
 in fact, the exact contrary, namely, post-judiced. (I do not 
 mean to introduce this word for general service, but it saves 
 time and print just now.) 
 
 Another character of my perceptions I find curiously steady 
 
8CHAFFHAUSEN AND AIILAN 
 
 89 
 
 —that I was only interested by things near me, or at least 
 clearly visible and present. I suppose this is so with chil- 
 dren generally ; but it remained — and remains — a part of my 
 grown-up temper. In this visit to Paris, I was extremely 
 taken up with the soft red cushions of the armchairs, which 
 it took one half an hour to subside into after sitting dov/n, — 
 with the exquisitely polished floor of the salon, and the good- 
 natured French “Boots” (more properly “Brushes”), who 
 skated over it in the morning till it became as reflective as a 
 mahogany table, — with the pretty court full of flowers and 
 shrubs in beds and tubs, between our rez-de-chaussee win- 
 dows and the outer gate, — with a nice black servant belong- 
 ing to another family, who used to catch the house-cat for 
 me ; and with an equally good-natured fille de chambre, who 
 used to catch it back again, for fear I should tease it, (her ex- 
 perience of English boy-children having made her dubious of 
 my intentions) ; — all these things and people I remember, — 
 and the Tuileries garden, and the “ Tivoli ” gardens, wdiere 
 my father took me up and down a “ Russian mountain,” and 
 I saw fireworks of the finest. But I remember nothing of the 
 Seine, nor of Notre Dame, nor of anything in or even out 
 of the town, except the windmills on Montmartre. 
 
 Similarly at Brussels. I recollect no Hotel de Ville, no 
 stately streets, no surprises, or interests, except only the 
 drive to Waterloo and slow walk over the field. The defacing 
 mound was not then built — it was only nine years since the 
 fight ; and each bank and hollow of the ground was still a 
 true exponent of the courses of charge or recoil. Fastened 
 in my mind by later reading, that sig;ht of the slope of battle 
 remains to me entirely distinct, while the results of a later 
 examination of it after the building of the mound, have faded 
 mostly away. 
 
 I must also note that the rapture of getting on board a 
 steamer, spoken of in last letter, was of later date ; as a child 
 I cared more for a beach on which the waves broke, or sands 
 in which I could dig, than for wide sea. There was no “first 
 sight ” of the sea for me. I had gone to Scotland in Captain 
 Spinks’ cutter, then a regular passage boat, when I was only 
 
90 
 
 PBu^TERITA, 
 
 three years old; but the weather was fine, and except for 
 the pleasure of tattooing myself with tar among the ropes, I 
 might as well have been ashore ; but I grew into the sense 
 of ocean, as the Earth shaker, by the rattling beach, and lisp- 
 ing sand. 
 
 I had meant, also in this place, to give a word or two to 
 another poor relative, Nanny Clowsley, an entirely cheerful 
 old woman, who lived, with a Dutch clock and some old tea- 
 cups, in a single room (v/ith small bed in alcove) on the third 
 story of a gabled house, part of the group of old ones lately 
 pulled down on Chelsea side of Battersea Bridge. But I had 
 better keej) what I have to say of Chelsea well together, early 
 and late ; only, in speaking of shingle, I must note the use 
 to me of the view out of Nanny Clowsley’s window right down 
 upon the Thames tide, with its tossing wherries at the flow, 
 and stranded barges at ebb. 
 
 And now, I must get on, and come to the real first sights 
 of several things. 
 
 I said that, for our English tours, Mr. Telford usually lent 
 us his chariot. But for Switzerland, now taking Mary, we 
 needed stronger wheels and more room ; and for this, and all 
 following tours abroad, the first preparation and the begin- 
 ning of delight was the choosing a carriage to our fancy, 
 from the hireable reserves at Mr. Hopkinson's, of Long Acre. 
 
 The poor modern slaves and simpletons who let themselves 
 be dragged like cattle, or felled timber, through the countries 
 they imagine themselves visiting, can have no conception 
 whatever of the complex joys, and ingenious hopes, connected 
 with the choice and arrangement of the travelling carriage in 
 old times. The mechanical questions first, of strength — easy 
 rolling, — steady and safe poise of persons and luggage ; the 
 general stateliness of effect to be obtained for the abashing 
 of plebeian beholders ; the cunning design and distribution 
 of store-cellars under the seats, secret drawers under front 
 windows, invisible pockets under padded lining, safe from 
 dust, and accessible only by insidious slits, or necromantic 
 valves like Aladdin’s trap-door ; the fitting of cushions where 
 they would not slip, the rounding of corners for more delicate 
 
SOHAFFIIAUSEN AND MILAN. 
 
 91 
 
 repose ; the prudent attachments and springs of blinds ; the 
 perfect fitting of windows, on which one-half the comfort of 
 a travelling carriage really depends ; and the adaptation of all 
 these concentrated luxuries to the probabilities of who would 
 sit where, in the little apartment which was to be virtually 
 one’s home for five or six months ; — all this was an imaginary 
 journey in itself, with every pleasure, and none of the discom- 
 fort, of practical travelling. 
 
 On the grand occasion of our first continental journey — ■ 
 which was meant to be half a year long — the carriage was 
 chosen with, or in addition fitted with, a front seat outside 
 for my father and Mar}^, a dickey, unusually large, for Anne 
 and the courier, and four inside seats, though those in front 
 very small, that papa and Mary might be received inside in 
 stress of weather. I recollect, when we had finally settled 
 v/hich carriage w^e would have, the polite Mr. Hopkinson, ad- 
 vised of my dawning literary reputation, asking me (to the 
 joy of my father) if I could translate the motto of the former 
 possessor, under his painted arms,— ea nostra voco ,'’ — 
 which I accomplishing successfully, farther wittily observed 
 that, however by right belonging to the former possessor, 
 the motto was with greater propriety applicable to us. 
 
 For a family carriage of this solid construction, with its 
 luggage, and load of six or more persons, four horses were 
 of course necessary to get any sufficient W'ay on it ; and half 
 a dozen such teams were kept at every post-house. The 
 modern reader may perhaps have as much difficulty in realiz- 
 ing these savagely and clumsily locomotive periods, though 
 so recent, as any aspects of migratory Saxon or Goth ; and 
 may not think me vainly garrulous in their description. 
 
 The French horses, and more or less those on all the great 
 lines of European travelling, v/ere properly stout trotting 
 cart-horses, well up to their v^rork and over it ; untrimmed, 
 long-tailed, good-humoredly licentious, whinnying and frol- 
 icking vAth each other v/hen they had a chance ; sagaciously 
 steady to their work ; obedient to the voice mostly, to the rein 
 only for more explicitness ; never touched by the whip, which 
 was used merely to express the driver’s exultation in himself 
 
92 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 and them, — signal obstructive vehicles in front out of the 
 wajr, and advise all the inhabitants of the villages and towns 
 traversed on the day’s journey, that persons of distinction 
 were honoring them by their transitory presence. If every- 
 thing was right, the four horses were driven by one postilion 
 riding the shaft horse ; but if the horses were young, or the 
 riders unpractised, there was a postilion for the leaders also. 
 As a rule, there were four steady horses and a good driver, 
 rarel}^ drunk, often very young, the men of stronger build 
 being more useful for other w^ork, and any clever young rider 
 able to manage the well-trained and merry-minded beasts, be- 
 sides being lighter on their backs. Half the weight of the 
 cavalier, in such cases, was in his boots, which were often 
 brought out slung from the saddle like two buckets, the pos- 
 tilion, after the horses were harnessed, walking along the 
 pole and getting into them. 
 
 Scarcely less official, for a travelling carriage of good class 
 than its postilions, was the courier, or properly, avant-courier, 
 whoso primary office it was to ride in advance at a steady 
 gallop, and order the horses at each post-house to be har- 
 nessed and ready waiting, so that no time might be lost 
 between stages. His higher function was to make all bar- 
 gains and pay all bills, so as to save the family unbecoming 
 cares and mean anxieties, besides the trouble and disgrace of 
 trying to speak French or any other foreign language. He, 
 farther, knew the good inns in each town, and all the good 
 rooms in each inn, so that he could write beforehand to 
 secure those suited to his family. He was also, if an intelli- 
 gent man and high-class courier, well acquainted with the 
 proper sights to be seen in each town, and with all the occult 
 means to be used for getting sight of those that weren’t to 
 be seen by the vulgar. Murray, the reader will remember, 
 did not exist in those days ; the courier was a private Murray, 
 who knew, if he had any wit, not the things to be seen only, 
 but those you would yourself best like to see, and gave 
 instructions to your valet-de-place accordingly, interfering 
 only as a higher power in cases of difficulty needing to be 
 overcome by money or tact. He invariably attended the 
 
SGHAFFHAU8EN AND MILAN. 
 
 93 
 
 ladies in their shopping expeditions, took them to the fash- 
 ionable shops, and arranged as he thought proper the prices 
 of articles. Lastly, he knew, of course, all the other high- 
 class couriers on the road, and told you, if you wished to 
 know, all the people of consideration who chanced to be with 
 you in the inn. 
 
 My father would have considered it an insolent and revo- 
 liiiionaiy trespass on the privileges of the nobility to have 
 mounted his courier to ride in advance of us ; besides that, 
 wisely liberal of liis money for comfort and pleasure, he never 
 would have paid the cost of an extra horse for show. The 
 horses 'were, therefore, ordered in advance, when possible, by 
 the postilions of any preceding carriage (or, otherwise, we 
 did not mind waiting till they were harnessed), and we carried 
 our courier behind us in the dickey with inline, being in ail 
 his other functions and accomplishments an indispensable 
 luxury to us. Indispensable, first, because none of us could 
 speak anything but French, and that only enough to ask our 
 way in ; for all specialties of bargaining, or details of informa- 
 tion, we were helpless, even in France, — and might as well 
 liavo been migratory sheep, or geese, in Switzerland or Italy. 
 Indispensable, secondly, to my father’s peace of mind, be- 
 cause, with perfect liberality of temper, he had a great dislike 
 to being over reached. He perfectly well knew that his 
 courier would have his commission, and allowed it without 
 question ; but he knew also that his courier would not be 
 cheated by other people, and was content in liis representa- 
 tive. Not for ostentation, but for real enjoyment and change 
 of sensation from his suburban life, my father liked large 
 rooms ; and my mother, in mere continuance of her or- 
 dinary and essential habits, liked clean ones ; clean, and 
 large, means a good inn and a first floor. Also my father 
 liked a view from his windows, and reasonably said, “Why 
 should we travel to see less than we may ? ” — so that meant 
 first ^QOT front. Also my father liked delicate cookery, just 
 because he was one of the smallest and rarest eaters ; and 
 my mother liked good meat. That meant, dinner without 
 limiting price, in reason. Also, though my father never went 
 
94 
 
 PB^TEBITA. 
 
 into society, lie all tlie more enjoyed getting a glimpse, rever< 
 entially, of fashionable people — I mean, people of rank, — he 
 scorned fashion, and it was a great thing to him to feel that 
 
 Lord and Lady were on the opposite landing, and 
 
 that, at any moment, he might conceivably meet and pass 
 them on the stairs. Salvador, duly advised, or penetratively 
 perceptive of these dispositions of my father, entirely pleas- 
 ing and admirable to the courier mind, had carte-blanche in 
 all administrative functions and bargains. We found our 
 pleasant rooms always ready, our good horses always w^aiting, 
 everybody took their hats off when we arrived and departed. 
 Salvador presented his accounts weekly, and they were set- 
 tled v/ithout a word of demur. 
 
 To all these conditions of luxury and felicity, can the 
 modern steam-puffed tourist conceive the added ruling and 
 culminating one — that we v/ere never in a hurry? coupled 
 with the correlative power of always starting at the hour we 
 chose, and that if we weren’t ready, the horses would wait ? 
 As a rule, we breakfasted at our own home time— -eight ; the 
 horses were pawing and neighing at the door (under the arch- 
 way, I should have said) by nine. Between nine and three, — 
 reckoning seven miles an hour, including stoppages, for mini- 
 mum pace, — we had done our forty to fifty miles of journej^, 
 sate down to dinner at four, — and I had tv/o hours of delicious 
 exploring by myself in the evening ; ordered in ]3unctually at 
 seven to tea, and finishing my sketches till half-past nine, — 
 bedtime. 
 
 On longer days of journey "we started at six, and did twenty 
 miles before breakfast, coming in for four o’clock dinner as 
 usual. In a quite long day we made a second stop, dining at 
 any nice village hostelry, and coming in for late tea, after do- 
 ing our eighty or ninety miles. But these pushes were seldom 
 made unless to get to some pleasant cathedral town for Sun- 
 day, or pleasant Alpine village. We never travelled on Sun- 
 day ; my father and I nearly always went — as philosophers — 
 to mass, in the morning, and ray mother, in pure good-nature 
 to us, (I scarcely ever saw in her a trace of feminine curiosity,) 
 would join with us in some such profanity as a drive on the 
 
8GHAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN 
 
 95 
 
 Corso, or the lake, in the afternoon. But we all, even my 
 father, liked a walk in the fields better, round an Alpine 
 chalet village. 
 
 At page 70 I threatened more accurate note of my first 
 impressions of Switzerland and Italy in 1833. Of customary 
 Calais I have something to say later on, — here I note only our 
 going up Ehine to Strasburg, where, with all its miracles of 
 building, I was already wise enough to feel the cathedral stiff 
 and iron-worky ; but was greatly excited and impressed by 
 the high roofs and rich fronts of the wooden houses, in their 
 sudden indication of nearness to Switzerland ; and especially 
 by finding the scene so admirably expressed by Prout in the 
 oGth plate of his Flanders and Germany, still uninjured.'9And 
 then, with Salvador was held council in the inn-parlor of 
 Strasburg, whether — it was then tbe Friday afternoon— we 
 should push on to-morrow for our Sunday’s rest to Basle, or 
 to Scliaffhausen. 
 
 How much depended — if ever anything “depends” on 
 anything else, — on the issue of that debate 1 Salvador in- 
 clined to the straight and level Rhine-side road, with the 
 luxury of the Three Kings attainable by sunset. But at 
 Basle, it had to be admitted, there were no Alps in sight, no 
 cataract within hearing, and Salvador honorably laid before 
 us the splendid alternative possibility of reaching, by traverse 
 of the hilly road of the Black Forest, the gates of Schaff- 
 hausen itself, before they closed for the night. 
 
 The Black Forest! The fall of Schaff hausen ! The chain 
 of the Alps ! within one’s grasp for Sunday 1 What a Sunday, 
 instead of customary Walworth and the Dulwich fields 1 My 
 impassioned petition at last carried it, and the earliest morn- 
 ing saw us trotting over the bridge of boats to Kehl, and in 
 the eastern light I w^ell remember watching the line of the 
 Black Forest hills enlarge and rise, as we crossed the plain of 
 the Rhine. “Gates of the hills opening for me to a new 
 life — to cease no more, except at the Gates of the Hills 
 whence one returns not. 
 
 And so, we reached the base of the Schwartzwald, and en- 
 tered an ascending dingle ; and scarcely, I think, a quarter of 
 
96 
 
 PUMTERITA. 
 
 nn Lour after entering, saw our first “ Swiss cottage.”* How 
 much it meant to all of us, — how much prophesied to me, no 
 modern traveller could the least conceive, if I spent days in 
 trying to tell him. A sort of triumphant shriek — like all the 
 railway whistles going off at once at Clapham Junction — hits 
 gone up from the Fooldom of Europe at the destruction of 
 the myth of William Tell. To us, every word of it was true 
 — but mythically luminous with more than mortal truth ; and 
 here, under the black woods, glowed the visible, beautiful, 
 tangible testimony to it in the purple larch timber, carved to 
 exquisiteness by the joy of peasant life, continuous, motion- 
 less here in the pine shadow on its ancestral turf, — unas- 
 saile^ and unassailing, in the blessedness of righteous poverty, 
 of religious peace. 
 
 The myth of William Tell is destroyed forsooth ? and you 
 have tunnelled Gothard, and filled, it may be, the Bay of 
 Uri ; — and it was all for you and your sake that the grapes 
 dropped blood from the press of St. Jacob, and the pine club 
 struck down horse and helm in Morgarten Glen? 
 
 Difficult enough for you to imagine, that old travellers’ 
 time when Switzerland was yet the land of the Swiss, and the 
 Alps had never been trod by foot of man. Steam, never 
 heard of yet, but for short fair weather crossing at sea (were 
 there paddle packets across Atlantic ? I forget). Any way, 
 the roads by land were safe ; and entered once into this 
 mountain Paradise, we wound on through its balmy glens, 
 I^ast cottage after cottage on their lawns, still glistening in 
 the dew. 
 
 The road got into more barren heights by the midday, 
 tlie hills arduous ; once or twice we had to wait for horses, 
 and we were still twenty miles from Schaffhausen at sunset ; it 
 -was past midnight when we reached her closed gates. The 
 disturbed porter had the grace to open them — not quite wide 
 enough ; we carried away one of our lamps in collision with 
 the slanting bar as we drove through the arch. How much 
 
 * Swiss, in character and real liahit— the political boundaries are of 
 no moment. 
 
8GUAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN 
 
 97 
 
 happier the privilege of dreamily entering a mediaeval city, 
 though with the loss of a lamp, than the free ingress of being 
 jammed between a dray and a tram-car at a railroad station ! 
 
 It is strange that I but dimly recollect the following morn- 
 ing ; I fancy we must have gone to some sort of church or 
 other ; and certainly, part of the day went in admiring the 
 bow-windows projecting into the clean streets. None of us 
 seem' to have thought the Alps would be visible without pro- 
 fane exertion in climbing hills. We dined at four, as ilaual, 
 and the evening being entirely fine, went out to walk, all of 
 us, — my father and mother and Mary and I. 
 
 We must have still spent some time in town-seeing, for it 
 was drawing toward sunset when wm got up to some sort of 
 garden promenade — west of the town, I believe ; and high 
 above the Rhine, so as to command the open country across 
 it to the south and west. At which open country of low 
 undulation, far into blue, — gazing as at one of our own 
 distances from Malvern of Worcestershire, or Dorking of 
 Kent, — suddenly — behold — beyond. 
 
 There was no thought in any of us for a moment of their 
 being clouds. They wmre clear as crystal, sharp on the pure 
 horizon sky, and already tinged wdth rose by the sinking sun. 
 Infinitely beyond all that we had ever thought or dreamed, 
 — the seen walls of lost Eden could not have been more 
 beautiful to us ; not more awful, round heaven, the walls of 
 sacred Death. 
 
 It is not possible to imagine, in any time of the world, a 
 more blessed entrance into life, for a child of such a tempera- 
 ment as mine. True, the temperament belonged to the age : 
 a very few years, — within the hundred, — before that, no child 
 could have been born to care for mountains, or for the men 
 that lived among them, in that way. Till Rousseau’s time, 
 there had been no sentimental” love of nature; and till 
 Scott’s, no such apprehensive love of “all sorts and conditions 
 of men,” not in the soul merely, but in the flesh. St. Bernard 
 of La Fontaine, looking out to Mont Blanc with his child’s 
 eyes, sees above Mont Blanc the Madonna ; St. Bernard of 
 Talloires, not the Lake of Annecy, but the dead between 
 7 
 
9S 
 
 PB^TEIUTA. 
 
 Martigny and Aosta. But for me, the Alps and their people 
 were alike beautiful in their snow, and their humanity ; and 
 I wanted, neither for them nor myself, sight of any thrones 
 in lieaven but the rocks, or of any spirits in heaven but the 
 clouds. 
 
 Thus, in perfect health of life and fire of heart, not wanting 
 to be anything but the boy I was, not wanting to have any- 
 thing more than I had ; knowing of sorrow only just so much 
 as make life serious to me, not enough to slacken in the 
 leas^ its sinews ; and with so much of science mixed with 
 feeling as to make the sight of the Alps not only the revela- 
 tion of the beauty of the earth, but the opening of the first 
 page of its volume, — I went down that evening from the 
 garden-terrace of Schaffhausen with my destiny fixed in all 
 of it that was to be sacred and useful. To that terrace, and 
 the shore of the Lake of Geneva, my heart and faith return 
 to this da}% in every impulse that is yet nobly alive in them, 
 and every thought that has in it help or peace. 
 
 The morning after that Sunday’s eve at Schaffhausen w^as 
 also cloudless, and sve drove early to the falls, seeing again 
 the chain of the Alps by morning light, and learning, at 
 Laiiffen, what an Alpine river was. Coming out of the gorge 
 of Balstall, I got another ever memorable sight of the chain 
 of the Alps, and these distant views, never seen by the mod- 
 ern traveller, taught me, and made me feel, more than the 
 close marvels of Thun and Interlachen. It was again fortu- 
 nate that we took the grandest pass into Italy, — that the first 
 ravine of the main Alps I saw was the Via Mala, and the first 
 lake of Italy, Como. 
 
 We took boat on the little recessed lake of Chiavenna, and 
 rowed down the whole way of waters, passing another Sunday 
 at Cadenabbia, and then, from villa to villa, across the lake, 
 and across, to Como, and so to Milan by Monza. 
 
 It was then full, though early, summer time ; and the first 
 impression of Italy always ought to be in her summer. It 
 was also well that, though my heart was with the Swiss 
 cottager, the artificial taste in me had been mainly formed 
 by Turner’s rendering of those very scenes, in Bogers’ “ Italy.” 
 
SCIIAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN. 
 
 99 
 
 The Lake of Como,” the two moonlight villas, and the 
 “ Farewell,” had prepared me for all that was beautiful and 
 right in the terraced gardens, proportioned arcades, and 
 white spaces of sunny wall, w’hich have in general no honest 
 charm for the English mind. But to me, they were almost 
 native through Turner, — familiar at once, and revered. I 
 had no idea then of the Kenaissance evil in them ; they were 
 associated only with what I had been told of the “divine art” 
 of Eaphael and Leonardo, and, by my ignorance of dates, 
 associated wdth the stories of Shakespeare. Portia’s villa, 
 — Juliet’s palace, — I thought to have been like these. 
 
 Also, as noticed in the epilogue to reprint of vol. ii. of 
 “Modern Painters,” I had always a quite true perception of size, 
 whether in mountains or buildings, and with the perception, 
 joy in it ; so that the vastness of scale in the Milanese pala- 
 ces, and the “mount of marble, a hundred spires,” of the 
 duomo, impressed me to the full at once : and not having yet 
 the taste to discern good Gothic from bad, the mere richness 
 and lineness of lace-like tracery against the sky was a con- 
 summate rapture to me — how much more getting up to it 
 and climbing among it, with the Monte Rosa seen between 
 its pinnacles across the plain ! 
 
 I had been partly prepared for this view by the admirable 
 presentment of it in London, a year or two before, in an exhi- 
 bition, of w'hich the vanishing has been in later life a greatly 
 felt loss to me, — Burford’s panorama in Leicester Square, 
 wJiich was an educational institution of the highest and 
 purest value, and ought to have been supported by the Gov- 
 ernment as one of the most beneficial school instruments in 
 London. There I had seen, exquisitely painted, the view 
 from the roof of Milan Cathedral, when I had no hope of ever 
 seeing the reality, but with a joy and wonder of the deepest ; 
 — and now to be there indeed, made deep w^onder become 
 fathomless. 
 
 Again, most fortunately, the weather was clear and cloud- 
 less all day long, and as the sun drew westward, we w^ere 
 able to drive to the Corso, where, at that time, the higher 
 Milanese were happy and proud as ours in their park, and 
 
100 
 
 PRMTEHITA. 
 
 wlience, no railway station intervening, the whole chain of the 
 Alps was visible on one side, and the beautiful city with its 
 dominant frost'Crystalline Duoino on the other. Then the 
 drive home in the open carriage through the quiet twilight, 
 up the long streets, and round the base of tlie Duomo, the 
 smooth pavement under the wheels adding with its silentness 
 to the sense of dream wonder in it all, — the perfect air in 
 absolute calm, the just seen majesty of encompassing Alps, 
 the perfectness — so it seemed to me — and purity, of the sweet, 
 stately, stainless marble against the sky. What more, wdiat 
 else could be asked of seemingly immutable good, in this 
 mutable world ? 
 
 I wish in general to avoid interference with the reader’s 
 judgment on the matters which I endeavor serenely to nar- 
 rate ; but may, I think, here be pardoned for observing to 
 him the advantage, in a certain way, of the contemplative 
 abstraction from the world which, during this early conti- 
 nental travelling, was partly enforced by our ignorance, and 
 partly secured by our love of comfort. There is something 
 peculiarly delightful — nay, delightful inconceivably by the 
 modern German-plated and French-polished tourist, in pass- 
 ing through the streets of a foreign city without understand- 
 ing a word that anybody says ! One’s ear for all sound of 
 voices then becomes entirely impartial ; one is not diverted 
 by the meaning of s}dlables from recognizing the absolute 
 guttural, liquid, or honeyed quality of them ; while the gest- 
 ure of the body and the expression of the face have the same 
 value for you that they have in a pantomime ; every scene 
 becomes a melodious opera to you, or a picturesquely inartic- 
 ulate Punch. Consider, also, the gain in so consistent tran- 
 quillity. Most young people nowadays, or even lively old 
 ones, travel more in search of adventures than of informa- 
 tion. One of my most valued records of recent wandering is 
 a series of sketches by an amiable and extremely elever girl, 
 of the things that happened to her people and herself every 
 day that they were abroad. Here it is brother Harry, and 
 there it is mamma, and now paterfamilias, and now her little 
 graceful self, and anon her merry or remonstrant sisterhood, 
 
rArA AND MAMMA. 
 
 101 
 
 who meet with enchanting hardships, and enviable misadvent- 
 ures ; bind themselves with fetters of friendship, and glance 
 into sj)arklings of amourette, with any sort of people in con- 
 ical bats and fringy caps : and it is all very delightful and 
 condescending ; and, of course, things are learnt about the 
 country that way which can be learned in no other way, but 
 only about that part of it which interests itself in you, or 
 which you have pleasure in being acquainted with. Virtu- 
 ally, you are thinking of yourself all the time ; you necessa- 
 rily talk to the cheerful people, not to the sad ones ; and your 
 head is for the most part vividly taken up with very little 
 things. I don’t say that our isolation was meritorious, or that 
 people in general should know no language but their own. 
 Yet the meek ignorance has these advantages. We did not 
 travel for adventures, nor for company, but to see with our 
 e^’es, and to measure with our hearts. If you have sympathy, 
 the aspect of humanity is more true to the depths of it than 
 its words; and even in my own land, the things in which I 
 have been least deceived are those which I have learned as 
 their Spectator. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAPA AND MAMMA. 
 
 The work to which, as partly above described, I set myself 
 during the year 1834, under the excitement remaining from 
 my fo}-eigii travels, was in four distinct directions, in any one 
 of which m}^ strength might at that time have been fixed by 
 definite encouragement. There was first the effort to express 
 sentiment in rhyme ; the sentiment being really genuine, 
 under all the superficial vanities of its display ; and the rhymes 
 rhythmic, only without any ideas in them. It was impossible 
 to explain, either to myself or other people, why I liked 
 staring at the sea, or scampering on a moor ; but, one had 
 pleasure in making some sort of melodious noise about it, like 
 the 'waves themselves, or the peev/its. Then, secondly, there 
 
102 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 was the real love of engraving, and of such characters of sur- 
 face and shade as it could give. I have never seen drawing, 
 by a youth, so entirely industrious in delicate line ; and there 
 was really the making of a fine landscape, or figure outline, 
 engraver in me. But fate having ordered otherwise, I mourn 
 the loss to engraving less than that before calculated, or 
 rather incalculable, one, to geology ! Then there was, thirdly, 
 the violent instinct for architecture ; but I never could have 
 built or carved anything, because I was without power of 
 design ; and have perhaps done as much in that direction as 
 it was worth doing with so limited faculty. And then, 
 fourthly, there was the unabated, never to be abated, geo- 
 logical instinct, now fastened on the Alps. My fifteenth 
 birthday gift being left to my choice, I asked for Saussure’s 
 “Voyages dans les Alpes,” and thenceforward began pro- 
 gressive work, carrying on my mineralogical dictionary by the 
 help of Jameson’s three-volume “ Mineralogy,” (an entirely 
 clear and serviceable book ; ) comparing his descriptions wdth 
 the minerals in the British Museum, and writing my own 
 more eloquent and exhaustive accounts in a shorthand of 
 many ingeniously symbolic characters, which it took me much 
 longer to write my descriptions in, than in common text, and 
 which neither I nor anybody else could read a word of, after- 
 w^ard. 
 
 Such being the quadrilateral plan of my fortifiable disposi- 
 tions, it is time now to explain, with such clew as I have found 
 to them, the somewhat peculiar character and genius of both 
 my parents ; the influence of which was more important upon 
 me, then, and far on into life, than any external conditions, 
 either of friendship or tutorship, whether at the University, 
 or in the world. 
 
 It was, in the first place, a matter of essential weight in the 
 determination of subsequent lines, not only of labor but of 
 thought, that while my father, as before told, gave me the 
 best example of emotional reading, — reading, observe, proper, 
 not recitation, which he disdained, and I disliked, — my mother 
 was both able to teach me, and resolved that I should learn, 
 absolute accuracy of diction and precision of accent in prose ; 
 
rAPA AND MA3IMA. 
 
 103 
 
 and made me know, as soon as I could speak plain, what I 
 have in all later years tried to enforce on my readers, that 
 accuracy of diction means accuracy of sensation, and precis- 
 ion of accent, precision of feeling. Trained, herself in girl- 
 hood, only at Mrs. Rice’s country school, my mother had 
 there learned severely right principles of truth, charity, and 
 liousewifery, with punctilious respect for the purity of that 
 English which in her home-surroundings she perceived to be 
 by no means as undefiled as the ripples of Wandel. She was 
 the daughter, as aforesaid, of the early widowed landlady of 
 the King’s Head Inn and Tavern, which still exists, or existed 
 a year or two since, presenting its side to Croydon market- 
 place, its front and entrance door to the narrow alley which 
 descends, steep for pedestrians, impassable to carriages, from 
 the High Street to the lower town. 
 
 Thus native to the customs and dialect of Croydon Agora, 
 my mother, as I now read her, must have been an extremely 
 intelligent, admirably practical, and naively ambitious girl ; 
 keeping, without contention, the headship of her class, and 
 availing herself with steady discretion of every advantage the 
 country school and its modest mistress could offer her. I 
 never in her after-life heard her speak with regret, and seldom 
 without respectful praise, of any part of the discipline of 
 Mrs. Rice. 
 
 I do not know for what reason, or under what conditions, 
 my mother went to live with my Scottish grandfather and 
 grandmother, first at Edinburgh, and then at the house of 
 Bower’s Well, on the slope of the Hill of Kinnoul, above 
 Perth. I was stupidly and heartlessly careless of the past 
 history of my family as long as I could have learnt it ; not till 
 after my mother’s death did I begin to desire to know what I 
 could never more be told. 
 
 But certainly the change, for her, was into a higher sphere 
 of society, — that of real, though sometimes eccentric, and fre- 
 quently poor, gentlemen and gentlew^omen. She must then 
 have been rapidly growing into a tall, handsome, and very 
 finely made girl, with a beautiful mild firmness of expression ; 
 a faultless and accomplished housekeeper, and a natural, 
 
104 
 
 PUMTERITA, 
 
 essential, unassailable, yet inoffensive, prude. I never heard 
 a single word of any sentiment, accident, admiration, or affec- 
 tion disturbing the sereiie tenor of her Scottish stewardship ; 
 yet I noticed that she never spoke without some slight shy- 
 ness before my father, nor without some pleasure, to other 
 people, of Dr. Thomas Brown. 
 
 That the Professor of Moral Philosophy w^as a frequent 
 guest at my grandmother’s tea-table, and fond of benignantly 
 arguing with Miss Margaret, is evidence enough of the posi- 
 tion she held in Edinburgli circles ; her household skills and 
 duties never therefore neglected — rather, if anything, still 
 too scrupulously practised. Once, when she had put her 
 white frock on for dinner, and hurried to the kitchen to give 
 final glance at the state and order of things there, old Mause, 
 having run against the white frock with a black saucepan, 
 and been, it seems, rebuked by her young mistress with too 
 little resignation to the will of Providence in that matter, 
 shook her head sorrowfully, saying, “ Ah, Miss Margaret, ye 
 are just like Martha, carefu’ and troubled about mony things.” 
 
 'When my mother was thus, at twenty, in a Desdemoua-like 
 prime of womanhood, intent on highest moral philosophy, — 
 “ though still the house affairs would draw her thence ” — 
 my father waxs a dark-e}^ed, brilliantly active, and sensitive 
 youth of sixteen. Margaret became to him an absolutely res- 
 pected and admired — mildly liked — governess and confidante. 
 Her sympathy was necessary to him in all his flashingly tran- 
 sient amours ; her advice in all domestic business or sorrow, 
 and her encouragement in all his plans of life. 
 
 These xvere already determined for commerce ; — yet not to 
 the abandonment of liberal study. He had learned Latin 
 thoroughly, though with no large range of reading, under the 
 noble traditions of Adams at the Pligh School of Edinburgh : 
 while, by the then living and universal influence of Sir "Wal- 
 ter, every scene of his native city was exalted in his imagina- 
 tion by the purest poetry, and the proudest history, that ever 
 hallowed or haunted the streets and rocks of a brightly in- 
 habited capital. I have neither space, nor wish, to extend my 
 proposed account of things that have been, by records of cor- 
 
PAPA AND MAMMA. 
 
 105 
 
 respondence ; — it is too much the habit of modern biogra- 
 phers to confuse epistolary talk with vital fact. But the follow- 
 ing letter from Dr. Thomas Brown to my father, at this criti- 
 cal juncture of his life, must be read, in part as a testimony 
 to the position ho already held among the youtlis of Edin- 
 burgh, and yet more as explaining some points of his blended 
 character, of the deepest significance afterward, both to him- 
 self and to me. 
 
 “8, N. St. David’s Sthekt, Edinburgh, 
 “February 18th, 1807. 
 
 “My dear Sir: When I look at the date of the letter 
 which you did me the honor to send me as your adviser in 
 literary matters — an office which a proficient like you scarcely 
 requires — I am quite ashamed of the interval which I have 
 suffered to elapse. I can truly assure you, however, that :*■. 
 has been unavoidable, and has not arisen from any want of 
 interest in your intellectual progress. Even when you were 
 a mere lioy I Avas much delighted with your early zeal and 
 attainments ; and for your own sake, as well as for your ex- 
 cellent mother’s, I have always looked to you with great 
 regard, and with the belief that you would distinguish your- 
 self in whatever profession you might adoi>t. 
 
 “You seem, I think, to repent too much the time you have 
 devoted to the Belles Lettres. I confess I do not regret this 
 for you. You must, I am sure, have felt the effect which 
 such studies have in giving a general refinement to the man- 
 ners and to the heart, which, to anyone who is not to be strict- 
 ly a man of science, is the most valuable effect of literature. 
 You must remember that there is a great difference between 
 professionally, and studying for relaxation and orna- 
 ment. In the societ}" in wbich you are to mix, the writers in 
 Belles Lettres will be mentioned fifty times, when more ab- 
 stract science will not be mentioned once ; and there is this 
 great advantage in that sort of knowledge, that the display of 
 it, unless very immoderate indeed, is not counted pedantry, 
 when the display of other intellectual attainments might run 
 some risk of the imputation. There is indeed one evil in the 
 reading of poetry and other light productions, that it is apt 
 
108 
 
 pujeterita. 
 
 to be indulged in to downright gluttony^ and to occupy time 
 which should be given to business ; but I am sure I can rely 
 on you that you will not so misapply your time. There is, 
 however, one science, the first and greatest of sciences to all 
 men, and to merchants particularly — the science of Political 
 Economy. To this I think your chief attention should be 
 directed. It is in truth the science of your own profession, 
 which counteracts the — (word lost with seal) — and narrow 
 habits which that profession is sometimes apt to produce ; 
 and which is of perpetual appeal in every discussion on mer- 
 cantile and financial affairs. A merchant well instructed in 
 Political Economy must always be fit to lead the views of his 
 brother merchants — without it, he is a mere trader. Do not 
 lose a day, therefore, without providing yourself with a copy 
 of Adam Smith’s ‘ Wealth of Nations,’ and read and re-read it 
 with attention — as I am sure you must read it with delight. 
 In giving you this advice I consider you as a merchant, for as 
 that is to be your profession in life, your test of the impor- 
 tance of any acquirement should be how far it will tend to 
 render you an honorable and distinguished merchant ; — a 
 character of no small estimation in this commercial country. 
 I tliei’efore consider the physical sciences as greatly subordi- 
 nate in relation to your prospects in life, and the society in 
 which you will be called to mingle. All but chemistry re- 
 (]uire a greater preparation in mathematics than you prob- 
 ably have, and chemistry it is quite impossible to understand 
 without some opportunity of seeing experiments systemati- 
 cally carried on. If, however, you have the opportunity to at- 
 tend any of the lecturers on that science in London, it will be 
 well worth your while, and in that case I think you should 
 purchase either Dr. Thomson’s or Mr. Murray’s new system 
 of chemistry, so as to keep up constantly with your lecturer. 
 Even of physics in general it is pleasant to have some view, 
 l)Owever superficial, and therefore, though you cannot expect 
 without mathematics to have anything but a superficial view, 
 you had better try to attain it. With this view 3’ou may read 
 Gregory’s ‘ Economy of Nature,’ which, though not a good 
 book, and not always accurate, is, I believe, the best popular 
 
PAPA AND MA3IMA. 
 
 107 
 
 book we have, and sufficiently accurate for your purposes. 
 Remember, however, that though you may be permitted to 
 be a superficial natural philosopher, no such indulgence is to 
 be given you in Political Economy. 
 
 “ The only other circumstance remaining for me to request 
 of you is that you will not suffer yourself to lose any of the 
 languages you have acquired. Of the modern languages 
 there is less fear, as your mercantile communications will hi 
 some measure keep them alive ; but merchants do not cor- 
 respond in Latin, and you may perhaps lose it unconsciously. 
 Independently, however, of the admirable writers of whom 
 you would thus deprive yourself, and considering the lan- 
 guage merely as the accomplishment of a gentleman, it is of 
 too great value to be carelessly resigned. 
 
 “Farewell, my dear sir. Accept the regard of all this 
 family, and believe me, with every wish to be of service to 
 you, 
 
 “Your sincere friend, 
 
 “T. Brown.” 
 
 It may easily be conceived that a youth to whom such a 
 letter as this was addressed by one of the chiefs of the purely 
 intellectual circles of Edinburgh, would be regarded with 
 more respect by his Croydon cousin than is usually rendered 
 by grown j^oung women to their schoolboy friends. 
 
 Their frank, cousinly relation went on, however, without a 
 thought on either side of any closer ties, until my father, at 
 two or three and twenty, after various apprenticeships in 
 London, was going finally to London to begin his career iii 
 his own business. By that time he had made up his mind 
 that Margaret, though not the least an ideal heroine to him, 
 was quite the best sort of person he could have fora wife, the 
 rather as they were already so well used to each other ; and 
 in a quiet, but enough resolute way, asked her if she were of 
 the same mind, and would wait until he had an independence 
 to offer her. His early tutress consented with frankly con- 
 fessed joy, not indeed in the Agnes Wickfield way, “ I have 
 loved you all my life,” but feeling and admitting that it was 
 
108 
 
 PBJETEEITA, 
 
 great delight to he allowed to love him now. The relations 
 between Grace Nugent and Lord Colambre in Miss Edge- 
 worth’s “Absentee” extremely resemble those between my 
 father and mother, except that Lord Colambre is a more eager 
 lover. My father chose his wife much with the same kind of 
 serenity and decision with which afterward he chose his 
 clerks. 
 
 A time of active and hopeful contentment for both the 
 young people followed, my mother being perhaps the more 
 deeply in love, while John depended more absolutely on her 
 sympathy and wise friendship than is at all usual with young 
 men of the present day in their relations with admired young 
 ladies. But neither of them ever permitted their feelings to 
 degenerate into fretful or impatient passion. My mother 
 shov/ed her affection chiefly in steady endeavor to cultivate 
 her powers of mind, and form her manners, so as to fit herself 
 to be the undespised companion of a man whom she considered 
 much her superior: my father in unremitting attention to the 
 business on the success of which his marriage depended : and 
 in a methodical regularity of conduct and correspondence 
 which never left liis mistress a moment of avoidable anxiety, 
 or gave her motive for any serious displeasure. 
 
 On these terms the engagement lasted nine years ; at the 
 end of which time, my grandfather’s debts having been all 
 paid, and my father established in a business gradually in- 
 creasing, and liable to no grave contingency, the now not 
 very young people were married in Perth one evening after 
 supper, the servants of the house having no suspicion of the 
 event until John and Margaret drove away together next 
 morning to Edinburgh. 
 
 In looking back to my past thoughts and Vv^ays, nothing 
 astonishes me more than my w^ant of curiosity about ail these 
 matters ; and that, often and often as m3" mother used to tell 
 with complacency the story of this carefully secret marriage, 
 I never asked, “But, mother, why so secret, when it was just 
 what all the friends of both of you so long expected, and what 
 all your best friends so heartily wished? ” 
 
 But, until lately, I never thought of writing any more about 
 
l^APA AND MAMMA. 
 
 109 
 
 mjself than was set down in diaries, nor of my family at all ; 
 and thus too carelessly, and, as I now think, profanely, 
 neglected the traditions of my people. “What does it all 
 matter, now ? ” I said ; “ we are what we are, and shall be 
 what we make ourselves.” 
 
 Also, until very lately, I had accustomed myself to consider 
 all that my parents had done, so far as their own happiness 
 was concerned, entirely wise and exemplary. Yet the reader 
 must not suppose that what I have said in my deliberate writ- 
 ings on the propriety of long engagements had any reference 
 to this singular one in my own family. Of the heroism and 
 patience with which the sacrifice was made, on both sides, I 
 cannot judge: — but that it was greater than I should myself 
 have been capable of, I know, and I believe that it ^vas unwise. 
 For during these years of waiting, my father fell gradually 
 into a state of ill-health from which he never entirely recov» 
 ered ; and in close of life, they both had to leave their child, 
 just when he was beginning to satisfy the ho^^es they had 
 formed for him. 
 
 I have allowed this tale of the little I knew of their early 
 trials and virtues to be thus chance told, because I think my 
 history will, in the end, bo completest if I write as its con- 
 nected subjects occur to me, and not with formal chronology 
 of plan. My reason for telling it in this place was chiefly to 
 explain how my mother obtained her perfect skill in English 
 reading, through the hard effort which, through the years of 
 waiting, she made to efface the faults, and supply the defects, 
 of her early education ; effort which was aided and directed 
 unerringly by her natural — for its intensity I might justly call 
 it supernatural — purity of heart and conduct, leading hei' 
 always to take most delight in the right and clear language 
 which only can relate lovely things. Her unquestioning 
 evangelical faith in the literal truth of the Bible placed me, as 
 soon as I could conceive or think, in the presence of an unseen 
 world ; and set my active analytic power early to work on the 
 questions of conscience, free will, and responsibility, which 
 are easily determined in days of innocence ; but are approached 
 too often with prejudice, and always with disadvantage, after 
 
110 
 
 PliuSTERlTA. 
 
 men become stupefied by the opinions, or tainted by the sins, 
 of the outer world ; while the gloom, and even terror, with 
 which the restrictions of the Sunday, and the doctrines of the 
 “Pilgrim’s Progress,” the “Holy War,” and Quarles’ “Em- 
 blems,” oppressed the seventh part of my time, was useful to 
 me as the only form of vexation which I was called on to 
 endure ; and redeemed by the otherwise uninterrupted cheer- 
 fulness and tranquillity of a household wherein the common 
 ways were all of ];)leasantness, and its single and strait path, 
 of perfect peace. 
 
 My father’s failure of health, following necessarily on the long 
 years of responsibility and exertion, needed only this repose to 
 effect its cure. Shy to an extreme degree in general com- 
 pany, all the more because he had natural powers which he 
 was unable to his own satisfaction to express, — his business 
 faculty was entirely superb and easy : he gave his full energy 
 to counting-house work in the morning, and his afternoons 
 to domestic rest. With instant perception and decision in all 
 business questions ; with principles of dealing which admitted 
 of no infraction, and involved neither anxiety nor concealment, 
 the counting-house work was more of an interest, or even an 
 amusement, to him, than a care. His capital was either in 
 the Bank, or in St. Catherine’s Docks, in the form of insured 
 butts of the finest sherry in the world ; his partner, Mr. 
 Domecq, a Spaniard as proud as himself, as honorable, and 
 having perfect trust in him, — not only in his probity, but his 
 judgment, — accurately complying with all his directions in 
 the preparation of wine for the English market, and no less 
 anxious than he to make every variety of it, in its several rank, 
 incomparably good. The letters to Spain therefore needed 
 only brief statement that the public of that year wanted their 
 wine young or old, pale or brown, and the like ; and the 
 letters to customers were as brief in their assurances that if 
 they found fault with their wine, they did not understand it, 
 and if they wanted an extension of credit, they could not 
 have it. These Spartan brevities of epistle were, however, 
 always supported by the utmost care in executing his corre- 
 spondents’ orders ; and by the unusual attention shown them 
 
PAPA . AND MAMMA. 
 
 Ill 
 
 in travelling' for those orders himself, instead of sending an 
 agent or a clerk. His domiciliary visits of this kind were al- 
 ways conducted by him with great savoir-faire and pleasant 
 courtesy, no less than the most attentive patience : and they 
 were productive of the more confidence between him and the 
 country merchant, that he was perfectly just and candid in 
 appraisement of the wine of rival houses, while his fine palate 
 enabled him always to sustain triumphantly any and every 
 ordeal of blindfold question which the suspicions customer 
 might put him to. Also, when correspondents of importance 
 came up to town, my father would put himself so far out of 
 his way as to ask them to dine at Herne Hill, and try the com 
 tents of his own cellar. These London visits fell into groups, 
 on any occasion in the metropolis of interest more than usual 
 to the provincial mind. Our business dinners were then 
 arranged so as to collect two or three country visitors togetli-= 
 er, and the table made symmetrical by selections from the 
 house’s customers in London, whose conversation might be 
 most instructive to its rural friends. 
 
 Very early in my boy’s life I began much to dislike these 
 commercial feasts, and to form, by carefully attending to 
 their dialogue, wdien it chanced to turn on any other subject 
 than wine, an extremely low estimate of the commercial mind 
 as such ;~estimate wdiich I have never had the slightest reason 
 to alter. 
 
 Of our neighbors on Herne Hill vze saw nothing, v/ith one 
 exception only, afterward to be noticed. They w^ere for the 
 most part W'elbto-do London tradesmen of the better class, 
 wdio had little sympathy with my mother’s old-fashioned v/ays, 
 and none wdth my father’s romantic sentiment. 
 
 There was probably the farther reason for our declining the 
 intimacy of our immediate neighbors, that most of them were 
 far more wealthy than w'e, and inclined to demonstrate their 
 wealth by the magnificence of their establishments. My 
 parents lived with strict economy, kept only female servants,* 
 used only tallow candles in plated candlesticks, were content 
 
 * Tliomas left us, I think partly in shame for my permanently in- 
 jured lip ; and we never had another indoor man-servant. 
 
112 
 
 PR^TERITA, 
 
 Avitli the leasehold territory of their front and back gardens, — 
 scarce an acre altogether, — and kept neither horse nor car- 
 riage. Oiir shop-keeping neighbors, on the contrary, had 
 usually great cortege of footmen and glitter of plate, exten- 
 sive pleasure grounds, costly hot-houses, and carriages driven 
 by coachmen in wigs. It may be perhaps doubted by some 
 of my readers whether the coldness of acquaintanceship was 
 altogether on our side ; but assuredly my father was too 
 proud to join entertainments for which he could give no like 
 return, and my mother did not care to leave her card on foot at 
 the doors of ladies who dashed up to hers in their barouche. 
 
 Protected by these monastic severities and aristocratic dig- 
 nities, from the snares and disturbances of the outer world, 
 the routine of my childish days became fixed, as of the sun- 
 rise and sunset to a nestling. It may seem singular to many 
 of my readei’s that I remember with most pleasure the time 
 when it was most regular and most solitary. The entra.nce 
 of my cousin Mary into our household was coincident with 
 the introduction of masters above described, and with other 
 changes in the aims and employments of the day, which, 
 while they often increased its interest, disturbed its tranquil- 
 lity. The ideas of success at school or college, put before me 
 by my masters, were ignoble and comfortless, in compai'ison 
 with my mother’s regretful blame, or simple praise : and 
 Mary, though of a mildly cheei-ful and entirely amiable dis- 
 position, necessarily touched the household heart with the 
 sadness of her orphanage, and something interrupted its har- 
 mony by the difference, which my mother could not help 
 showing, between the feelings with which she regarded her 
 niece and her child. 
 
 And although I have dwelt with thankfulness on the many 
 joys and advantages of these secluded years, the vigilant reader 
 will not, I hope, have interpreted the accounts rendered of 
 them into general praise of a like home education in the en- 
 virons of London. But one farther good there was in it, 
 hitherto unspoken ; that great part of my acute perception 
 and deep feeling of the beauty of architecture and scenery 
 abroad, was owing to the well-formed habit of narrowing 
 
PAPA AND MAMMA. 
 
 113 
 
 myself to happiness within the four brick walls of our fifty by 
 one hundred yards of garden ; and accepting with resignation 
 the sesthetic external surroundings of a London suburb, and, 
 yet more, of a London chapel. l"or Dr. Andrews’ was the 
 Londonian chapel in its perfect type, definable as accurately 
 as a Eoman basilica, — an oblong, flat-ceiled barn, lighted by 
 windows with semicircular heads, brick - arched, filled by 
 small-paned glass held by iron bars, like fine threaded halves 
 of cobwebs ; galleries propped on iron pipes, up both sides ; 
 pews, well shut in, each of them, by partitions of j^lain deal, 
 and neatly brass-latched deal doors, tilling the barn floor, all 
 but its two lateral straw-matted passages ; pulpit, sublimely 
 isolated, central from sides and clear of altar rails at end ; a 
 stout, four-legged box of well-grained wainscot, high as the 
 level of front galleries, and decorated with a cushion of 
 crimson velvet, padded six inches thick, with gold tassels at 
 the corners ; which was a great resource to me when I was 
 tired of the sermon, because I liked watching the rich color of 
 the folds and creases that came in it when the clergyman 
 thumped it. 
 
 Imagine the change between one Sunday and the next, — 
 from the morning service in this building, attended by the 
 families of the small shopkeepers of the Walworth Road, in 
 their Sunday trimmings ; our plumber’s wife, fat, good, 
 sensible Mrs. Goad, sat in the next pew in front of us, sternly 
 sensitive to the interruption of her devotion by our late arri- 
 vals) ; fancy the change from this, to high mass in Rouen 
 Cathedral, its nave filled by the white-capped peasantry of 
 half Normandy ! 
 
 Nor was the contrast less enchanting or marvellous between 
 the street architecture familiar to my eyes, and that of Flan- 
 ders and Italy, as an exposition of mercantile taste and power. 
 My father’s counting-house v/as in the centre of Billiter Street, 
 some jnars since effaced from sight and memory of men, but 
 a type, then, of English city state in perfection. We now 
 build house fronts as advertisements, spending a hundred 
 thousand pounds in the lying mask of our bankruptcies. But 
 in my father’s time both trade and building were still honest. 
 
 8 
 
114 : 
 
 PM^TEBITA. 
 
 His counting-bouse was a room about fifteen feet by twenty, 
 including desks for two clerks, and a small cupboard for 
 sherry samples, on the first floor, with a larger room opposite 
 for private polite receptions of elegant visitors, or the serving 
 of a chop for himself if he had to stay late in town. The 
 ground floor was occupied by friendly Messrs. Wardell and 
 Co., a bottling retail firm, I believe. The only advertisement 
 of the place of business was the brass plate under the bell- 
 handle, inscribed “Kuskin, Telford, and Domecq,” brightly 
 scrubbed by the single female servant in charge of the estab- 
 lishment, old Maisie,' — abbreviated or tenderly diminished into 
 the “ sie,” from I know not what Christian name — Marion, I 
 believe, as Mary into Manse. The whole house, three-storied, 
 with garrets, was under her authority, with, doubtless, assist- 
 ant morning charwoman, — cooking, v/aiting, and answering 
 the door to distinguished visitors, all done by Maisie, the 
 visitors being expected of course to announce themselves by 
 the knocker with a flourish in proportion to their eminence 
 in society. The business men rang the counting-house bell 
 aforesaid, (round which the many coats of annual paint were 
 cut into a beautiful slant section by daily scrubbing, like the 
 coats of an agate ;) and were admitted by lifting of latch, 
 manipulated by the head clerk’s hand in the counting-house, 
 without stirring from his seat. 
 
 This unpretending establishment, as I said, formed part of 
 the western side of Billiter Street, a narrow trench — it may 
 have been thirty feet wide — admitting, with careful and pre- 
 cise driving, the passing each other of two brew'ers’ dra3's. I 
 am not sure that this was possible at the ends of the street, 
 but only at a slight enlargement opposite the brewery in the 
 ]uiddle. Effectively a mere trench between three-storied 
 houses of prodigious brickwork, thoroughly well laid, and 
 presenting no farther entertainment wdiatever to the sesthetic 
 beholder than the alternation of the ends and sides of their 
 beautifully level close courses of bricks, and the practised and 
 skilful radiation of those which formed the window lintels. 
 
 Typical, I repeat, of the group of London edifices east of 
 the Mansion House, and extending to the Tower ; the under’ 
 
PAPA AND MAMMA. 
 
 115 
 
 hill picturesquenesses of which, however, were in early days 
 an entirely forbidden district to me, lest I should tumble into 
 the docks ; but Fenchurch and Leadenhall streets, familiar to 
 me as the perfection of British mercantile state and grandeur, 
 — the reader may by effort, though still dimly, conceive the 
 effect on my imagination of the fantastic gables of Ghent, 
 and orange-scented cortiles of Genoa. 
 
 I can scarcely account to myself, on any of the ordinary 
 principles of resignation, for the undimmed tranquillity of 
 pleasure with which, after these infinite excitements in for- 
 eign lands, my father would return to his desk opposite the 
 brick wall of the brewery, and I to my niche behiiid the 
 drawing-room chimney-piece. But to both of us, the steady 
 occupations, the beloved samenesses, and the sacred customs 
 of home were more precious than all the fervors of wonder 
 in things new to us, or delight in scenes of incomparable 
 beauty. Very early, indeed, I had found that novelty was 
 soon exhausted, and beauty, though inexhaustible, beyond a 
 certain point or time of enthusiasm, no more to be enjoyed ; 
 but it is not so often observed by philosophers that home, 
 healthily organized, is always enjoyable ; nay, the sick thrill 
 of pleasure through all the brain and heart with which, after 
 even so much as a month or two of absence, I used to catch 
 the first sight of the ridge of Herne Hill, and watch for every 
 turn of the well-known road and every branch of the familiar 
 trees, was — though not so deep or overwhelming — more in- 
 timately and vitally powerful than the brightest passions of 
 joy in strange lands, or even in the unaccustomed scenery of 
 my own. To my mother, her ordinary household cares, her 
 reading with Mary and me, her chance of a chat with Mrs. 
 Gray, and the unperturbed preparation for my father’s return, 
 and for the quiet evening, were more than all the splendors 
 or wonders of the globe between poles and equator. 
 
 Thus we returned — full of new thoughts, and faithful to 
 the old, to this exulting rest of home in the close of 1833. An 
 unforeseen shadow was in the heaven of its charmed horizon. 
 
 Every day at Cornhill, Charles became more delightful and 
 satisfactory to everybody who knew him. How a boy living 
 
116 
 
 ph^tebita. 
 
 all day in London could keep so bright a complexion, and so 
 crisply Achillean curls of hair — and all the gay spirit of his 
 Croydon mother — was not easily conceivable ; but he became 
 a perfect combination of the sparkle of Jin Vin with the 
 steadiness of Tunstall, and was untroubled by the charms of 
 any unattainable Margaret, for his master had no daughter ; 
 but, as worse chance would have it, a son : so that, looking 
 forward to possibilities as a rising apprentice ought, Charles 
 saw that there were none in the house for him beyond the 
 place of cashier, or perhaps only head-clerk. His elder 
 brother, who had taught him to swim by throwing him into 
 Croydon Canal, was getting on fast as a general trader in 
 Australia, and naturally longed to have his best-loved brother 
 there for a partner. Bref, it was resolved that Charles should 
 go to Australia. The Christmas time of 1833 passed heavil}^ 
 for 1 was very sorry ; Maiy, a good deal more so : and my 
 father and mother, though in their hearts caring for nobody 
 in the world but me, were grave at the thought of Charles’s 
 going so far away ; but honestly and justifiably, thought it 
 for the lad’s good. I think the whole affair was decided, and 
 Charles’s outfit furnished, and ship’s berth settled, and ship’s 
 captain interested in his favor, in something less than a fort- 
 night, and down he w^ent to Portsmouth to join his ship joy- 
 fully, with the world to win. By due post came the new^s 
 that he was at anchor off Cowes, but that the ship could not 
 sail because of the west wind. And post succeeded post, and 
 still the west wind blew. "We liked the w^est wind for its own 
 sake, but it was a prolonging of farewell which teazed us, 
 though Charles wrote that he was enjoying himself immensely, 
 and the captain, that he had made friends with every sailor 
 on board, besides the passengers. 
 
 And still the west wind blew. I do not remember how 
 long — some ten days or fortnight, I believe. At last, one 
 day my mother and Mary went with my father into town on 
 some shopping or sight-seeing business of a cheerful charac- 
 ter ; and I was left at home, busy also about something that 
 cheered me greatly, I know not what ; but when I heard the 
 others come in, and upstairs into the drawing-room, I ran 
 
PAP4^ AND MAMMA. 
 
 117 
 
 eagerly down and into the room, beginning to tell them about 
 this felicity that had befallen me, whatever it was. They all 
 stood like statues, my father and aiother very grave. Mary 
 was looking out of the window — the farthest of the front 
 three from the door. As I went on, boasting of myself, she 
 turned round suddenly, her face all streaming with tears, 
 and caught hold of mo, and put her face close to mine, that I 
 might hear the sobbing wdiisper, “Charles is gone.” 
 
 The west wind had still blown, clearly and strong, and the 
 day before there had been a fresh breeze of it round the isle, 
 at Spithead, exactly the kind of breeze that drifts the clouds, 
 and ridges the waves, in Turner’s “Gosport.” 
 
 The ship v/as sending her boat on shore for some water, or 
 the like — her little cutter, or somehow sailing, boat. There 
 was a heavy sea running, and the sailors, and, I believe, also 
 a passenger or two, had some difficulty in getting on board. 
 “May I go, too?” said Charles to the captain, as he stood 
 seeing them down the side. “Are you not afraid ?” said the 
 captain. “I never was afraid of anything in my life,” said 
 Charles, and went down the side and leaped in. 
 
 The boat had not got fifty j^ards from the ship before she 
 went over, but there were other boats sailing all about them, 
 like gnats in midsummer. Two or three scudded to the spot 
 in a minute, and every soul was saved, except Charles, who 
 went down like a stone. 
 
 22d January, 1834. 
 
 All this we knew by little and little. For the first day 
 or two we would not believe it, but thought he must have 
 been taken up by some other boat and carried to sea. At 
 last came word that his body had been throwm ashore at 
 Cowes : and his father went down to see him buried. That 
 done, and all the story heard, for still the ship stayed, he 
 came to Herne Hill, to tell Charles’s “ auntie ” all about it. 
 (The old man never called my mother anything else than 
 auntie.) It was in the morning, in the front parlor — my 
 mother knitting in her usual place at the fireside, I at my 
 
118 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 drawing, or the like, in my own place also. My uncle told 
 all the story, in the quiet, steady sort of way that the common 
 English do, till just at the end he broke down into sobbing, 
 saying (I can hear the words now), “ They caught the cap of? 
 of his head, and yet they couldn’t save him.” 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 VESTER, CAMENiE. 
 
 The death of Charles closed the doors of my heart again 
 for that time ; and the self-engrossed quiet of the Herne Hill 
 life continued for another year, leaving little to be remem- 
 bered, and less to be told. My parents made one effort, how- 
 ever, to obtain some healthy companionship for me, to which 
 I probably owe more than I knew at the moment. 
 
 Some six or seven gates down the hill toward the field, 
 (which I have to return most true thanks to its present owner, 
 Mr. Sopper, for having again opened to the public sight in 
 consequence of the passage above describing the greatness of 
 its loss both to the neighbor and the stranger), some six or 
 seven gates down that way, a pretty lawn, shaded by a low 
 spreading cedar, opened before an extremely neat and care- 
 fully kept house, wdiere lived two people, modest in their 
 ways as my father and mother themselves, — Mr. and Mrs. 
 Fall ; happier, however, in having son and daughter instead 
 of an only child. Their son, Richard, was a year younger 
 than I, but already at school at Shrewsbury, and somewhat 
 in advance of me therefore in regular discipline ; extremely 
 gentle and good-natured, — his sister, still younger, a clever 
 little girl, her mother’s constant companion : and both of 
 them unpretending, but rigid, examples of all Herne Hill 
 proprieties, true religions, and useful learnings. I shudder 
 still at the recollectk>n of Mrs. Fall’s raised eyebrows one day 
 at my pronunciation of “naivete” as “naivette.” 
 
 I think it must have been as early as 1832 that my father, 
 noticing with great respect the conduct of all matters in this 
 
VESTEH, CAMEN^. 
 
 119 
 
 family, wrote to Mr. Fall in courteous request that “the two 
 boys” might be permitted, v/heii Richard was at home, to 
 pursue their holiday tasks, or recreations, so far as it pleased 
 them, together. The proposal was kindly taken : the two 
 boys took stock of each other, — agreed to the arrangement, — • 
 and, as I had been promoted by that time to the possession 
 of a study, all to myself, while Richard had only his own 
 room, (and that liable to sisterly advice or intrusion,) the 
 course which things fell into was that usuall}^, when Richard 
 was at home, he came up past the seven gates about ten in 
 the morning ; did what lessons he had to do at the same 
 table v/ith me, occasionally helping me a little with mdiie ; 
 and then we went together for afternoon walk with Dash, 
 Gipsy, or whatever dog chanced to be dominant. 
 
 Ido not venture to affirm that the snow of those Christmas 
 holidays was whiter than it is now, though I might give some 
 reasons for supposing that it remained longer white. But I 
 affirm decisively that it used to fall deeper in the neighbor- 
 hood of London than has been seen for the last twenty or 
 twenty-five years. It was quite usual to find in the hollo^vs 
 of the Norv/ood Hills the field fences buried under crested 
 waves of snow, while, from the higher ridges, half the counties 
 of Kent and Surrey shone to the horizon like a cloudless and 
 terrorless Ai’ctic sea. 
 
 Richard Fall was entirely good-humored, sensible, and 
 practical ; but had no particular tastes ; a distaste, if anytliing, 
 for my styles both of art and poetry. Ke stiffly declined ar]>i- 
 tration on the merits of my compositions; and tliough with 
 pleasant cordiality in daily companionship, took rather the 
 position of putting up wdth me, than of pride in his privilege 
 of acquaintance with a rising author. He was never unkind 
 or sarcastic ; but laughed me inexorably out of writing bad 
 English for rhyme’s sake, or demonstrable nonsense either in 
 prose or rhyme. We got gradually accustomed to ]>e to- 
 gether, and far on into life were glad when any chance 
 brought us together again. 
 
 The year 1834 passed innocuously enough, but with little 
 profit, in the quadripartite industries before described, fob 
 
120 
 
 PHJETEBITA. 
 
 lowed for my own pleasure ;~with mingiings of sapless effort 
 in the classics, in which I neither felt, nor foresaw, the least 
 good. 
 
 Innocuously enough, I say,— meaning, with as little mischief 
 as a weh-intentioned boy, virtually masterless, could suffer 
 from having all his own way, and daily confirming himself in 
 the serious impression that his own way was always the best. 
 
 I cannot analyze, at least without taking more trouble than 
 I suppose any reader would care to take with me, the mixed 
 good and evil in the third-rate literature which I preferred to 
 the Latin classics. My volume of the “Forget-me-not,” which 
 gave me that precious engraving of Verona, (curiously also 
 another by Prout of St. Mark’s at Venice,) was somewhat 
 above the general caste of annuals in its quality of letterpress ; 
 and contained three stories, “ The Ked-nosed Lieutenant,” by 
 the Eev. George Croly ; “ Hans in Kelder,” by the author of 
 “Chronicles of London Bridge ;” and “ The Comet,” by Henry 
 Neele, Esq., which were in their several ways extremely im- 
 pressive to me. The partly childish, partly dull, or even, as 
 aforesaid, idiotic way I had of staring at the same things all 
 day long, carried itself out in reading, so that I could read 
 the same things all the year round. As there was neither 
 advantage nor credit to be got by remembering fictitious cir- 
 cumstances, I was, if anything, rather proud of my skill in 
 forgetting, so as the sooner to recover the zest of the tales ; 
 and I suppose these favorites, and a good many less impor- 
 tant ones of the sort, were read some twenty times a year, 
 during the earlier epoch of teens. 
 
 I wonder a little at my having been allowed so long to sit 
 in that drawing-room corner with only my Kogers’ “Italy,” my 
 “Forget-me-not,” the “Continental Annual,” and “Friend- 
 ship’s offering,” for my working library ; and I wonder a little 
 more that my father, in his passionate hoj)e that I might one 
 day write like Byron, never noticed that Byron’s early power 
 was founded on a course of general reading of the masters in 
 every walk of literature, such as is, I think, utterly unparalleled 
 in any other young life, whether of student or author. But I 
 was entirely incapable of such brain-work, and the real gift I 
 
VESTER, GAMENJE. 
 
 121 
 
 had in drawing involved the use in its practice of the best 
 energy of the day. “ Hans in Kelder,” and “The Comet,” were 
 my manner of rest. 
 
 I do not know when my father first began to read Byron to 
 me, with any expectation of my liking him ; all primary train- 
 ing, after the “Iliad,” having been in Scott ; but it must have 
 been about tlie beginning of the teen period, else I should 
 recollect the first effect of it. “Manfred” evidently, Iliad got 
 at, like “Macbeth,” for the sake of the witches. Various ques- 
 tionable changes were made, however, at that 1831 turning of 
 twelve, in the Hermitage discipline of Herne Hill. I was al- 
 lowed to taste wine ; taken to the theatre ; and, on festive 
 days, even dined with my father and mother at four : and it 
 was then generally at dessert that my father would read any 
 otherwise suspected delight : the “Noctes Ambrosianae ” regu- 
 larly when they came out — without the least missing of the 
 naughty words ; and at last, the shipwreck in “ Don Juan,” — of 
 which, finding me rightly appreciative, m}’’ father went on 
 with nearly all the rest. I recollect that he and my mother 
 looked across the table at each other with something of alarm, 
 when, on asking me a few festas afterward what we should 
 have for after-dinner reading, I instantly answered “Juan and 
 Haidee.” My selection was not adopted, and, feeling there 
 was something wrong somewhere, I did not press it, attempt- 
 ing even some stutter of apology which made matters worse. 
 Perhaps I was given a bit of “Childe Harold ” instead, which I 
 liked at that time nearly as well ; and indeed, the story of 
 Haidee soon became too sad for me. But very certainly, by 
 the end of this year 1834, I knew my Byron pretty well ail 
 through, all but “ Cain,” “ Werner,” the “ Deformed Trans- 
 formed,” and “ Vision of Judgment,” none of which I could 
 understand, nor did papa and mamma think it would be well 
 I should try to. 
 
 The ingenuous reader may perhaps be so much surprised 
 that mamma fell in with all this, that it becomes here needful 
 to mark for him some peculiarities in my mother’s prudery 
 which he could not discover for himself, from anything 
 hitherto told of her. He might indeed guess that, after taking 
 
122 
 
 PM^TERITA. 
 
 me at least six times straight through the Bible, she was not 
 afraid of plain words to, or for, me ; but might not feel that 
 iu the energy and affectionateness of her character, she had as 
 much sympathy with all that is noble and beautiful in Byron 
 as my father himself; nor that her Puritanism was clear 
 enough in common sense to see that, while Shakespeare and 
 Burns lay open on the table all da}', there was no reason for 
 much mystery with Byron (though until later I was not 
 allowed to read him for myself). She had trust in my dis- 
 position and education, and was no more afraid of my turning 
 out a Corsair or a Giaour than a Kichard III, or a — Solomon. 
 And she was perfectly right, so far. I never got the slightest 
 harm from Byron : what harm came to me was from the facts 
 of life, and from books of a baser kind, including a wide 
 range of the works of authors popularly considered extremely 
 instructive — from Victor Hugo down to Doctor Watts. 
 
 Farther, I will take leave to explain in this place what I 
 meant by saying that my mother was an “ inoffensive ” prude. 
 She was herself as strict as Alice Bridgenorth ; but she under- 
 stood the doctrine of the religion she had learnt, and, without 
 ostentatiously calling herself a miserable sinner, knew that 
 according to that doctrine, and probably in fact, Madge Wild- 
 fire was no worse a sinner than she. She was like her sister 
 in universal charity — had sympathy with every passion, as well 
 as every virtue, of true v/omanhood ; and, in her heart of 
 hearts, perhaps liked the real Margherita Cogni quite as well 
 as the ideal wife of Faliero. 
 
 And there was one more feature in my mother’s character 
 which must be here asserted at once, to put an end to tlie 
 notion of which I see traces in some newspaper comments on 
 my past descriptions of her, that she was in any wise like Es- 
 ther’s religious aunt in “ Bleak House.” Far on the contrary, 
 there was a hearty, frank, and sometimes even iiTepressible, 
 laugh in my mother! Never sardonic, yet with a very defi- 
 nitely Smollettesque turn in it I so that between them- 
 selves, she and my father enjoyed their ‘‘Humphrey Clinker” 
 extremely, long before I was able to understand either the 
 jest or gist of it. Much more, she could exult in a harmless 
 
TESTER, GAMENJS. 
 
 123 
 
 "bit of Smollettesque reality". Years and years after this time, 
 in one of our crossings of the Simplon, just at the top, where 
 we had stopped to look about us, Nurse Anne sat down to rest 
 herself on the railings at the roadside, just in front of the mon- 
 astery ; — the off roadside, from which the bank slopes steeply 
 dowm outside the fence. Turning to observe the panoramic 
 picturesque, Anne lost her balance, and went back\vard over 
 the railings down the bank. My father could not help sug- 
 gesting that she had done it expressly for the entertainment 
 of the Holy Fathers ; and neither he nor my mother could 
 ever speak of the “ performance ” (as they called it) afterward, 
 without laughing for a quarter of an hour. 
 
 If, however, there was the least bitterness or irony in a jest, 
 my mother did not like it ; but my father and I liked it all 
 the more, if it were just ; and, so far as I could understand 
 it, I rejoiced in all the sarcasm of ‘‘Don Juan.” But my firm 
 decision, as soon as I got v/ell into the latter cantos of it, that 
 Byron was to be my master in verse, as Turner in color, was 
 made of course in that gosling (or say cygnet) epoch of exist- 
 ence, without consciousness of the deeper instincts that 
 prompted it : only tw^o things I consciously recognized, that 
 his truth of observation w^as the most exact, and his chosen 
 expression the most concentrated, that I had yet found in lit- 
 erature. By that time my father had himself put me through 
 the tw'o first books of Livy, and I knew, therefore, what close- 
 set language was ; but I saw then that Livy, as afterward tlmt 
 Horace and Tacitus, were studiously, often laboriously, and 
 sometimes obscurely, concentrated : while Byron wrote, as 
 easily as a hawk flies, and as clearly as a lake reflects, the 
 exact truth in the precisely narrovv^est terms ; nor only the 
 exact truth, but the most central and useful one. 
 
 Of course I could no more measure Byron’s greater powers 
 at that time than I could Turner’s ; but I saw that both were 
 right in all things that I knew right from wrong in ; and that 
 they must thenceforth be my masters, each in his own domain. 
 The modern reader, not to say also modern scholar, is usually 
 so ignorant of the essential qualities of Byron, that I cannot 
 go farther in the story of my own novitiate under him without 
 
124 
 
 PBJETEBITA. 
 
 illustrating, by rapid example, the things which I saw to be 
 unrivalled in his work. 
 
 For this purpose I take his common prose, rather than 
 his verse, since his modes of rhythm involve other questions 
 than those with which I am now concerned. Bead, for chance- 
 first, the sentence on Sheridan, in his letter to Thomas Moore, 
 from Venice, June 1st (or dawn of June 2d !), 1818. “ The 
 
 Whigs abuse him ; however, he never left them, and such 
 blunderers deserve neither credit nor compassion. As for his 
 creditors — remember Sheridan never had a shilling, and was 
 thrown, with great powers and passions, into the thick of the 
 world, and placed upon the pinnacle of success, with no otlier 
 external means to support him in his elevation. Did Fox pay 
 
 his debts? or did Sheridan take a subscription? Was ’s 
 
 drunkenness more excusable than his? Were his intrigues 
 more notorious than those of all his contemporaries ? and is 
 his memory to be blasted and theirs respected? Don’t let 
 yourself be led away by clamor, but compare him with the 
 coalitioner Fox, and the pensioner Burke, as a man of princi- 
 ple ; and with ten hundred thousand in personal views ; and 
 with none in talent, for he beat them all out and out. With- 
 out means, without connection, without character (which might 
 be false at first, and drive him mad afterward from despera- 
 tion), he beat them all, in all he ever attempted. But, alas 
 poor human nature ! Good-night, or rather morning. It is 
 four, and the dawn gleams over the Grand Canal, and unshad- 
 ows the Bialto.” 
 
 Now, observe, that passage is noble, primarily because it 
 contains the utmost number that will come together into the 
 space, of absolutely just, wise, and kind thoughts. But it is 
 more than noble, it is perfect^ because the quantity it holds is 
 not artificially or intricately concentrated, but with the serene 
 swiftness of a smith’s hammer-strokes on hot iron ; and with 
 choice of terms which, each in its place, will convey far more 
 than they mean in the dictionary. Thus, “however ” is used 
 instead of “yet,” because it stands for “howsoever,” or, in 
 full, for “yet whatever they did.” “Thick” of society, be- 
 cause it means, not merely the crowd, but the fog of it ; “ ten 
 
VESTEB, OAMEK^. 
 
 125 
 
 hundred thousand” instead of “a million,” or a thousand 
 thousand,” to take the sublimity out of the number and make 
 us feel that it is a number of nobodies. Then the sentence 
 in parenthesis, “ which might be false,” etc., is indeed obscure, 
 because it was impossible to clarify it without a regular pause, 
 and much loss of time ; and the reader’s sense is therefore left 
 to expand it for himself into “it was, perhaps, falsely said of 
 him at first, that he had no character,” etc. Finally, the dawn 
 “ unshadows ” — lessens the shadow on — the Eialto, but does 
 not gleam on that, as on the broad water. 
 
 Next, take the two sentences on poetry, in his letters to 
 Murray of September 15th, 1817, and April 12th, 1818 ; (for 
 the collected force of these compare the deliberate published 
 statement in the answer to Blackwood in 1820). 
 
 1817. “ With regard to poetry in general, I am convinced, 
 the more I think of it, that he (Moore), and all of us — Scott, 
 Southey, Wordsworth, Moore, Campbell, I, — are all in the 
 wu’ong, one as much as another ; that we are upon a wu'ong 
 revolutionary poetical system, or systems, not worth a damn in 
 itself, and from which none but Eogers and Crabbe are free ; 
 and that the present and next generations will finally be of 
 this opinion. I am the more confirmed in this by having 
 lately gone over some of our classics, particularly Pope, whom 
 I tried in this way : I took Moore’s poems, and my own, and 
 some others, and went over them side by side with Pope’s, 
 and I was really astonished (T ought not to have been so) and 
 mortified, at the ineffable distance in point of sense, learning, 
 effect, and even imagination, passion, and mvention, between 
 the little Queen Anne’s man, and us of the Lower Empire. 
 Depend upon it, it is all Horace then, and Claudian now, 
 among us ; and if I had to begin again, I would mould myself 
 accordingly. Crabbe’s the man ; but he has got a coarse and 
 impracticable subject, and ... is retired upon half-pay, 
 and has done enough, unless he were to do as he did 
 formerly.” 
 
 1818. “I thought of a preface, defending Lord Hervey 
 against Pope’s attack, but Pope — quoad Pope, the poet, — 
 against all the world, in the unjustifiable attempts begun by 
 
126 
 
 PRJETERITA. 
 
 Warton, and carried on at this day by the new school of 
 critics and scribblers, who think themselves poets because 
 they do not write like Pope. I have no patience with such 
 cursed humbug and bad taste ; your whole generation are not 
 worth a canto of the ‘ Kape of the Lock,’ or the ‘ Essay on 
 Man,’ or the ‘Dunciad,’ or ‘ anything that is his.’” 
 
 There is nothing which needs explanation in the brevities 
 and amenities of these tv/o fragments, except, in the first of 
 them, the distinctive and exhaustive enumeration of the 
 qualities of great poetry, — and note especially the order in 
 which he puts these. 
 
 A. Sense. That is to say, the first thing you have to think 
 of is whether the would-be poet is a wise man — so also in the 
 answer to Blackwood. “They call him (Pope) the poet of 
 reason ! — is that any reason why he should not be a poet ? ” 
 
 B. Learning. The Ayrshire ploughman may have good 
 gifts, but he is out of court with relation to Homer, or Dante, 
 or Milton. 
 
 C. Effect. Has he efficiency in his verse ? — does it tell on 
 the ear and the spirit in an instant ? See the “ effect ” on her 
 audience of Beatrice’s “ottave,” in the story at p. 286 of Miss 
 Alexander’s “Songs of Tuscany.” 
 
 D. Imagination. Put thus low because many novelists and 
 artists have this faculty, yet are not poets, or even good nov- 
 elists or painters ; because they have not sense to manage it, 
 nor the art to give it effect. 
 
 E. Passion. Lower yet, because all good men and women 
 have as much as either they or the poet ought to have. 
 
 F. Invention. And this lowest, because one may be a good 
 poet without having this at all. Byron had scarcely any him- 
 self, while Scott had any quantity — yet never could ^write a 
 play. 
 
 But neither the force and precision, nor the rhythm, of 
 BjTon’s language, were at all the central reasons for my 
 taking him for master. Knowing the Song of Moses 
 and the Sermon on the Mount by heart, and half tlie 
 Apocalypse besides, I was in no need of tutorship either in the 
 majesty or simplicity of English words ; and for their logical 
 
VEBTER, OAMENES. 
 
 127 
 
 arrangement, I had had Byron’s own masier, Pope, since I 
 could lisp. But the thing wholly new and precious to me in 
 Bjron was his measured and living truth — measured, as com- 
 pared with Homer ; and living, as compared with everybody 
 else. My own inexorable measuring wand, — not enchanter s, 
 but cloth-worker’s and builder’s, — reduced to mere incredi- 
 bility all the statements of the poets usually called sublime. 
 It was of no use for Homer to tell me that Pelion was put on 
 the top of Ossa. I knew perfectly well it wouldn’t go on 
 the top of Ossa. Of no use for Pope to tell me that trees 
 where his mistress looked w’ould crowd into a shade, because I 
 was satisfied that they would do nothing of the sort. Hay, 
 the w'hole world, as it was described to me either by poetry or 
 theology, was every hour becoming more and more shadowy 
 and impossible, I rejoiced in all stories of Pallas and Venus, 
 of Achilles and ASneas, of Elijah and St. John : but, without 
 doubting in my heart that there v/ere real spirits of wisdom 
 and beauty, nor that there had been invincible heroes and 
 inspired prophets, I felt already, with fatal and increasing 
 sadness, that there was no clear utterance about any of them 
 “that there 'were for me neither Goddess guides nor 
 prophetic teachers ; and that the poetical histories, whether 
 of this world or the next, were to me as the 'words of Peter 
 to the shut-up disciples — “as idle tales; and they believed 
 them not.” 
 
 But here at last I had found a man who spoke only of 
 what he had seen, and known ; and spoke wdthout exaggera- 
 tion, v/itliout mystery, without enmity, and without mercy. 
 “ That is so ; — make '^diat you will of it ! ” Sliakespeare said 
 the Alps voided their rheum on the valleys, which indeed is 
 precisely true, with the final troth, in that matter, of James 
 Forbes, — but it was told in a mythic manner, and \vith an un- 
 pleasant British bias to the nasty. But Byron, saying that 
 “ the glacier’s cold and restless mass moved onward day by 
 day,” said plainly what lie sa'^v and knew, — no more. So also, 
 the “ Arabian Nights ” had told me of thieves who lived in 
 enchanted caves, and beauties who fought with genii in the 
 air ; but Byron told me of thieves with whom he had ridden 
 
128 
 
 PBJETEEITA. 
 
 on their own hills, and of the fair Persians or Greeks who 
 lived and died under the very sun that rose over my visible 
 Norwood hills. 
 
 And in this narrow, but sure, truth, to B3Ton, as already to 
 me, it appeared that Love was a transient thing, and death a 
 dreadful one. He did not attempt to console me for Jessie’s 
 death, by saying she was happier in Heaven ; or for Charles’s, 
 by saying’ it was a Providential dispensation to me on Earth. 
 He did not tell me that war was a just price for the glory 
 of captains, or that the National command of murder di- 
 minished its guilt. Of all things within range of human 
 thought he felt the facts, and discerned the natures v;ith ac- 
 curate justice. 
 
 But even all this he might have done, and yet been no 
 master of mine, had not he sympathized with me in reverent 
 love of beauty, and indignant recoil from ugliness. The 
 witch of the Staubbach in her rainbow was a greatly more 
 pleasant vision than Shakespeare’s, like a rat without a tail, 
 or Burns’s, in her cutty sark. The sea-king Conrad had an 
 immediate advantage with me over Coleridge’s long, lank, 
 brown, and ancient, mariner; and whatever Pope might have 
 gracefully said, or honestly felt, of Windsor woods and streams, 
 was mere tinkling cymbal to me, compared with Byron’s love 
 of Lachin-y-Gair. 
 
 I must pause here, in tracing the sources of his influence 
 over me, lest the reader should mistake the analysis whicii I 
 am now able to give them, for a description of the feelings 
 possible to me at fifteen. Most of these, however, were <is- 
 suredly within the knot of my unfolding mind — as the safiron 
 of the crocus yet beneath the earth ; and Byron — though he 
 could not teach me to love mountains or sea more than I did 
 in childhood, first animated them for me with the sense of 
 real human nobleness and grief. He taught me the meaning 
 of Chillon and of Meillerie, and bade me seek first in Venice 
 — the ruined homes of Foscari and Falieri. 
 
 And observe, the force with which he struck depended 
 again on there being uiiquestionable reality of person in his 
 stories, as of principle in his thoughts. Komance, enough 
 
VE8TER, (JAMENuE. 
 
 129 
 
 and to spare, I had learnt from Scott — but his Lady of tlie 
 Lake was as openjy fictitious as liis White Maid of Avene! : 
 while Eogers was a mere dilettante, who felt no difference 
 between landing where Tell leaped ashore, or standing where 
 “St. Preux has stood.” Even Shakespeare’s Venice was 
 visionary ; and Portia as impossible as Miranda. But Byron 
 told me of, and reanimated for me, the real people whose feet 
 liad worn the marble I trod on. 
 
 Ojie word only, though it trenches on a future subject, I 
 must permit myself about his rhythm. Its natural flow in 
 almost prosaic simplicity and tranquillity interested me ex- 
 tremely, in opposition alike to the symmetrical clauses of 
 Pope’s logical metre, and to the balanced strophes of classic 
 and Hebrew verse. But though I followed his manner in- 
 stantly in what verses I wrote for my own amusement, my 
 respect for the structural, as opposed to fluent, force of the 
 classic measures, supported as it was partly by Byron’s con- 
 tempt for his own work, and partly by my own architect’s in- 
 stinct for “the principle of the pyramid,” made me long en- 
 deavor, in forming my prose style, to keep the cadences of 
 Pope and Johnson for all serious statement. Of Johnson's 
 influence on me I have to give account in the last chapter of 
 this volume ; meantime, I must get back to the days of mere 
 rivulet-singing, in my poor little water-cress life. 
 
 I had a sharp attack of pleurisy in the spring of ’35, which 
 gave me much gasping pain, and put me in some danger for 
 three or four days, during which our old family phj^sician, Hr. 
 'Walshman, and my mother, defended me against the wish of all 
 other scientific people to have me bled. “He wnnts all the 
 blood he has in him to fight the illness,” said the old doctor, 
 and brought me v/ell through, weak enough, however, to 
 claim a fortnight’s nursing and petting afterward, during 
 which I read the “ Pair Maid of Perth,” learned the song of 
 “Poor Louise,” and feasted on Stanfield’s drawing of St. 
 Michael’s Mount, engraved in the “ Coast Scenery,” and Tur- 
 ner’s “Santa Saba,” “Pool of Bethesda,” and “Corinth,” en- 
 graved in the Bible series, lent me by Richard Fall’s little sister. 
 I got an immense quantity of useful learning out of those four 
 
130 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 plates, and am very tliankful to possess now the originals of 
 the Bethesda and Corinth. 
 
 Moreover, I planned all my proceedings on the journey to 
 Switzerland, which was to begin the moment I was strong 
 enough. I shaded in cobalt a “ cyanometer ” to measure the 
 blue of the sky with ; bought a ruled notebook for geological 
 observations, and a large quarto for architectural sketches, with 
 square rule and foot-rule ingeniously fastened outside. And 
 I determined that the events and sentiments of this journey 
 should be described in a poetic diary in the style of “Don 
 Juan,” artfully combined with that of “ Childe Harold.” Two 
 cantos of this work were indeed finished — carrying me across 
 France to Chamouni — where I broke down, finding that I had 
 exhausted on the Jura all the descriptive terms at my disposal, 
 and that none were left for the Alps. I must try to give, in 
 the next chapter, some useful account of the same part of the 
 journey in less exalted language. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE COL DE LA FAUCILLE. 
 
 About the moment in the forenoon when the modern fash- 
 ionable traveller, intent on Paris, Nice, and Monaco, and 
 started by the morning mail from Charing Cross, has a lit- 
 tle recovered himself from the qualms of his crossing, and 
 the irritation of fighting for seats at Boulogne, and begins to 
 look at his watch to see how near he is to the buffet of 
 Amiens, he is apt to be balked and worried by the train’s 
 useless stop at one inconsiderable station, lettered Abbeville. 
 As the carriage gets in motion again, he may see, if he cares 
 to lift his eyes for an instant from his newspaper, two square 
 towers, with a curiously attached bit of traceried arch, 
 dominant over the poplars and osiers of the marshy level he 
 is traversing. Such glimpse is probably all he will ever wush 
 to get of them ; and I scarcely know how^ far I can make even 
 
THE COL BE LA FAUCILLE. 
 
 131 
 
 the most sympathetic reader undertand their power over my 
 own life. 
 
 Tiie country town in which they are central, — once, like 
 Croyland, a mere monk’s and peasant’s refuge (so for some 
 time called “Refuge”), — among the swamps of Somme, re- 
 ceived alDout the year C50 the name of “Abbatis Villa,” 
 
 • — “ Abbot’s-ford,” I had like to have written : house and 
 village, I suppose Vv^e may rightly say, — as the chief depend- 
 ence of the great monastery founded by St. Riquier at his 
 native place, on the hillside five miles east of the present 
 town. Concerning which saint I translate from the Diet"® 
 des Sciences Eccles*^"A what it may perhaps be well for the 
 reader, in present political junctures, to remember for more 
 weighty reasons than any arising out of such interest as he 
 may take in my poor little nascent personalit 3 \ 
 
 “St. Riquier, in Latin ‘ Sanctus Richarius,’ born in the 
 village of Centula, at two leagues from Abbeville, was so 
 touched by the piety of two holy priests of Ireland, whom he 
 had hospitably received, that he also embraced ‘la peni- 
 tence.’ Being ordained priest, he devoted himself to preach- 
 ing, and so passed into England. Then, returning into 
 Ponthieu, he became, by God’s help, j)owerful in work and 
 word in leading the people to repentance. He preeched 
 at the court of Dagobert, and, a little while after that prince’s 
 death, founded the monastery which bore his name, and 
 another, called Forest- Moutier, in the wood of Crecy, where 
 he ended his life and penitence.” 
 
 I find further in the “Ecclesiastical History of Abbeville,” 
 published in 1646 at Paris b}^ Frau 9 ois Pelican, “Rue St. 
 Jacques, a I’enseigne du Pelican,” that St. Riquier wars him- 
 self of royal blood, that St. Angilbert, the seventh abbot, had 
 married Charlemagne’s second daughter Bertha — “qui se 
 rendit aussi Religieuse de bordre de Saint Benoist.” Louis, 
 the eleventh abbot, w-as cousin-german to Charles the Bald ; 
 the twelfth was St. Angilbert’s sou, Charlemagne’s grandson. 
 Raoul, the thirteenth abbot, was the brother of the Empress 
 Judith; and Carloman, the sixteenth, was the son of Charles 
 the Bald. 
 
132 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 Lifting again your eyes, good reader, as the train gets to 
 its speed, you may see gleaming opposite on the hillside the 
 white village and its abbey, — not, indeed, the walls of the 
 home of these princes and princesses, (afterward again and 
 again ruined,) but the still beautiful abbey built on their 
 foundations by the monks of St. Maur. 
 
 In the year when the above-quoted history of Abbeville was 
 written (say 1600 for surety), the town, then familiarly called 
 “Faithful Abbeville,” contained 40,000 souls, “living in great 
 unity among themselves, of a marvellous frankness, fearing to 
 do wrong to their neighbor, the women modest, honest, full 
 of faith and charity, and adorned with a goodness and beauty 
 toute innocente : the noblesse numerous, hardy, and adroit 
 in arms, the masterships (maistrises) of arts and trades, with 
 excellent workers in every profession, under sixty-four 
 Mayor-Bannerets, who are the chiefs of the trades, and elect 
 the mayor of the city, who is an independent Home Euler, de 
 grande probito, d’authorite, et sans reproche, aided by four 
 eschevins of the present, and four of the past year ; having 
 authority of justice, police, and war, and right to keep the 
 weights and measures true and unchanged, and to punish 
 those who abuse them, or sell by false weight or measure, or 
 selkanything without the town’s mark on it.” Moreover, the 
 towr; contained, besides the great church of St. Wulfran, 
 tliirteen parish churches, six monasteries, eight nunneries, 
 and five hospitals, among which churches I am especially 
 bound to name that of St. George, begun by our own Ed- 
 ward in 1368, on the 10th of January ; transferred and re- 
 consecrated in 1469 by the Bishop of Bethlehem, and en- 
 larged by the Marguilliers in 1536, “because the congrega- 
 tion had so increased that numbers had to remain outside on 
 days of solemnity.” 
 
 These reconstructions took place with so great ease and 
 rapidity at Abbeville, owing partly to the number of its, 
 unanimous workmen, partly to the easily workable quality of 
 the stone they used, and partly to the uncertainty of a foun- 
 dation always on piles, that there is now scarce vestige left 
 of any building prior to the fifteenth century. St. Wulfran 
 
THE COL DE LA FAUGILLE, 
 
 133 
 
 itself, with St. Riquier, and all that remain of the parish 
 churches (four onl}^, now, I believe, besides St. Wulfran), are 
 of the same flamboyant Gothic, — walls and towers alike coeval 
 with the gabled timber houses of which the busier streets 
 chiefly consisted when first I saw them. 
 
 I must here, in advance, tell the general reader that there 
 have been, in sum, three centres of my life’s thought : 
 Rouen, Geneva, and Pisa. All that I did at Venice was by- 
 work, because her history had been falsely written before, 
 and not even by any of her own people understood ; and 
 because, in the world of painting, Tintoret was virtually 
 unseen, Veronese unfelt, Carpaccio not so much as named, 
 when I began to study them ; something also was due to 
 my love of gliding about in gondolas. But RoLen, Geneva, 
 and Pisa have been tutresses of all I know, and were mis- 
 tresses of all I did, from the first moments I entered their 
 gates. 
 
 In this journey of 1835 I first saw Rouen and Venice — Pisa 
 not till 1840 ; nor could I understand the full power of any of 
 those great scenes till much later. But for Abbeville, which 
 is the preface and interpretation of Rouen, I was ready on that 
 5th of June, and felt that here was entrance for me into imme- 
 diately healthy labor and joy. 
 
 For here I saw that art (of its local kind), religion, and 
 present human life, were yet in perfect harmony. There 
 v/ere no dead six days and dismal seventh in those sculptured 
 churches ; there was no beadle to lock me out of them, or 
 pew-shutter to shut me in. I might haunt them, fancying 
 myself a ghost ; peep round their pillars, like Rob Roy ; kneel 
 in them, and scandalize nobody ; draw" in them, and disturb 
 none. Outside, the faithful old town gathered itself, and 
 nestled under their buttresses like a brood beneath the moth- 
 er’s wings ; the quiet, uninjurious aristocracy of the newer 
 town opened into silent streets, between self-possessed and 
 hidden dignities of dwelling, each with its courtyard and 
 richly trellised garden. The commercial square, with the 
 main street of traverse, consisted of uncompetitive shops, 
 such as were needful, of the native wares : cloth and hosiery 
 
134 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 spun, woven, and knitted within the walls ; cheese of neighbor- 
 ing Neuchatel ; fruit of their own gardens, bread from the 
 fields above the green coteaux ; meat of their herds, untaint- 
 ed by American tin ; smith’s work of sufficient scythe and 
 ploughshare, hammered on the open anvil ; groceries dainty, 
 the coffee generally roasting odoriferously in the street be- 
 fore the door ; for the modistes, — well, perhaps a bonnet or 
 two from Paris, the rest, wholesome dress for peasant and 
 dame of Ponthien. Above the prosperous, serenely busy and 
 beneficent shop, the old dwelling-house of its ancestral mas- 
 ters ; pleasantly carved, proudly roofed, keeping its place, 
 and order, and recognized function, unfailing, unenlarging, 
 for centuries. Pound all, the breezy ramparts, with their 
 long waving avenues ; through all, in variously circuiting 
 cleanness and sweetness of navigable river and active mill- 
 stream, the green chalk- w^ater of the Somme. 
 
 My most intense happinesses have of course been among 
 mountains. But for cheerful, unalloyed, unwearying pleas- 
 ure, the getting in sight of Abbeville on a fine summer after- 
 noon, jumping out in the courtyard of the Hotel de I’Europe, 
 and rushing down the street to see St. Wulfran again before 
 the sun was off the towers, are things to cherish the past for, 
 — to the end. 
 
 Of Eouen, and its Cathedral, my saying remains yet to be 
 said, if days be given me, in “ Our Fathers have Told Us.” 
 The sight of them, and following journey up the Seine to 
 Paris, then to Soissons and Bheims, determined, as aforesaid, 
 the first centre and circle of future life-work. Beyond 
 Bheims, at Bar-le-Duc, I was brought again within the greater 
 radius of the Alps, and my father was kind enough to go down 
 by Plombieres to Dijon, that I might approach them by the 
 straightest pass of Jura. 
 
 The reader must pardon my relating so much as I think he 
 may care to hear of this journey of 1835, rather as what used 
 to happen, than as limitable to that date ; for it is extremely 
 difficult for me now to separate the circumstances of any one 
 journey from those of subsequent days, in which we stayed 
 at the same inns, wdth variation only from the blue room to 
 
THE COL DE LA FAUGILLE. 
 
 135 
 
 the green, saw the same sights, and rejoiced the more in every 
 pleasure — that it was not new. 
 
 And this latter part of the road from Paris to Geneva, beau- 
 tiful without being the least terrific or pathetic, but in the 
 most lovable and cheerful way, became afterward so dear and 
 so domestic to me, that I will not attempt here to check my 
 gossip of it. 
 
 We used always to drive out of the yard of La Cloche at 
 Dijon in early morning — seven, after joyful breakfast at half- 
 past six. The small saloon on the first floor to the front had 
 a bedroom across the passage at the west end of it, whose 
 windows commanded the cathedral towmi’S over a low roof on 
 the opposite side of the street. This was always mine, and 
 its bed 'was in an alcove at the back, separated only by a lath 
 partition from an extremely narrow j)assage leading from the 
 outer gallery to Anne’s room. It was a delight for Anne to 
 which I think she looked forward all across France, to open 
 a little hidden door from this passage, at the back of the alcove 
 exactly above my pillow, and surprise — or wake, me in the 
 morning. 
 
 I think I only remember once starting in rain. Usu- 
 ally the morning sun shone through the misty spray and far- 
 throwm diamonds of the fountain in the southeastern suburb, 
 and threw long j^oplar shadows across the road to Genlis. 
 
 Genlis, Auxonne, Dole, Mont-sous-Vaudrey — three stages 
 of 12 or 14 kilometres each, tw^o of 18 ; in all about 70 kilo- 
 metres — 42 miles, from Dijon gate to Jura foot — we w^ent 
 straight for the hills always, lunching on French plums and 
 bread. 
 
 Level plain of little interest to Auxonne. I used to won- 
 der how any mortal creature could be content to live wdthin 
 actual sight of Jura, and never go to see them, all their lives I 
 At Auxonne, cross the Saone, -wide and beautiful in clear 
 shallows of green stream — little more, yet, than a noble 
 mountain torrent ; one saw’ in an instant it came from Jura. 
 Another hour of patience, and from the broken j^ellow" lime- 
 stone slopes of Dole — there, at last, they were- — the long 
 blue surges of them fading as far as eye could see to the 
 
13G 
 
 PRzETERITA. 
 
 south, more abruptly near to the northeast, where the bold 
 outlier, almost island, of them, rises like a precipitous Wrekiu, 
 above Salins. Bej'ond Dole, a new wildness comes into the 
 more undulating country, notable chiefly for its clay-built 
 cottages with enormously high thatched gables of roof. 
 Strange, that I never inquired into the special reason of that 
 form, nor looked into a single cottage to see the mode of its 
 inhabitation ! 
 
 The village, or rural town, of Poligny, clustered out of 
 well-built old stone houses, with gardens and orchards; and 
 gathering at the midst of it into some pretence or manner of 
 a street, straggles along the roots of Jura at the opening of a 
 little valley, which in Yorkshire or Derbyshire limestone 
 would have been a gorge between nodding cliffs, with a 
 pretty pattering stream at the bottom ; but, in Jura is a far 
 retiring theatre of rising terraces, with bits of field and gar- 
 den getting foot on them at various heights ; a spiry convent 
 in its hollow, and well-built little nests of husbandry-building 
 set in corners of meadow, and on juts of rock no stream, to 
 speak of, nor springs in it, nor the smallest conceivable rea- 
 son for its being there, but that God made it. 
 
 “ Far” retiring, I said, — perhaps a mile into the hills from 
 the outer plain, by half a mile across, permitting the main road 
 from Paris to Geneva to serpentine and zigzag cai)riciously 
 up the cliff* terraces with innocent engineering, finding itseit 
 every now and then where it had no notion of getting to, and 
 looking, in a circumflex of puzzled level, where it was to go 
 next retrospect of the jJain of Burgundy enlarging under 
 its backward sweeps, till at last, under a broken bit of steep 
 final crag, it got quite up the side, and out over the edge of 
 the ravine, where said ravine closes as unreasonably as it had 
 opened, and the surprised traveller finds himself, magicalty 
 as if he were Jack of the Beanstalk, in a new plain of an up- 
 per world. A world of level rock, breaking at the surface 
 into yellow soil, capable of scanty, but healthy, turf, and 
 sprinkled copse and thicket ; with here and there, beyond, a 
 blue surge of pines, and over those, if the evening or morning 
 were clear, always one small bright silvery likeness of a cloud. 
 
THE COL DE LA FAUCILLE. 
 
 137 
 
 These first tracts of Jura differ in many pleasant ways from 
 the limestone levels round Ingleborough, which are their 
 English types. The Yorkshire moors are mostly by a hun- 
 dred or two feet higher, and exposed to drift of rain under 
 violent, nearly constant, wind. They break into wide fields 
 of loose blocks, and rugged slopes of shale ; and are mixed 
 with sands and clay from the millstone grit, which nourish 
 rank grass, and lodge in occasional morass : the wild winds 
 also forbidding any vestige or comfort of tree, except here and 
 there in a sheltered nook of new plantation. But the Jura 
 sky is as calm and clear as that of the rest of France ; if the 
 day is bright on the plain, the bounding hills are bright 
 also ; the Jura rock, balanced in the make of it between 
 chalk and marble, weathers indeed into curious rifts and fur- 
 rows, but rarely breaks loose, and has long ago clothed itself 
 either with forest flowers, or with sweet short grass, and all 
 blossoms that love sunshine. The pure air, even on this lower 
 ledge of a thousand feet above sea, cherishes their sweetest 
 scents and liveliest colors, and the winter gives them rest 
 under thawless serenity of snow. 
 
 A still greater and stranger difference exists in the system 
 of streams. For all their losing themselves and hiding, and 
 intermitting, their presence is distinctlj^ felt on a Yorkshire 
 moor ; one sees the places they have been in yesterday, the 
 wells where they will flow after the next shower, and a trick- 
 let here at the bottom of a crag, or a tinkle there from the top 
 of it, is always making one think whether this is one of the 
 sources of Aire, or rootlets of Eibble, or beginnings of Bolton 
 Strid, or threads of silver which are to be spun into Tees. 
 
 But no whisper, nor murmur, nor patter, nor song of stream- 
 let disturbs the enchanted silence of open Jura. The rain- 
 cloud clasps her cliffs, and floats along her flelds ; it passes, 
 and in an hour the rocks are dry, and only beads of dew left 
 in the Alchernilla leaves,— but of rivulet, or brook,— no vestige 
 yesterday, or to-day, or to-morrow. Through unseen fissures 
 and filmy crannies the v/aters of cliff and plain have alike 
 vanished, only far down in the depths of the main valley 
 glides the strong river, unconscious of change. 
 
138 
 
 PR^TERITA. • 
 
 One is taught thus much for one’s earliest lesson, in the 
 tu^o stages from Poligny to Champagnole, level over the ab- 
 solutely crisp turf and sun-bright rock, without so much water 
 anywhere as a cress could grow in, or a tadpole wag his tail 
 in, — and then, by a zigzag of shady road, forming the Park 
 and Boulevard of the wistful little village, down to the single- 
 arched bridge that leaps the Ain, which pauses underneath in 
 magnificent pools of clear pale green : the green of spring 
 leaves ; then clashes into foam, half weir, half natural cas- 
 cade, and into a confused race of currents beneath hollow 
 overhanging of crag festooned with leafage. The only mar- 
 vel is, to anyone knowing Jura structure, that rivers should 
 be visible anywhere at all, and that the rocks should be con- 
 sistent enough to carry them in open air through the great 
 valleys without perpetual “ pertes ” like that of the Phone. 
 Below the Lac de Joux the Orbe thus loses itself indeed, re- 
 appearing seven hundred feet * beneath in a scene of which 
 I permit myself to quote my Papa Saussure’s description. 
 
 “ A semicircular rock at least two hundred feet high, com- 
 posed of great horizontal rocks hewn vertical, and divided f 
 by ranks of pine which grow on their projecting ledges, closes 
 to the w^est the valley of Valorbe. Mountains yet more ele- 
 vated and covered with forests, form a circuit round this rock, 
 which opens only to give passage to the Orbe, whose source 
 is at its foot. Its waters, of a perfect limpidity, flow at first 
 with a majestic tranquillity upon a bed tapestried with beau- 
 tiful green moss (Fontinalis antipyretica), but soon, drawn into 
 a steep slope, the thread of the current breaks itself in foam 
 against the rocks wFich occupy the middle of its bed, while 
 the borders, less agitated, flowing always on their green 
 ground, set off the whiteness of the midst of the river ; and 
 thus it withdraws itself from sight, in following the course of 
 a deep valley covered with pines, whose blackness is rendered 
 more striking by the vivid green of the beeches which are scat- 
 tered among them. 
 
 * Six Imndred and eighty French feet. Saussure, § 385. 
 f “ Taill s a pic, et entrecoiipcs.” 
 
TEE COL BE LA FAUCILLE. 
 
 139 
 
 ‘‘ Ah, if Petrarch had seen this spring and had found there 
 his Laura, how much would not he have preferred it to that 
 of Vaucluse, more abundant, perhaps, and more rapid, but 
 of which the sterile rocks have neither the greatness of ours, 
 nor the rich parure, which embellishes them.” 
 
 I have never seen the source of the Orbe, but would com- 
 mend to the reader’s notice the frequent beaut}" of these great 
 springs in literally rising at the base of cliffs, instead of 
 falling, as one would have imagined likely, out of clefts in the 
 front of them. In our own English antitype of the source of 
 Orbe, Malham Cove, the flow of water is, in like manner, 
 wholly at the base of the rock, and seems to rise to the ledge 
 of its outlet from a deeper interior pool. 
 
 Tiie old Hotel de la Poste at Champagnole stood just above 
 the bridge of Ain, opposite the town, where the road got level 
 again as it darted away toward Geneva. I think the year 
 1842 was tlie first in which we lengthened the day from Dijon 
 by the two stages beyond Poligny ; but afterward, the Hotel 
 de la Poste at Champagnole became a kind of home to ns : 
 going out, we had so much delight there, and coming home, 
 so many thoughts, that a great space of life seemed to be 
 passed in its peace. No one was ever in the house but our- 
 selves ; if a family stopped every third day or so, it was 
 enough to maintain the inn, which, besides, had its own 
 farm ; and those who did stop, rushed away for Geneva earlv 
 in the morning. We, who were to sleep again at Horez, were 
 in no hurry ; and in returning always left Geneva on Fridav, 
 to get the Sunday at Champagnole. 
 
 But my own great joy was in the early June evening, when 
 we had arrived from Dijon, and I got out after the quicklv 
 dressed trout and cutlet for the first walk on rock and under 
 pine. 
 
 With all my Tory prejudice (I mean, principle), I have to 
 confess that one great joy of Swiss — above all, Jurassic Swiss 
 — ground to me, is in its eff'ectual, not merely theoretic, lib- 
 erty. Among the greater hills, one can’t always go just where 
 one chooses, — all around is the too far, or too steep, — one 
 wants to get to this, and climb that, and can’t do either ; — but in 
 
140 
 
 PBu^TERITA. 
 
 Jura one can go every way, and be happy everywhere. Gener- 
 ally, if there w'as time, I used to climb the islet of crag to the 
 north of the village, on which there are a few gray walls of 
 ruined castle, aud the yet traceable paths of its “pleasance,” 
 whence to look if the likeness of white cloud were still on the 
 horizon. Still there, in the clear evening, and again and again, 
 each year more marvellous to me ; the derniers rochers, and 
 calotte of Mont Blanc. Only those ; that is to say, just as 
 much as may be seen over the Dome du Goute from St. Mar- 
 tin’s. But it looks as large from Champagnole as it does 
 there — glowiiig in the last light like a harvest moon. 
 
 If there were not time to reach the castle rock, at least I 
 could get into the woods above the Ain, and gather my first 
 Alpine flowers. Again and again, I feel the duty of gratitude 
 to the formalities and even vulgarities of Herne Hill, for 
 making me to feel by contrast the divine wildness of Jura 
 forest. 
 
 Then came the morning drive into the higher glen of the 
 Ain, where the road began first to wind beside the falling 
 stream. One never understands how those winding roads 
 steal with their tranquil slope from height to height ; it was 
 but an hour’s walking beside the carriage, — an hour passed 
 like a minute ; and one emerged on the high plain of St. 
 Laurent, and the gentians began to gleam among the roadside 
 grass, and the pines swept round the horizon with the dark 
 infinitude of ocean. 
 
 All Switzerland was there in hope and sensation, and what 
 was less than Switzerland was in some sort better, in its meek 
 simplicity and healthy purity. The Jura cottage is not 
 carved with the stately richness of the Bernese, nor set to- 
 gether with the antique strength of Uri. It is covered with 
 thin-slit fine shingles, side-roofed as it were to the ground for 
 mere dryness’ sake, a little crossing of laths here and there 
 underneath the window its only ornament. It has no dainti- 
 ness of garden nor wealth of farm about it, — is indeed little 
 more than a delicately-built chalet, yet trim and domestic, 
 mildly intelligent of things other than pastoral, watch-making 
 and the like, though set in the midst of the meadows, the 
 
THE COL BE LA FAUCLLLE. 
 
 141 
 
 gentian at its door, the lily of the valley wild in the copses 
 hard by. 
 
 My delight in these cottages, and in the sense of human in- 
 dustry and enjoyment through the whole scene, was at the 
 root of all pleasure in its beauty ; see the passage afterward 
 written in the “Seven Lamps,” insisting on this as if it were 
 general to human nature thus to admire through sympathy. 
 I have noticed since, with sorrowful accuracy, how many peo- 
 ple there are who, wherever they hud themselves, think only 
 “ of their position.” But the feeling which gave me so much 
 happiness, both then and through life, differed also curiously, 
 in its impersonal character, from that of many even of the 
 best and kindest persons. 
 
 In the beginning of the Carlyle-Emerson correspondence, 
 edited with too little comment by my dear friend Charles 
 Norton, I find at page 18 this — tome entirely disputable, and 
 to my thought, so far as undisputed, much blameable and 
 pitiable, exclamation of my master’s : “Not till we can think 
 that here and there one is thinking of us, one is loviug us, 
 does this waste earth become a peopled garden.” My training, 
 as the reader has perhaps enough perceived, produced in me 
 the precisely opposite sentiment. My times of happiness had 
 always been when nobody was thinking of me ; and the main 
 discomfort and drawback to all proceedings and designs, the 
 attention and interference of the public — represented by my 
 mother and the gardener. The garden was no waste place to 
 me, because I did not suppose myself an object of iuterest 
 either to the ants or the butterflies ; and the only qualihca- 
 tion of the entire delight of my evening walk at Champagnole 
 or St. Laurent was the sense that my father and mother n;ere 
 thinking of me, and would be frightened if I was five minutes 
 late for tea. 
 
 I don’t mean in the least that I could have done without 
 them. They were, to me, much more than Carlyle’s wife to 
 him ; and if Carlyle had written, instead of, that he wanted 
 Emerson to think of him in America, that he wanted his 
 father and mother to be thinking of him at Ecclefechan, it 
 had been well. But that the rest of the world was waste to 
 
142 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 him unless he had admirers in it, is a sorry state of sentiment 
 enough ; and I am somewhat tem})ted, for once, to admire the 
 exactly opposite temper of my own solitude. My entire delight 
 was in observing without being myself noticed, — if I could 
 have been invisible, all the better. I was absolutely interested 
 in men and their ways, as I was interested in marmots and cha- 
 mois, in tomtits and trout. If only they would stay still 
 and let me look at them, and not get into their holes and up 
 their heights. The living inhabitation of the world — the 
 grazing and nesting in it, — the spiritual power of the air, the 
 rocks, the waters, — to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and 
 wonder at it, and help it if I could, — happier if it needed no 
 help of mine, — this was the essential love of Nature in me, 
 this the root of all that I have usefully become, and the light 
 of all that I have rightly learned. 
 
 Whether we slept at St. Laurent or Morez, the morning of 
 the next day was an eventful one. In ordinarily fine weather, 
 the ascent from Morez to Les Rousses, walked most of the 
 way, was mere enchantment ; so also breakfast, and fringed- 
 gentian gathering, at Les Rousses. Then came usually an 
 hour of tortured watching the increase of the noon clouds ; 
 for, however early we had risen, it was impossible to reach the 
 Col de la Faucille before two o’clock, or later if we had bad 
 horses, and at two o’clock, if there are clouds above Jura, 
 there will be assuredly clouds on the Alps. 
 
 It is worth notice, Saussure liimself not having noticed it, 
 that this main pass of Jura, unlike the great passes of the 
 Alps, reaches its traverse-point very nearly under the higliest 
 summit of that part of the chain. The col, separating the 
 source of the Bienne, which runs down to Morez and St. 
 Claude, from that of the Valserine, which winds through the 
 midst of Jura to the Rhone at Bellegarde, is a spur of the 
 Dole itself, under whose prolonged masses the road is then 
 carried six miles farther, ascending very slightly to the Col 
 de la Faucille, where the chain opens suddenly, and a sweep 
 of the road, traversed in five minutes at a trot, opens the 
 whole lake of Geneva, and the chain of the Alps along a hun- 
 dred miles of horizon. 
 
QUEM TCr, MF.LPOMENE. 
 
 143 
 
 I have never seen that view perfectly but once — in this year 
 1835 ; when I drew it carefully in my then fashion, and have 
 been content to look back to it as the confirming secpiel of 
 tlie first view of the Alps from Schaffliausen. Very few travel- 
 lers, even in old times, saw it at all ; tired of the long posting 
 journey from Paris, by the time they got to the col they were 
 mostly thinking only of their dinners and rest at Geneva ; the 
 guide-books said nothing about it ; and though, for every- 
 body, it was an inevitable task to ascend the Rigid, nobody 
 ever thought there was anything to be seen from the Dole. 
 
 Both mountains have had enormous influence on my whole 
 life ; — the Dole continually and calmly ; the Righi at sorrow- 
 ful intervals, as will be seen. But the Col de la Faucille, on 
 that day of 1835, opened to me in distinct vision the Holy 
 Land of my future work and true home in this world. My 
 eyes had been opened, and my heart with them, to see and 
 to possess royally such a kingdom ! Far as the eye could 
 reach — that land and its moving or pausing waters ; Arve, and 
 his gates of Cluse, and his glacier fountains ; Rhone, and the 
 infinitude of his sapphire lake,-— his peace beneath the nar- 
 cissus meads of Yevay — his cruelty beneath the promontories 
 of Sierre. And all that rose against and melted into the 
 sky, of mountain and mountain snow ; and all that living 
 plain, burning with human gladness — studded with white 
 homes, — a milky way of star-dwellings cast across its sunlit 
 blue. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 QUEM TU, MELPOMENE. 
 
 Whether in the biography of a nation, or of a single per- 
 son, it is alike impossible to trace it steadity through succes- 
 sive years. Some forces are failing while others strengthen, 
 and most act irregularly, or else at uncorresponding periods 
 of renewed enthusiasm after intervals of lassitude. For all 
 clearness of exposition, it is necessary to follow first one, then 
 
144 
 
 PllrETElUTA. 
 
 anotlier, without confusing notices of what is happening in 
 other directions. 
 
 I must according!}^ cease talk of pictorial and rhjdhinic 
 efforts of the year 1835, at this point ; and go back to give 
 account of another segment of 1113 ^ learning, which might 
 have had better consequence than ever came of it, had the 
 stars so pleased. 
 
 I cannot, and perhaps the reader will be thankful, remem- 
 ber an^dhing of the Apolline instincts under which I averred 
 to incredulous papa and mamma that, “though I could not 
 speak, I could pla^" upon the fiddle.” But even to this day, I 
 look back with starts of sorrow to a lost opportunity of show- 
 ing what was in me, of that manner of genius, on the occa- 
 sion of a grand military dinner in the state room of the Sus- 
 sex, at Tunbridge Wells ; where, when I was something 
 about eight or nine years old, we were staying in an unad- 
 venturous manner, enjoying the pantiles, the common, the 
 sight, if not the taste, of the lovely fountain, and drives to the 
 High Rocks. After the military dinner there was military 
 music, and by connivance of waiters, Anne and I got in, 
 somehow, mixed up with the dessert. I believe I was rather 
 a pretty boy then, and dressed in a not wholly civilian man- 
 ner, in a sort of laced and buttoned surtout. My mind was 
 extremely set on watching the instrumental manoeuvres of 
 the band, — with admiration of all, but burning envy of the 
 drummer. 
 
 The colonel took notice of my rapt attention, and sent an 
 ensign to bring me round to him ; and after getting, I know 
 not how, at m 3 " mind in the matter, told me I might go and 
 ask the drummer to give me his lovel 3 ^ round-headed sticks, 
 and he would. I was in two minds to do it, having good 
 confidence in m 3 " powers of keeping time. But the dismal 
 shyness conquered; — I shook my head w'ofulty, and my 
 musical career was blighted. No one will ever know what I 
 could then have brought out of that drum, or (if my father 
 had perchance taken me to Spain) out of a tambourine. 
 
 My mother, busy in graver matters, had never cultivated 
 the little she had been taught of music, though her natural 
 
qUEM TU, MELPOMENE. 
 
 145 
 
 sensibility to it was great. Mrs. Richard Gray used some- 
 times .to piay gracefully to me, but if ever she struck a false 
 note, her husband used to put his lingers in his ears, and 
 dance about the room, exclaiming, “ O Mary, Mary dear ! ” 
 and so extinguish her. Our own Perth Mary played dutiful- 
 ly her scales, and little more ; but I got useful help, almost 
 unconsciously, from a family of young people who ought, if 
 my chronology had been systematic, to have been affection- 
 ately spoken of long ago. 
 
 Ill above describing my father’s counting-house, I said the 
 door was opened by a latch pulled by the head clerk. This 
 head clerk, or, putting it more modestly, topmost of two 
 clerks, Henry Watson, was a person of much import in my 
 father’s life and mine ; import which, I perceive, looking 
 back, to have been as in many respects tender and fortunate, 
 yet in others extremely doleful, both to ns and himself. 
 
 The chief fault in my father’s mind, (I say so reverently, 
 for its faults were few, but necessarily, for they were very 
 fatal,) was his dislike of being excelled. He knew his own 
 power — felt that he had not nerve to use or display it, in full 
 measure ; but all the more, could not bear, in his own sphere, 
 any approach to equality. He chose his clerks first for trust- 
 worthiness, secondly for — i5^capacit3^ I am not sure that he 
 would have sent away a clever one, if he had chanced on such 
 a person ; but he assuredly did not look for mercantile 
 genius in them, but rather for subordinates wdio would be 
 subordinate for ever. Frederick the Great chose his clerks 
 in the same way ; but then, his clerks never supposed them- 
 selves likely to be king, while a merchant’s clerks are apt to 
 hope they may at least become partners, if not successors. 
 Also, Friedrich’s clerks were absolutely fit for ilieir business ; 
 but my father’s clerks were, in many ways, utterly unfit for 
 theirs. Of which unfitness my father greatly complaining, 
 nevertheless by no means bestirred himself to find fitter 
 ones. He used to send Henry Watson on business tours, 
 and assure him afterward that he had done more harm than 
 good : he would now and then leave Heniy Ritchie to write a 
 business letter ; and, I think, find with some satisfaction that 
 10 
 
146 
 
 PB^TEBITA. 
 
 it was needful afterward to write two, himself, in correction 
 of it. There was scarcely a day when he did not come 
 home in some irritation at something that one or other of 
 them had done, or not done. But they stayed with him 
 till his death. 
 
 Of the second in command, Mr. Eitchie, I will say what is 
 needful in another place ; but the clerk of confidence, Henry 
 Watson, has already been left unnoticed too long. He was, 
 I believe, the principal support of a widowed mother and 
 three grown-up sisters, amiable, well educated, and fairly 
 sensible women, all of them ; refined beyond the average 
 tone of their position, — and desirous, not vulgarly, of keep- 
 ing themselves in the upper-edge circle of the middle class. 
 Not vulgarly, I say, as caring merely to have carriages stop- 
 ping at their door, but with real sense of the good that is in 
 good London society, in London society’s way. They liked, 
 as they did not drop their own h’s, to talk with people who 
 did not drop theirs ; to hear w'hat was going on in polite cir- 
 cles ; and to have entree to a pleasant dance, or rightly given 
 concert. Being themselves both good and pleasing musi- 
 cians, (the qualities are not united in all musicians,) this 
 was not difficult for them ; — nevertheless it meant necessar- 
 ily having a house in a street of tone, near the Park, and 
 being nicely dressed, and giving now and then a little re- 
 ception themselves. On the whole, it meant the total ab- 
 sorption of Henry’s salary, and of the earnings, in some offi- 
 cial, or otherwise plumaged occupations, of tw'O brothers 
 besides, David and William. The latter, now I think of it, 
 was a West-End wine merchant, sujDplying the nobility with 
 Clos-Vougeot, Hochheimer, dignifiedly still Champagne, and 
 other nectareous drinks, of which the bottom fills up half the 
 bottle, and which are only to be had out of the cellars of 
 Grand Dukes and Counts of the Empire. The family lived, 
 to the edge of their means, — not too narrowly : the young 
 ladies enjo}'ed themselves, studied German — and at that time 
 it was thought very fine and i^oetical to study German ; — 
 sang extremely well, gracefully and easily ; had good taste 
 in dress, the better for being a little matronly and old-fash- 
 
qUEM TU, 3IELF0MEJSE. U7 
 
 ioned : and the whole family thought themselves extremely 
 dite, in a substantial and virtuous manner. 
 
 When Henry Watson was first taken, (then, I believe, a boy 
 of sixteen,) I know not by what chance, or on what commen- 
 dation, into my father’s counting-house, the opening was 
 thought by his family a magnificent one ; they were very 
 thankful and happy, and, of course, in their brother’s interest, 
 eager to do all they could to please my father and mother. 
 They found, however, my mother not very easily pleased ; and 
 presently began themselves to be not a little surprised and 
 displeased by the way things went on, both in the counting- 
 house and at Herne Hill. At the one, there was steady work ; 
 at the other, little show ; the clerks could by no meaj]s venture 
 to leave their desks for a garden-party, and after dark were 
 allowed only tallow candles. That the head of the Firm 
 should live in the half of a party-walled house, beyond the 
 suburb of Camberwell, was a degradation and disgrace to 
 everybody connected with the business ! and that Henry 
 should be obliged every morning to take omnibus into the 
 eastern City, and work within scent of Billingsgate, instead 
 of walking elegantly across Piccadilly to an office in St. 
 James’s Street, was alike injurious to him, and disparaging lo 
 my father’s taste and knowledge of the world. Also, to the 
 feminine circle, my mother w^as a singular, and sorrowfully 
 intractable, phenomenon. Taking herself no interest in Ger- 
 man studies, and being little curious as to the events, and 
 little respectful to the opinions, of Mayfair, she v/as apt to 
 look with some severity, perhaps a tinge of jealousy, on what 
 she thought pretentious in the accomplishments, or affected 
 in the manners, of the young people : while they, on the 
 other hand, though quite sensible of my mother’s worth, 
 grateful for her good will, and in time really attached to her, 
 were not disposed to pay much attention to the opinions of a 
 woman who knew only her own language ; — and were more 
 restive than responsive under kindnesses wdiich frequently 
 took the form of advice. 
 
 These differences in feeling, irreconcilable though they 
 were, did not hinder the growth of consistently pleasant and 
 
148 
 
 PRMTERITA. 
 
 sincerely affectionate relations between my mother and the 
 young housewives. With what best of girl nature was in them, 
 Fanny, Helen, and foolishest, cleverest little Juliet, enjoyed, 
 in sprii]g time, exchanging for a day or two the dusty dignity 
 of their street of tone in Mayfair for the lilacs and labur- 
 nums of Herne Hill: and held themselves, with their brother 
 Henry, always ready at call to come out on any occasion of 
 the Hill’s hospitality to some respected correspondent of the 
 House, and sing to us the prettiest airs from the new opera, 
 with a due foundation and tonic intermixture of classical 
 German. 
 
 Henry had a singularly beautiful tenor voice ; and the three 
 sisters, though not, any one of them, of special power, sang 
 their parts w’ith sufficient precision, with intelligent taste, and 
 with the pretty unison of sistei’ly voices. In this way, from 
 early childhood, I was accustomed to hear a great range of 
 good music completely and rightly rendered, without break- 
 ings down, missings out, affectations of manner, or vulgar 
 prominence of execution. Had the quartette sung me Eng- 
 lish glees, or Scotch ballads, or British salt-water ones, or 
 had any one of the girls had gift enough to render higher 
 music with its proper splendor, I might easily have been led 
 to spare some time from my maps and mineralogy for atten- 
 tive listening. As it was, the scientific German compositions 
 w’ere simply tiresojne to me, and the pretty modulations of 
 Italian, which I understood no syllable of, pleasant only as 
 the trills of the blackbirds, who often listened, and ex- 
 pressed their satisfaction by joining in the part-songs through 
 the window that opened to the back garden in the spring 
 evenings. Yet the education of my ear and taste went on 
 without trouble of mine. I do not think I ever heard any 
 masterly professional music, until, as good hap was, I heard 
 the best, only to he heard during a narrow space of those 
 young days. 
 
 I too carelessly left without explanation the casual sentence 
 about “ fatal dinner at Mr. Domecq’s” when I was fourteen, 
 above. Chap. IV., p. 73. My father’s Spanish partner w'as 
 at that time living in the Champs Elysces, with his English 
 
QUEM TU, MELPOMENE. 
 
 149 
 
 wife and his five daughters ; the eldest, Diana, on the eve of 
 her marriage with one of Napoleon’s officers, Count Maison ; 
 the four others, much younger, chanced to be at home on 
 vacation from their convent school : and we had happy family 
 dinner with them, and mamma and the girls and a delightful 
 old French gentleman, Mr. Badell, plajed afterward at “la 
 toilette de Madame ” with me ; only I couldn’t remember 
 whether I was the necklace or the garters ; and then Clotilde 
 and Cecile played “ les ^fichos ” and other fascinations of dance- 
 melody, — only I couldn’t dance ; and at last Elise had to take 
 pity oil me as above described. But the best, if not the 
 largest, part of the conversation among the elders was of the 
 recent death of Bellini, the sorrow of all Paris for him, and 
 the power with wdiich his “I Puritani” was being rendered 
 by the reigning four great singers for whom it was written. 
 
 It puzzles me that I have no recollection of any first sight 
 and hearing of an opera. Not even, for that matter, of my 
 first going to a theatre, though I was full twelve, before being- 
 taken ; and afterward, it was a matter of intense rapture, of 
 a common sort, to be taken to a pantomime. And I greatly en- 
 joy theatre to this day — it is one of tlie pleasures that liave least 
 W’oru out ; yet, while I remember Friar’s Crag at Derwent- 
 water wlien I was four j-ears old, and the courtyard of our 
 Paris inn at five, I have no memory wdiatever, and am a little 
 proud to have none, of my first theatre. To be tjiken now at 
 Paris to the feebly dramatic “Puritani” was no great joy to 
 me ; but I then heard, and it will always be a rare, and only 
 once or twice in a century possible, thing to hear, four great 
 musicians, all rightly to be called of genius, singing together, 
 wdth sincere desire to assist each other, not eclipse ; and to 
 exhibit, not only their own power of singing, but the beauty 
 of the music they sang. 
 
 Still more fortunately it happened that a woman of faultless 
 genius led the following dances, — Taglioni ; a person of the 
 highest natural faculties, and stainlessly simple character, 
 gathered with sincerest ardor and reverence into her art. 
 My mother, though she allowed me without serious remon- 
 strance to be taken to the theatre by my father, had the 
 
150 
 
 PR^ETERITA. 
 
 strictest Puritan prejudice against the stage ;• yet enjoyed it 
 so much that I think she felt the sacrifice she made in not 
 going with us to be a sort of price accepted by the laws of 
 virtue for what was sinful in her concession to my father and 
 me. She went, however, to hear and see this group of players, 
 renowned, without any rivals, through all the cities of Europe ; 
 — and, strange and pretty to say, her instinct of the inno- 
 cence, beauty, and wonder, in every motion of the Grace of 
 her century, was so strong, that from that time forth my 
 mother would always, at a word, go with us to see Taglioni. 
 
 Afterward, a season did not pass without my hearing 
 twice or thrice, at least, those four singers ; and I learned the 
 better because ray ear was never jaded the intention of the 
 music written for them, or studied by them ; and am ex- 
 tremely glad now that I heard Iheir renderings of Mozart and 
 Rossini, neither of whom can be now said ever to be heard at 
 all, owing to the detestable quickening of the time. Grisi and 
 Malibran sang at least one-third slower than any modern 
 cantatrice ; * and Patti, the last time I heard her, massacred 
 Zerlina’s part in ‘-'La ci darem,” as if the audience and she 
 had but the one object of getting Mozart’s air done with as 
 soon as possible. 
 
 Afterward, (the confession may as well be got over at 
 once,) when I had got settled in my furrow at Christ Church, 
 it chanced that the better men of the college had founded a 
 musical society, under instruction of the cathedral organist, 
 Mr. Marshall, an extremely simple, good-natured, and good- 
 humored person, by whose encouragement I was brought to 
 the point of trying to learn to sing, “ Come mai posso vivere 
 se Rosina non m’ascolta,” and to play the tw’O lines of prelude 
 to the “ A te o cara,” and w’hat notes I could manage to read 
 of accompaniments to other songs of similarly tender pur- 
 port. In v/hich, though never even getting so far as to read 
 with ease, I nevertheless, between my fine rhythmic ear, and 
 true lover’s sentiment, got to understand some principles of 
 
 * It is a pretty conceit of musical people to call themselves scientific, 
 when they have not yet fixed their iinit of time ! 
 
qUEM TU, MELPOMENE. 
 
 151 
 
 musical art, wliich I shall perhaps be able to enforce with 
 benefit on the musical public mind, even to-day, if only I can 
 get first done with this autobiography^ 
 
 What the furrow at Christ Church was to be like, or where 
 to lead, none of my people seem at this time to have been 
 thinking. My mother, watching the naturalistic and methodic 
 bent of me, was, I suppose, traiKjuil in the thought of my 
 becoming another White of Selborne, or Vicar of Wakefield, 
 victorious in W^histonian and every other controversy. My 
 father perhaps conceived more cometic or meteoric career for 
 me, but neither of them put the matter seriously in hand, 
 however deeply laid up in heart : and I was allowed without 
 remonstrance to go on measuring the blue of the sky, and 
 watching the flight of the clouds, till I had forgotten most of 
 the Latin I ever knew, and all the Greek, except Anacreon’s 
 ode to the rose. 
 
 Some little effort was made to pull me together in 1836 by 
 sending me to hear Mr. Dale’s lectures at King’s College, 
 where I explained to Mr. Dale, on meeting him one day in 
 the court of entrance, that porticoes should not be carried on 
 the top of arches ; and considered myself exalted because I 
 went in at the same door with boys who had square caps on. 
 The lectures were on early English literature, of which, though 
 I had never read a word of any before Pope, I thought my- 
 self already a much better judge than Mr. Dale. His cpiota- 
 tion of “Knut the king came sailing by ” stayed with me; 
 and I think that was about all I learnt during the summer. 
 For, as my adverse stars would have it, that year, my father’s 
 partner, Mr. Domecq, thought it might for once be expedient 
 that he should himself pay a complimentary round of visits 
 to his British customers, and asked if meanvv^hile he might 
 leave his daughters at Herne Hill to see the lions at the 
 Tower, and so on. How we got them all into Herne Hill 
 corners and cupboards would be inexplicable but with a plan 
 of the three stories ! The arrangements were half Noah’s ark, 
 half Do11’i3 house, but we got them all in : Clotilde, a grace- 
 ful oval-faced blonde of fifteen ; Cecile, a dark, finely-browed, 
 beautifully-featured giid of thirteen ; £lise, again, fair, round- 
 
152 
 
 FRMTERITA, 
 
 faced like an English girl, a treasure of good nature and 
 good sense ; Caroline, a delicately quaint little thing of 
 eleven. They had all been born abroad, Clotilde at Cadiz, 
 and of course convent-bred ; but lately accustomed to be 
 much in society during vacation at Paris. Deeper than any 
 one dreamed, the sight of them in the Champs filysees had 
 sealed itself in me, for they were the first well-bred and well- 
 dressed girls I had ever seen — or at least spoken to. I mean 
 of course, by well-dressed, perfectly simply dressed, with 
 Parisian cutting and fitting. They were all bigoted ” — as 
 Protestants would say ; quietly firm, as they ought to say — 
 Poman Catholics ; spoke Spanish and French with perfect 
 grace, and English with broken precision ; were all fairly 
 sensible, Clotilde sternly and accurately so, filise gayly and 
 kindly, Cecile serenely, Caroline keenly. A most curious 
 galaxy, or southern cross, of uiiconceived stars, floating on a 
 sudden into my obscure firmament of London suburb. 
 
 How my parents could allow their young novice to be 
 cast into the fiery furnace of the outer world in this helpless 
 manner the reader may wonder, and only the Fates know ; 
 but there was this excuse for them, that they had never seen 
 me the least interested or anxious about girls — never caring 
 to stay in the promenades at Cheltenham or Bath, or on the 
 parade at Dover ; on the contrary, growling and mewing if I 
 was ever kept there, and off to the sea or the fields the 
 moment I got leave ; and they had educated me in such ex- 
 tremely orthodox English Toryism and Evangelicalism that 
 they could not conceive their scientific, religious, and George 
 the Third revering youth, wavering in his constitutional 
 balance toward French Catholics. And I had never mid 
 anything about the Champs Elysees! Virtually convent-bred 
 more closely than the maids themselves, without a single 
 sisterly or cousinly affection for refuge or lightning-rod, and 
 having no athletic skill or pleasure to check my dreaming, I 
 was thrown, bound hand and foot, in my unaccomplished 
 simplicity, into the fiery furnace, or fiery cross, of these four 
 girls, — who of course reduced me to a mere heap of white 
 ashes in four days. Four days, at the most, it took to re- 
 
qUEM TU, MELPOMENE. 153 
 
 duce me to ashes, but the Mercredi des ceiidres lasted four 
 years. 
 
 Anything more comic in the externals of it, anything more 
 tragic in the essence, could not have been invented by the 
 skilfullest designer in either kind. In my social behavior 
 and mind I was a curious combination of Mr. Traddles, Mr. 
 Toots, and Mr. Winkle. I had the real fidelity and single- 
 mindedness of Mr. Traddles, with the conversational abilities 
 of Mr. Toots, and the heroic ambition of Mr. Winkle ; — all 
 these illuminated by imagination like Mr. Copperfield’s, at his 
 first Norwood dinner. 
 
 Clotilde (Adele Clotilde in full, but her sisters called her 
 Clotilde, after the queen-saint, and I Adele, because it rhymed 
 to shell, spell, and knell) was only made more resplendent by 
 the circlet of her sisters’ beauty ; while my own shyness and 
 unpresentableness were farther stiffened, or rather sanded, 
 by a patriotic and Protestant conceit, which was tempered 
 neither by politeness nor sympathy ; so that, while in com- 
 pany I sate jealously miserable like a stockfish (in truth, I 
 imagine, looking like nothing so much as a skate in an aqua- 
 rinm trying to get up the glass), on any blessed occasion of 
 tete-a-tete I endeavored to entertain my Spanish-born, Paris- 
 bred, and Catholic-hearted mistress with my own views upon 
 the subjects of the Spanish Armada, the Battle of Waterloo, 
 and the doctrine of Transubstantiation. 
 
 To these modes of recommending myself, however, I did 
 not fail to add what display I could make of the talents I 
 supposed myself to possess. I wrote with great pains, and 
 straining of my invention, a story about Naples, (which I had 
 never seen,) and “ the Bandit Leoni,” whom I represented as 
 typical of what my own sanguinary and adventurous disposi- 
 tion would have been had I been brought up a bandit; and 
 “ the Maiden Giuletta,” in whom I portrayed all the perfec- 
 tions of my mistress. Our connection with Messrs. Smith & 
 Elder enabled me to get this story printed in Friendships 
 Offering ; and Adele laughed over it in rippling ecstasies of 
 derision, of which I bore the pain bravely, for the sake of 
 seeing her thoroughly amused. 
 
154 
 
 PB^TEBITA. 
 
 I dared not address any sonnets straight to herself ; but 
 when she went back to Paris, wrote her a French letter seven 
 quarto pages long, descriptive of the desolations and solitudes 
 of Herne Hill since her departure. This letter, either Elise 
 or Caroline wrote to tell me she had really read, and “laughed 
 immensely at the French of.” Both Caroline and filise pitied 
 me a little, and did not like to say she had also laughed at 
 the contents. 
 
 The old people, meanwhile, saw little harm in all this. Mr. 
 Domecq, who was extremely good-natured, and a good judge 
 of character, rather liked me, because he saw that I was good- 
 natured also, and had some seedling brains, which would come 
 up in time : in the interests of the business he was perfectly 
 
 ready to give me any of his daughters I liked, who could also 
 be got to like me, but considered that the time was not come 
 to talk of such things. My father was entirely of the same 
 mind, besides being pleased at my getting a story printed 
 in Friendshijys Offering, glad that I saw something of girls 
 with good manners, and in hopes that if I wrote poetry about 
 them, it might be as good as the “ Hours of Idleness.” My 
 mother, who looked upon the idea of my marrying a Homan 
 Catholic as too monstrous to be possible in the decrees of 
 Heaven, and too preposterous to be even guarded against on 
 earth, was rather annoyed at the whole business, as she would 
 have been if one of her chimneys had begun smoking, — but 
 had not the slightest notion her house was on fire. She saw 
 more, however, than my father, into the depth of the feeling, 
 but did not, in her motherly tenderness, like to grieve me by 
 any serious check to it. She hoped, when the Domecqs went 
 back to Paris, we might see no more of them, and that Adele’s 
 influence and memory would pass away — with next winter’s 
 snow. 
 
 Under these indulgent circumstances, — bitterly ashamed of 
 the figure I had made, but yet not a whit dashed back out of my 
 daily swelling foam of fimious conceit, supported as it was by 
 real depth of feeling, and (note it well, good reader) by a true 
 and glorious sense of the newly revealed miracle of human 
 love, in its exaltation of the physical beauty of the world I 
 
QJIEM TU, MELPOMENE. 
 
 155 
 
 had till then sought by its own light alone, — I set myself in 
 that my seventeenth year, in a state of majestic imbecility, to 
 write a tragedy on a Venetian subject, in which the sorrows of 
 my soul were to be enshrined in immortal verse, — the fair 
 heroine, Bianca, was to be endowed with the perfections of 
 Desdemona and the brightness of Juliet, — and Venice and 
 Love were to be described, as never had been thought of 
 before. I may note in passing, that on my first sight of the 
 Ducal Palace, the year before, I had deliberately announced 
 to my father and mother, and — it seemed to me stupidly in- 
 credulous — Mary, that I meant to make such a drawing of the 
 Ducal Palace as never had been made before. This I pro- 
 ceeded to perform by collecting some hasty memoranda on 
 the spot, and finishing my design elaborately out of my head 
 at Treviso. The drawing still exists, — for a wonder, out of 
 perspective, which I had now got too conceited to follow the 
 rules of, — and with the diaper pattern of the red and white 
 marbles represented as a bold panelling in relief. No figure 
 disturbs the solemn tranquillity of the Biva, and the gondolas 
 — each in the shape of a Turkish crescent standing on its back 
 on the water — float about without the aid of gondoliers. 
 
 I remember nothing more of that year, 1836, than sitting 
 under the mulberry tree in the back garden, writing my 
 traged}^ I forget whether we went travelling or not, or wliat 
 I did in the rest of the day. It is all now blank to me, ex- 
 cept Venice, Bianca, and looking out over Shooter’s Hill, 
 where I could see the last turn of the road to Paris. 
 
 Some Greek, though I don’t know' wdiat, must have been 
 read, and some mathematics, for I certainly knew the 
 difference between a square and cube root when I went to 
 Oxford, and was put by my tutor into Herodotus, out of 
 whom I immediately gathered materials enough to write my 
 Scythian drinking song, in imitation of the “Giaour.” 
 
 The reflective reader can scarcely but have begun to doubt, 
 by this time, the accuracy of my statement that I took no 
 harm from Byron. But he need not. The particular form 
 of expression which my folly took was indeed directed by 
 him ; but this form was the best it could have taken. I got 
 
156 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 better practice in English by imitating the “Giaour” and 
 “ Bride of Abydos” than I could have had under any other 
 master, (the tragedy was of course Shakespearian !) and the 
 state of my mind was — my mind’s own fault, and that of sur- 
 rounding mischance or mismanagement — not Byron’s. In 
 that same year, 1836, I took to reading Shelley also, and 
 wasted much time over the “ Sensitive Plant ” and “ Epipsy- 
 chidion ; ” and I took a good deal of harm from him, in try- 
 ing to write lines like “prickly and pulpous and blistered and 
 blue or “it was a little lawny islet by anemone and vi’let, 
 — like mosaic paven,” etc. ; but in the state of frothy fever I 
 was in, there was little good for me to be got out of anything. 
 The perseverance with which I tried to wade through the “ Re- 
 volt of Islam,” and find out (I never did, and don’t know to this 
 day) who revolted against whom, or what, was creditable to 
 me ; and the “ Prometheus ” really made me understand some- 
 thing of ..^schylus. I am not sure that, for what I was to 
 turn out, my days of ferment could have been got over much 
 easier : at any rate, it was better than if I had been learning to 
 shoot, or hunt, or smoke, or gamble. The entirely inscrutable 
 thing to me, looking back on myself, is my total want of all 
 reason, will, or design in the business : I had neither the 
 resolution to win Adcle, the courage to do without her, the 
 sense to consider what was at last to come of it all, or the 
 grace to think how disagreeable I was making myself at the 
 time to everybody about me. There was really no more 
 capacity nor intelligence in me than in a just fledged owlet, 
 or just open-eyed puppy, disconsolate at the existence ^f the 
 moon. 
 
 Out of my feebly melodious complaints to that luminary, 
 however, I was startled by a letter to my father from Christ 
 Church, advising him that there was room for my residence 
 in the January term of 1837, and that I must come up to 
 matriculate in October of the instant year, 1836. 
 
 Strangely enough, my father had never inquired into the 
 nature and manner of matriculation, till he took me up to 
 display in Oxford ; — he, very nearly as much a boy as I, for 
 anything we knew of what we were about. He never had 
 
QUE3I TU, MELPOMENE. 
 
 157 
 
 any doubt about putting me at the most fashionable college, 
 and of coarse my name had been down at Christ Church 
 years before I was called up ; bat it had never dawned on my 
 father’s mind that there were two, fashionable and unfashion- 
 able, orders, or castes, of undergraduate at Christ Church, 
 one of these being called Geiitlemen-Commoners, the other 
 Commoners ; and that these last seemed to occupy an almost 
 bisoctional point between the Gentlemen-Commoners and the 
 Servitors. All these “ invidious ” distinctions are now done 
 away with in our Reformed University. Nobody sets up for 
 tlie special rank of a gentleman, but nobody will be set down 
 as a commoner ; and tliough, of the old people, anybody will 
 beg or canvass for a place for their children in a cliarity 
 school, everybody would be furious at the thought of his son’s 
 wearing, at college, the gown of a Servitor. 
 
 How far I agree with the modern British citizen in these 
 lofty sentimei]ts, my general writings have enough shown ; 
 but I leave the reader to form his own opinions without 
 any contrary comment of mine, on the results of the exploded 
 system of things in my own college life. 
 
 My father did not like the word “commoner,” — all the less, 
 because our relationships in general were not uncommon. 
 Also, though himself satisfying his pride enough in being the 
 head of the sherry trade, he felt and saw in his son powers 
 which had not their full scope in the sherry trade. His ideal 
 of my future, — nowentirely formed in conviction of my genius, 
 — was that I should enter at college into the best society, 
 take all the prizes every year, and a double first to finish with ; 
 marry Lady Clara Vere de Vere ; write poetry as good as 
 Byron’s, only pious ; preach sermons as good as Bossuet’s, 
 only Protestant ; be made, at forty, Bishop of Winchester, 
 and at fifty. Primate of England. 
 
 With all these hopes, and under all these temptations, my 
 father was yet restrained and embarrassed in no small degree 
 by his old and steady sense of what was becoming to his 
 station in life ; and he consulted anxiousl}^ but honestly, the 
 Dean of Christ Church, (Gaisford,) and my college tutor that 
 was to be, Mr. Walter Brown, whether a person in his posi- 
 
i5S 
 
 PB^TEBITA, 
 
 tion miglit without impropriety enter his son as a gentleman- 
 commoner. I did not hear the dialogues, but the old Dean 
 must have answered with a grunt, that my father had every 
 right to make me a gentleman-commoner if he liked, and 
 could pay the fees ; the tutor, more attentively laying before 
 him the conditions of the question, may perhaps have said, 
 with courtesy, that it would be good for the college to have 
 a reading man among the gentlemen-commoners, who, as a 
 rule, were not studiously inclined ; but he was compelled also 
 to give my father a hint, that as far as my reading had already 
 gone, it was not altogether certain I could pass the entrance 
 examination which had to be sustained by commoners. This 
 last suggestion was conclusive. It was not to be endured 
 that the boy who had been expected to carry all before him, 
 should get himself jammed in the first turnstile. I was en- 
 tered as a Gentleman-Commoner without further debate, and 
 remember still, as if it were yesterday, the pride of first 
 walking out of the Angel Hotel, and past University College, 
 holding my father’s arm, in my velvet cap and silk gown. 
 
 Yes, good reader, the velvet and silk made a difference, not 
 to my mother onl}% but to me ! Quite one of the telling and 
 weighty points in the home debates concerning this choice of 
 Hercules, had been that the commoner’s gown was not only 
 of ugly stuff, but had no flowing lines in it, and was virtually 
 only a black rag tied to one’s shoulders. One was thrice a 
 gownsman in a flowing gown. 
 
 So little, indeed, am I disposed now in maturer years to 
 deride these unphilosophical feelings, that instead of effacing 
 distinction of dress at the University (except for the boating 
 clubs), I would fain have seen them extended into the entire 
 social order of the country. I think that nobody but duch- 
 esses should be allowed to wear diamonds ; that lords should 
 be known from common people by their stars, a quarter of a 
 mile off; that every peasant girl should boast her county by 
 some dainty ratification of cap or bodice ; and that in the 
 towns a vintner should be known from a fishmonger by the 
 cut of his jerkin. 
 
 That walk to the Schools, and the waiting, outside the 
 
CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR. 
 
 159 
 
 Divinity School, in comforting admiration of its door, my 
 turn for matriculation, continue still for me, at pleasure. But 
 I remember nothing more that year ; nor anything of the first 
 days of the next, until early in January we drove down to 
 Oxford, only my mother and I, by the beautiful Henley road, 
 weary a little as we changed horses for the last stage from 
 Dorchester ; solemnized, in spite of velvet and silk, as we 
 entered among the towers in the twilight ; and after one more 
 rest under the domestic roof of the Angel, I found myself the 
 next day at evening, alone, by the fireside, entered into com- 
 mand of my own life, in my own college room in Peckwater. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 CmUST CHURCH CHOIR. 
 
 Alone, by the fireside of the little back-room, which looked 
 into the narrow lane, chiefly then of stabling, I sate collecting 
 my resolution for college life. 
 
 I had not much to collect ; nor, so far as I knew, much to 
 collect it against. I had about as clear understanding of mj' 
 whereabouts, or foresight of my fortune, as Davie Gellatley 
 might have had in my place ; v/ith these farther inferiorities 
 to Davie, that I could neither dance, sing, nor roast eggs. 
 There was not the slightest fear of my gambling, for I had 
 never touched a card, and looked 1123011 dice as peoiile now do 
 on dynamite. No fear of my being tem 23 ted by the strange 
 woman, for was not I in love ? and besides, never allowed to 
 be out after half-past nine. No fear of my running in debt, 
 for there were no Turners to be had in Oxford, and I cared 
 for nothing else in the world of material possession. No fear 
 of my breaking my neck out hunting, for I couldn’t have 
 ridden a hack down the High Street ; and no fear of my 
 ruining myself at a race, for I never had been but at one race 
 in my life, and had not the least wish to win anybody else’s 
 money. 
 
 I expected some ridicule, indeed, for these my sim 23 le ways, 
 
IGO 
 
 PRJETEPdTA. 
 
 but was safe against ridicule in my conceit : the only thing I 
 doubted myself in, and very rightly, was the power of apply- 
 ing for three years to work in which I took not the slightest 
 interest. I resolved, however, to do my parents and myself 
 as much credit as I could, said my prayers very seriously, 
 and went to bed in good hope. 
 
 And here I must stay, for a minute or two, to give some 
 account of the state of mind I had got into during the above- 
 described progress of my education, touching religious mat- 
 ters. 
 
 As far as I recollect, the steady Bible reading with my 
 mother ended with our first continental journey, when I was 
 fourteen ; one could not read three chapters after breakfast 
 while the horses were at the door. For this lesson was sub- 
 stituted my own private reading of a chapter, morning and 
 evening, and, of course, saying the Lord’s Prayer after it, 
 and asking for everything that was nice for myself and my 
 family ; after which I waked or slept, without much thought 
 of anything but my earthl}^ affairs, whether by night or day. 
 
 It had never entered into my head to doubt a word of the 
 Bible, though I saw well enough already that its words were to 
 be understood otherwise than I had been taught ; but the more 
 I believed it, the less it did me any good. It was all very well 
 for Abraham to do what angels bid him, — so would I, if any 
 angels bid me ; but none had ever appeared to me that I knew 
 of, not even Adele, who couldn’t be an angel because she was 
 a Roman Catholic. 
 
 Also, if I had lived in Christ’s time, of course I w^ould have 
 gone with Him up to the mountain, or sailed with Him on 
 the Lake of Galilee ; but that was quite another thing from 
 g(ung to Beresford Chapel, Walworth, or St. Bride’s, Fleet 
 Street. Also, though I felt myself somehow called to imitate 
 Christian in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” I couldn’t see that either 
 Billiter Street and the Tower Wharf, where my father had 
 his cellars, or the cherry-blossomed garden at Herne Hill, 
 where my mother potted her flowers, could be places I was 
 bound to fly from as in the City of Destruction. Without 
 much reasoning on the matter, I had virtually concluded 
 
CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR. 
 
 IGl 
 
 from my general Bible reading that, never having meant or 
 done any harm that I knew of, I could not be in danger of 
 hell : while I saw also that even the creme do la creme of 
 religious people seemed to be in no hurry to go to heaven. 
 On the whole, it seemed to me, all that was required of me 
 was to say my prayers, go to church, learn my lessons, obey 
 iny parents, and enjoy my dinner. 
 
 Thus minded, in the slowly granted light of the winter 
 morning I looked out upon the view from my college windows, 
 of Christ Church library and the smooth-gravelled square of 
 Peck water, vexed a little because I w^as not in an oriel window 
 looking out on a Gothic chapel : but quite unconscious of the 
 real condemnation I had fallen under, or of the loss that was 
 involved to me in having nothing but Christ Church library, 
 and a gravelled square, to see out of wdiidow during the 
 spring- times of two years of youth. 
 
 At the moment I felt that, though dull, it w^as all very grand ; 
 and that the architecture, though Benaissance, v/as bold, 
 learned, well-proportioned, and variously didactic. In reality, 
 I might just as ’svell have been sent to the dungeon of Chillon, 
 except for the damp ; better, indeed, if I could have seen the 
 three small trees from the window slit, and good groining and 
 pavement, instead of the modern vulgar upholstery of my 
 room furniture. 
 
 Even the first sight of college chapel disappointed me, after 
 the large churches abroad ; but its narrow vaults had very 
 different offices. 
 
 On the whole, of important places and services for the 
 Christian souls of England, the choir of Christ Church was at 
 that epoch of Englisli history virtually the navel, and seat of 
 life. There remained in it the traditions of Saxon, Norman, 
 Elizabethan, religion unbroken, — the memory of loyalty, {he 
 reality of learning, and, in nominal obedience at least, and in 
 the heart of them with true docility, stood every morning, to 
 be animated for the highest duties owed to their country, the 
 noblest of English }’outh. The greater number of the peers 
 of Eugland, and, as a rule, the best of her squirealty, passed 
 necessarily through Christ Church. 
 
 11 
 
1G2 
 
 PM^TElilTA. 
 
 The cathedral itself was an epitome of English history. 
 Every stone, every pane of glass, every panel of woodwork, 
 was true, and of its time, — not an accursed sham of architect’s 
 job. The first shrine of St. Frideswide had indeed been de- 
 stroyed, and her body rent and scattered on the dust by the 
 Puritan ; but her second shrine was still beautiful in its kind, 
 — most lovely English work both of heart and hand. The 
 Norman vaults above were true English Norman ; bad and 
 rude enough, but the best we could do with our own wits, and 
 no French help. The roof was true Tudor, — grotesque, in- 
 ventively constructive, delicately carved ; it, with the roof of 
 the hall staircase, summing the builder’s skill of the fifteenth 
 century. The west window, with its clumsy painting of the 
 Adoration of the Shejpherds, a monument of the transition 
 from window to picture which ended in Dutch pictures of the 
 cattle v/ithout either shepherds or Christ, — but still, the best 
 men could do of the day ; and the plain final woodwork of 
 the stalls represented still the last art of living England in the 
 form of honest and comfortable carpentry. 
 
 In this choir, written so closely and consecutively with in- 
 disputable British history, met every morning a congregation 
 representing the best of what Britain had become, — orderly, 
 as the crew of a man-of war, in the goodly shijD of their tem- 
 ple. Every man in his place, according to his rank, age, and 
 learning ; every man of sense or heart there recognizing that 
 he was either fLilfilling, or being prepared to fulfil, the gravest 
 duties required of Englishmen. A well-educated foreigner, 
 admitted to that morning service, might have learned and 
 judged more quickly and justly what the country had been, 
 and still had power to be, than by months of stay in court or 
 city. There, in his stall, sat the greatest divine of England, 
 — under his commandant niche, her greatest scholar, — among 
 the tutors the present Dean Liddell, and a man of curious 
 intellectual power and simple virtue, Osborne Gordon. The 
 group of noblemen gave, in the Marquis of Kildare, Earl of 
 Desart, Earl of Emlyn, and Francis Charteris, now Lord 
 Wemyss, — the brightest types of high race and active ]:»ower. 
 Henry Acland and Charles Newton among the senior under- 
 
CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR, 
 
 1G3 
 
 graduates, and I among the freshmen, sliowed, if one had 
 known it, elements of curious possibilities in coming days. 
 None of us then conscious of any need or chance of change, 
 least of all the stern captain, who, with rounded brow and 
 glittering dark eye, led in his old thunderous Latin the re- 
 sponses of the morning prayer. 
 
 For all that I saw, and was made to think, in that cathedral 
 choir, I am most thankful to this day. 
 
 The inlluence on me of the next goodliest part of the col- 
 lege buildings, — the hall, — was of a different and curiously 
 mixed character. Had it only been used, as it only ought to 
 have been, for festivity, and magnificence, — for the refectory 
 daily, the reception of guests, the delivery of speeches on 
 state occasions, and the like, — the hall, like the cathedralTy 
 would have had an entirely salutary and beneficently solemn- 
 izing effect on me, hallowing to me my daily bread, or, if our ' 
 Dean Abbot had condescended sometimes to dine with us, 
 our incidental venison. But with the extremely bad taste 
 (wliicli, to my mind, is our cardinal modern sin, the staple to 
 the hinge of our taste for money, and distaste for money’s 
 worth, and every other worthiness) — in that bad taste, I say, 
 the Abbot allowed our Hall to be used for “ collections.” Tlie 
 word is wholly abominable to my mind, whether as express- 
 ing extorted charities in church, or extracted knowledge in 
 examination. “Collections,” in scholastic sense, meant the 
 college examination at the end of every term, at which the 
 Abbot had always the worse than bad taste to be present as 
 our inquisitor, though he had never once presided at our table 
 as our host. Of course the collective quantity of Greek pos- 
 sessed by all the undergraduate heads in hall, was to him, 
 infinitesimal. Scornful at once, and vindictive, thunderous 
 always, more sullen and threatening as the day wmnt on, he 
 stalked with baleful emanation of Gorgonian cold from dais to 
 door, and door to dais, of the majestic torture chamber,-— vast 
 as the great council hall of Venice, but degraded now by the 
 mean terrors, swallow-like under its eaves, of doleful creatures 
 who had no counsel in them, except how to hide their crib in 
 time, at each fateful Abbot’s transit. Of course I never used 
 
1G4 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 a crib, but I believe the Dean would rather I had used fift}^, 
 than borne the puzzled and hopeless aspect which I presented 
 toward the afternoon, over whatever I had to do. And as 
 iny Latin writing was, I suppose, the worst in the universit}', 
 
 ■ — as I never by any chance knew a first from a second future, 
 or, even to the end of my Oxford career, could get into my 
 head where the Pelasgi lived, or where the Heraclidm returned 
 from, — it may be imagined with what sort of countenance the 
 Dean gave me his first and second fingers to shake at our 
 parting, or with what comfort I met the inquiries of my father 
 and mother as to the extent to which I was, in college 
 opinion, carrying all before me. 
 
 As time went on, the aspect of my college hall to me meant 
 little more than the fear and shame of those examination 
 days ; but even in the first surprise and sublimity of finding 
 myself dining there, were many reasons for the qualification of 
 my pleasure. The change from our front parlor at Hei-ne 
 Hill, some fifteen feet by eighteen, and meat and pudding 
 with my mother and Mary, to a hall about as big as the nave 
 of Canterbury Cathedral, with its extremity lost in mist, its 
 roof in darkness, and its company, an innumerable, immeasur- 
 able vision in vanishing perspective, was in itself more appal- 
 ling to me than appetizing ; but also, from first to last, I had 
 the clownish feeling of having no business there. 
 
 In the cathedral, however born or bred, I felt myself present 
 by as good a right as its bishop, — nay, that in some of its 
 lessons and uses, the building was less his than mine. But 
 at table, with this learned and lordly perspective of guests, 
 and state of worldly service, I had nothing to do ; my own 
 proper style of dining was for ever, I felt, divided from this 
 — impassably. With baked potatoes under the mutton, just 
 out of the oven, into the little parlor off the shop in Market 
 Street, or beside a gypsy’s kettle on Addington Hill (not that 
 I had ever been beside a gypsy’s kettle, but often wanted to 
 be) ; or with an oak-cake and butter — for I was always a gour- 
 mand — in a Scotch shepherd’s cottage, to be divided with his 
 collie, I was myself, and in my place: Imt at the gentleraen- 
 commoners’ table, in Cardinal Wolsey’s dining-room, I was, 
 
 
 I 
 
 ' 
 
 
CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR. 
 
 165 
 
 
 in all sorts of ways at once, less than myself, and in all sorts 
 of wrong places at once, out of my place. 
 
 I may as well here record a somewhat comic incident, 
 j extremely trivial, which took place a little while afterward ; 
 
 ‘ and v/hich, in spite of its triviality, farther contributed to 
 |: diminish in my own mind the charm of Christ Church hall. 
 
 I had been received as a good-humored and inoffensive little 
 ; cur, contemptuously, yet kindl}', among the dogs of race at 
 ‘ the gentlemen-commoners’ table ; and my tutor, and the men 
 i who read in class with me, were beginning to recognize that 
 ; I had some little gift in reading with good accent, thinking of ^ 
 what I read, and even asking troublesome questions about it, 
 
 I to the extent of being one day eagerly and admiringly con- 
 gratulated by the whole class the moment Ave got into quad, 
 
 \ on the consummate manner in which I had floored our tutor. 
 
 I having had no more intention to floor, or consciousness of 
 , flooring, the tutor, than a babe unborn ! but had only hap- 
 |i pened, to the exquisite joy of my companions, to ask him 
 something which he didn’t happen to know. But, a good 
 while before attaining this degree of public approval, I had 
 i' made a direct attempt to bring myself into favorable notice, 
 which had been far less successful. 
 
 It was an institution of the college that every week the 
 undergraduates should write an essay on a philosophical sub- 
 ject, explicatory of some brief Latin text of Horace, Juvenal, 
 or other accredited and pithy writer ; and, I suppose, as a sort 
 of guarantee to the men that what they wrote was really 
 looked at, the essay pronounced the best was read aloud in 
 hall on Saturday afternoon, with enforced attendance of the 
 other undergraduates. Here, at least, was something in which 
 I felt that my little faculties had some scope, and both con- 
 scientiously, and with real interest in the task, I wrote my 
 weekly essay with all the sagacity and eloquence I possessed. 
 And therefore, though much flattered, I was not surprised, 
 when, a few weeks after coming up, ray tutor announced to 
 ! me, with a look of approval, that I was to read my essay in 
 ' hall next Saturday. 
 
 Serenely, and on good grounds, confident in my powers of 
 
 I 
 
164 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 a crib, but I believe tlie Dean would rather I had used 6%, 
 than borne the puzzled and hopeless aspect which I presented 
 toward the afternoon, over whatever I had to do. And as 
 my Latin writing was, I suppose, the worst in the university, 
 — as I never by any chance knew a first from a second future, 
 or, even to the end of my Oxford career, could get into my 
 head where the Pelasgi lived, or where the Heraclidie returned 
 from, — it may be imagined with what sort of countenance the 
 Dean gave me his first and second fingers to shake at our 
 parting, or with what comfort I met the inquiries of my father 
 and mother as to the extent to which I was, in college 
 opinion, carrying all before me. 
 
 As time went on, the aspect of my college hall to me meant 
 ‘ little more than the fear and shame of those examination 
 days ; but even in the first surprise and sublimity of finding 
 myself dining there, were many reasons for the qualification of 
 my pleasure. The change from our front parlor at Herne 
 Hill, some fifteen feet by eighteen, and meat and pudding 
 with my mother and Mary, to a hall about as big as the nave 
 of Canterbury Cathedral, with its extremity lost in mist, its 
 roof in darkness, and its company, an innumerable, immeasur- 
 able vision in vanishing perspective, was in itself more appal- 
 ling to me than appetizing ; but also, from first to last, I had 
 the clownish feeling of having no business there. 
 
 In the cathedral, however born or bred, I felt myself present 
 by as good a right as its bishop, — nay, that in some of its 
 lessons and uses, the building was less his than mine. But 
 at table, with this learned and lordly perspective of guests, 
 and state of worldly service, I had nothing to do ; my own 
 proper style of dining was for ever, I felt, divided from this 
 — impassably. Y/ith baked potatoes under the mutton, just 
 out of the oven, into the little parlor off the shop in Market 
 Street, or beside a gypsy’s kettle on Addington Hill (not that 
 I had ever been beside a gypsy’s kettle, but often wanted to 
 be) ; or with an oak-cake and butter — for I was always a gour- 
 mand — in a Scotch shepherd’s cottage, to be divided with his 
 collie, I was myself, and in my place : but at the gentlemen- 
 commoners’ table, in Cardinal Wolsey’s dining-room, I was, 
 
165 
 
 CHRIST CHURCH Ci'^piR, 
 
 ,n al] sorts of ways at once, less than lu^l^^self, and in all sorts 
 )f wrong places at once, out of my place. V 
 
 I may as well here record a some^’ivJ]at comic incident, 
 3xtreraely trivial, which took place a littk^ while afterward ; 
 lud v/hich, in spite of its triviality, farthtu’ contributed to 
 liminish in my own mind the charm of Chr.ist Church hall. 
 
 L had been received as a good-humored and in<.offensive little 
 5ur, contemptuously, yet kindl}^ among the dog^s^ of race at 
 ke gentlemen-commoners’ table ; and my tutor, anai (lie men 
 vho read in class with me, were beginning to recognizv^ that 
 [ had some little gift in reading with good accent, thinking 
 vhat I read, and even asking troublesome questions about it, 
 ;o the extent of being one day eagerly and admiringl}'- con- 
 gratulated by the whole class the moment we got into quad, 
 )ii the consummate manner in which I had floored our tutor. 
 
 ! having had no more intention to floor, or consciousness of 
 iooring, the tutor, than a babe unborn ! but had only hap» 
 )ened, to the exquisite joy of my companions, to ask him 
 something which he didn’t happen to know. But, a good 
 vhile before attaining this degree of public approval, I had 
 nade a direct attempt to bring myself into favorable notice, 
 vhich had been far less successful. 
 
 It was an institution of the college that every week the 
 indergraduates should write an essay on a philosophical sub- 
 cct, explicatory of some brief Latin text of Horace, Juvenal, 
 )i* other accredited and j)ithy writer ; and, I suppose, as a sort 
 )f guarantee to the men that what they wrote was really 
 ooked at, the essay pronounced the best was read aloud in 
 lall on Saturday afternoon, with enforced attendance of the 
 )ther undergraduates. Here, at least, was something in which 
 ’ felt that my little faculties had some scope, and both coii- 
 jcientiously, and with real interest in the task, I wrote my 
 veekly essay with all the sagacity and eloquence I possessed. 
 Ind therefore, though much flattered, I was not surprised, 
 vheu, a few weeks after coming up, my tutor announced to 
 ne, with a look of approval, that I was to read my essay in 
 rail next Saturday. 
 
 Serenely, and on good grounds, confident in my powers of 
 
166 
 
 'Tr^tebita. 
 
 reading rightly, and ‘ with a decent gravity which I felt to 
 be becomino* on this'* 6i’st occasion of public distinction, I 
 read my essaj^, I hay^^ reason to believe, not ungracefully ; and 
 descended from tlW^ rostrum to receive — as I doubted not — 
 the thanks of thr- gentlemen-commoners for this creditable 
 presentment of wisdom of that body. But poor Clara, 
 after her first "ball, receiving her cousin’s compliments in the 
 cloak-room,^ was less surprised than I by my welcome from my 
 cousins o^ long-table. Not in envy, truly, but in fiery dis- 
 dain expression through every form and manner of 
 
 ;j 2 jngiish language, from the Olympian sarcasm of Charteris to 
 r the level-delivered volley of Grimston, they explained to me 
 that I had committed grossest lese-majeste against the order of 
 gentlemen-commoners ; that no gentleman-commoner’s essay 
 ought ever to contain more than twelve lines, with four words 
 in each ; and that even indulging to my folly, and conceit, and 
 want of savoir-faire, the impropriety of writing an essay with 
 any meaning in it, like vulgar students, — the thoughtlessness 
 and audacity of writing one that would take at least a quarter 
 of an hour to read, and then reading it all, might for this once 
 be forgiven to such a greenhorn, but that Coventry wasn’t the 
 word for the place I should be sent to if ever I did such a 
 thing again. I am happy at least in remembering that I bore 
 my fall from the clouds without much hurt, or even too ridic- 
 ulous astonishment. I at once admitted the justice of these 
 representations, yet do not remember that I modified the 
 style of my future essays materially in consequence, neither 
 do I remember what line of conduct I had proposed to myself 
 in the event of again obtaining the privilege of edifying the 
 Saturday’s congregation. Perhaps my essays really dimin- 
 ished in value, or perhaps even the tutors had enough of 
 them. All I know is, I was never asked to. 
 
 I ought to have noticed that the first introductions to the 
 men at my table were made easier by the chance of my having 
 been shut up for two days of storm at the Hospice of the 
 Grimsel, in 1835, with some thirty travellers from various 
 countries, among whom a Christ Church gentleman-com- 
 moner, Mr. Strangways, had. played chess with me, and been 
 
CHRIST CHURCH C. 
 
 167 
 
 '^OIR. 
 
 a little interested in the way I drew gra,-^ 
 
 He at once acknowledged me in Hall fcnite among the snow.^ 
 and the rest of his set, finding they could g\|r a fellow-creatur^, 
 of me in amusement without my knowing .';et a good dea ou 
 not take upon myself to reform their manfih. 
 
 Evangelical, or otherwise impertinent, point of 
 
 up kindly ; so that, i]i a fortnight or so, I had fair choice"^^x 
 
 what companions I liked, out of the whole college. 
 
 Fortunately for me — beyond all words, fortunately — Henry 
 Acland, by about a year and a half my senior, chose me ; saw 
 what helpless possibilities were in me, and took me afiection- 
 ately in hand. His rooms, next the gate on the north side of 
 Canterbury, were within fifty yards of mine, and became to 
 me the only place where I was happy. He quietly showed 
 me the manner of life of English youth of good sense, good 
 family, and enlarged education ; we both of us already lived 
 in elements far external to the college quadrangle. He told 
 me of the plains of Troy ; a year or two afterward I showed 
 him, on his marriage journey, the path up the Montauvert ; 
 and the friendship between us has never changed, but by 
 deepening, to this daj% 
 
 Of other friends, I had some sensible and many kind ones ; 
 an excellent college tutor ; and later on, for a private one, the en- 
 tirely right-minded and accomplished scholar already named, 
 Osborne Gordon. At the corner of the great quadrangle lived 
 Hr. Buckland, always ready to help me, — or, a greater favor 
 still, to be helped by me, in diagram drawing for his lectures. 
 
 My picture of the granite veins in Trewavas Head, with a cut- 
 ter weathering the point in a squall, in the style of Copley 
 Fielding, still, I believe, forms part of the resources of the 
 geological department. Mr. Parker, then first founding the 
 Architectural Society, and Charles Newton, already notable in 
 his intense and curious way of looking into things, were there 
 to symi^athize with me, and to teach me more accurately the 
 study of architecture. Within eight miles were the pictures 
 of Blenheim. In all ways, opportunities, and privileges, it was 
 not conceivable that a youth of my age could have been placed 
 more favorably — if only he had had the wit to know them, 
 
^RMTERITA. 
 
 and the will to use Alas! there I stood — or tottered — 
 
 T idiotic, in the midst of them : nothing 
 
 that I can think of r , i x -x xi 
 
 , ^-among men, or birds, or beasts, quite the 
 
 image o me, exc^|. g^epherdess Agnes’s picture of 
 
 , . just a little to my credit that I was not ashamed, 
 
 bi^^pleased, that my mother came to Oxford with me to take 
 sqPdi care of me as she could. Through all three years of 
 residence, during term time, she had lodging in the High 
 Street (first in Mr. Adams’s pretty house of sixteenth century 
 woodwork), and my father lived alone all through the week at 
 Herne Hill, parting with wife and son at once for the son’s 
 sake. On the Saturday, he came down to us, and I went with 
 him and mother, in the old domestic way, to St. Peter’s, for 
 the Sunday morning service : otherwise, they never appeared 
 with me in public, lest my companions should laugh at me, or 
 anyone else ask malicious questions concerning vintner papa 
 and his old-fashioned wife. 
 
 None of the men, through my whole college career, ever 
 said one word in depreciation of either of them, or in sarcasm 
 at my habitually spending my evenings with my mother. But 
 once, when Adele’s elder sister came with her husband to see 
 Oxford, and I mentioned, somewhat unnecessarily, at dinner, 
 that she was the Countess Diane de Maison, they had no mercy 
 on me for a month afterward. 
 
 The reader will please also note that my mother did not 
 come to Oxford because she could not part with me, — still 
 less, because she distrusted me. She came simply that she 
 might be at hand in case of accident or sudden illness. She 
 had always been my physician as well as my nurse ; on sev- 
 eral occasions her timely watchfulness had saved me from 
 the most serious danger ; nor was her caution now, as will be 
 seen, unjustified by the event. But for the first two years of 
 my college life I caused her no anxiety ; and my day was 
 always happier because I could tell her at tea whatever had 
 pleased or profited me in it. 
 
 The routine of day is perhaps worth telling. I never missed 
 chapel ; and in winter got an hour’s reading before it. Break- 
 
CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR. 
 
 169 
 
 fast at nine, — lialf-an-hour allowed for it to a second, for Cap- 
 tain Marryat with my roll and butter. College lectures till 
 one. Lunch, with a little talk to anybody who cared to come 
 in, or share their own commons with me. At two, Buckland 
 or other professor’s lecture. Walk till five, hall dinner, wine 
 either given or accepted, and quiet chat over it Avith the read- 
 ing men, or a frolic with those of my own table ; but I always 
 got round to the High Street to my mother’s tea at seven, and 
 amused myself till Tom"^ rang in, and I got with a run to Can- 
 terbury gate, and settled to a steady bit of of final reading till 
 ten. I can’t make out more than six hours’ real work in the 
 day, but that was constantly and unflinchingly given. 
 
 My Herodotean history, at any rate, got well settled down 
 into me, and remains a greatly precious possession to this day. 
 Also my college tutor, Mr. Walter Brown, became somewhat 
 loved by me, and with gentleness encouraged me into some 
 small acquaintance with Greek verbs. My mathematics pro- 
 gressed well under another tutor whom I liked, Mr. Hill ; the 
 natural instinct in me for pure geometry being keen, and 
 my grasp of it, as far as I had gone, thorough. At my “ little 
 go ” in the spring of ’88, the diagrams of Euclid being given 
 me, as was customary with the Euclid examination paper, I 
 handed the book back to the examiner, saying scornfully, “ I 
 don’t want any figures, sir.” “You had better take them,” 
 replied he, mildl}^ ; which I did, as he bid me ; but I could 
 then, and can still, dictate blindfold the demonstration of any 
 problem, with any letters, at an}' of its points, I just scraped 
 through, and no more, Avith my Latin writing, came credita- 
 bly off with wl\at else had to be done, and my tutor Avas satis- 
 fied with me, — not enough recognizing that the ‘‘ little go ” 
 had asked, and got out out of me, pretty nearly all I had in 
 me, or Avas ever likely to have in that kind. 
 
 It Avas extremely unfortunate for me that the two higher 
 lecturers of the college, Kynaston (afterward Master of Sk 
 
 * I try to do without notes, but for the sake of any not English reader 
 must explain that “ Tom ” is the name of the great bell of Oxford, in 
 Christ Church western tower. 
 
172 
 
 PE^TEBITA. 
 
 Originality — passing slightly into grotesqueness, and a lit- 
 tle diminishing their effective power. The Doctor had too 
 much humor ever to follow far enough the dull side of a sub- 
 ject, Frauk was too fond of his bear-cub to give attention 
 enough to the training of the cubbish element in himself ; and 
 a day scarcely passed without Mit’s com-mit-ting herself in 
 some manner disapproved by the statelier college demoiselles. 
 But all were frank, kind, and clever, vital in the highest de- 
 gree ; to me, medicinal and saving. 
 
 Dr. Buckland was extremely like Sydney Smith in his staple 
 of character ; no rival with him in wit, but like him in humor, 
 common sense, and benevolently cheerful doctrine of Divin- 
 ity. At his breakfast-table I met the leading scientific men of 
 the day, from Herschel downward, and often intelligent and 
 courteous foreigners, — with whom my stutter of French, re- 
 fined by AdMe into some precision of accent, was sometimes 
 useful. Everyone was at ease and amused at that breakfast- 
 table, — the menu and service of it usually in themselves 
 interesting. I have always regretted a day of unlucky en- 
 gagement on which I missed a delicate toast of mice ; and 
 remembered, with delight, being waited upon one hot sum- 
 mer morning by two graceful and polite little Carolina liz- 
 ards, who kept off the flies. 
 
 I have above noticed the farther and incalculable good it 
 w^as to me that Acland took me up in my first and foolishest 
 days, and with pretty irony and loving insight, — or, rather, 
 sympathy with wdiat was best, and blindness to was worst in 
 me, — gave me the good of seeing a noble young English life 
 in its purity, sagacity, honor, reckless daring, and happy 
 piety ; its English pride shining prettily through all, like a 
 giiTs in her beauty. It is extremely interesting to me to con- 
 trast the Englishman’s silently conscious pride in v;hat he is, 
 with the vexed restlessness and wretchedness of the French- 
 man, in his thirst for ‘‘gloire,” to be gained by agonized 
 effort to become something he is not. 
 
 One day when the Cherwell was running deep over one of 
 of its most slippeiy weirs, question arising between Acland 
 and me whether it w^ere traversable, and I declaring it too 
 
CHRIST CHURCH CHOIR. 
 
 1 > 7 ‘> 
 1 i O 
 
 positively to be impassable, Aclaiid instantly took off boot and 
 sock, and walked over and back. He ran no risk but of a 
 sound ducking, being, of course, a strong swimmer : and I 
 suppose him wise enough not to have done it had there been 
 real danger. But he would certainly have run the margin 
 fine, and possessed in its quite highest, and in a certain sense, 
 most laughable degree, the constitutional English serenity in 
 danger, which, with the foolish of us, degenerates into de- 
 light in it, but with the wise, whether soldier or physician, is 
 the basis of the most fortunate action and swiftest decision 
 of deliberate skill. When, thirty years afterward. Dr. Ac- 
 land was wrecked in the steamer Tyne, off the coast of Dor- 
 set, the steamer having lain wedged on the rocks all night, 
 — no one knew what rocks, — and the dawn breaking on half 
 & mile of dangerous surf between the ship and shore, — the 
 officers, in anxious debate, the crew, in confusion, the pas- 
 sengers, ill hysterics or at prayers, were all astonished, and 
 many scandalized, at the appearance of Dr. Acland from 
 the saloon in punctilious morning dress, with the announce- 
 ment that “ breakfast was ready.” To the impatient clamor 
 of indignation with which his unsympathetic conduct was 
 greeted, he replied by pointing out that not a boat could go on 
 shore, far less come out from it, in that stale of the tide, and 
 that in the meantime, as most of them were wet, all cold, and 
 at the best must be dragged ashore through the surf, if not 
 swim for their lives in it, they would be extremely prudent to 
 begin the day, as usual, with breakfast. The hysterics ceased, 
 the confusion calmed, what wits anybody had became avail- 
 able to them again, and not a life was ultimately lost. 
 
 In all this playful and proud heroism of his youth, Henry 
 Acland delighted me as a leopard or a falcon would, without 
 in the least affecting my own character by his example. I 
 had been too often adjured and commanded to take care of 
 myself, ever to think of following him over slippery weirs, or 
 accompanying him in pilot boats through white-topped shoal 
 water ; but both in art and science he could imW me on, being 
 years ahead of me, yet glad of my sympathy, for, till I came, 
 he was literally alone in the university in caring for either, 
 
m 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 To Dr. Buckland, geology was only the pleasant occupation 
 of his own merry life. To Henry Acland physiology was an 
 entrusted gospel of which he was the solitary and first preacher 
 to the heathen ; and already in his undergraduate’s room in 
 Canterbury he was designing — a few years later in his pro- 
 fessional room in Tom quad, he was realizing, — the introduc- 
 tion of physiological study which has made the university 
 what she has now become. 
 
 Indeed, the curious point in Acland’s character was its 
 early completeness. Already in these yet boyish days, his 
 judgment was unerring, his aims determined, his powders 
 developed ; and had he not, as time went on, been bound to 
 the routine of professional work, and satisfied in the serenity, 
 not to say arrested by the interests, of a beautiful home life, 
 — it is no use thinking or saying what he might have been ; 
 those who know him best are the most thankful that he is 
 what he is. 
 
 Next to Acland, but with a many-feet-thick wall betw^een, 
 in my aesthetic choice of idols, which required primarily of 
 man or woman that they should be comely, before I regarded 
 any of their farther qualities, came Francis Charteris. I 
 have always held Charteris the most ideal Scotsman, and on 
 the whole the grandest type of European Circassian race 
 hitherto visible to me ; and his subtle, effortless, inevitable, 
 unmalicious sarcasm, and general!}^ sufficient and available 
 sense, gave a constantly natural, and therefore inoffensive, 
 hauteur to his delicate beauty. He could do what he h'ked 
 with anyone, — at least with anyone of good humor and sym- 
 pathy ; and when one day, the old sub-dean coming out of 
 Canterbury gate at the instant Charteris was dismounting at 
 it in forbidden pink, and Charteris turned serenely to him, as 
 he took his foot out of the stirrup, to inform him that “ he 
 had been out with the Dean’s hounds,” the old man and the 
 boy were both alike pleased. 
 
 Charteris never failed in anything, but never troubled him- 
 self about anything. Naturally of high ability and activity, 
 he did all he chose with ease, — neither had falls in hunting, 
 nor toil in reading, nor ambition nor anxiety in examination, 
 
CHBIST CHURCH CHOIR. 
 
 175 
 
 — nor disgrace in recklessness of life. He was partly checked, 
 it may be in some measure weakened, by hectic danger in his 
 constitution, possibly the real cause of his never having made 
 his mark in after life. 
 
 The Earl of Desart, next to Charteris, interested me most of 
 the men at ray table. A youth of the same bright promise, 
 and of kind disposition, he had less natural activity, and less 
 — being Irish, — common sense, than the Scot ; and the Uni- 
 versity made no attempt to give him more. It has been the 
 pride of recent days to equalize the position, and disguise 
 the distinction of noble and servitor. Perhaps it might have 
 been wiser, instead of ethxcing the distinction, to reverse the 
 manner of it. In those days the happy servitor’s tenure of his 
 college-room and revenue depended on his industry, while it 
 was the privilege of the noble to support with lavish gifts the 
 college, from which he expected no return, and to buy with 
 sums equivalent to liis dignity the privileges of rejecting alike 
 its instruction and its control. It seems to me singular, and 
 little suggestive of sagacity in the common English character, 
 that it had never occurred to either an old dean, or a young 
 duke, that possibly the Church of England and the House of 
 Peers might hold a different position in the country in years 
 to come if the entrance examination had been made severer 
 for the rich than the poor ; and the nobility and good breed- 
 ing of a student expected to be blazoned consistently by the 
 shield on his seal, the tassel on his cap, the grace of his con- 
 duct, and the accuracy of his learning. 
 
 In the last respect, indeed, Eton and Harrow boys are for 
 ever distinguished, — whether idle or industrious in after life, 
 — from youth of general England ; but how much of the best 
 capacity of her noblesse is lost by her carelessness of their 
 university training, she may soon have more serious cause to 
 calculate than I am willing to foretell. 
 
 I have little to record of my admired Irish fellow-student 
 than that he gave the supper at which my freshman’s initia- 
 tion into the body of gentlemen-comrnoners was to be duly 
 and formally ratified. Curious glances were directed to me 
 under the ordeal of the necessary toasts, — but it had not 
 
1T6 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 occurred to the hospitality of my entertainers that I probably 
 knew as much about wine as they did. When we broke u[) 
 at the small hours, I helped to carry the son of the head of 
 my college downstairs, and walked across Peckwater to my 
 own rooms, deliberating, as I went, whether there was any 
 immediately practicable trigonometric method of determining 
 whether I was walking straight toward the lamp over the door. 
 
 From this time — that is to say, from about the third week 
 after I came into residence — it began to be recognized that, 
 mull or milksop though I might be, I could hold my own on 
 occasion ; and in next term, when I had to return civilities, 
 that I gave good wine, and that of curious quality, without 
 any bush ; and saw with good humor the fruit I had sent for 
 from London thrown out of the window to the porter’s chil- 
 dren ; farther, that I could take any quantity of jests, though 
 I could not make one, and could be extremely interested in 
 hearing conversation on topics I knew nothing about, — to 
 that degree that Bob Grimston condescended to take me with 
 him one day to a tavern across Magdalen Bridge, to hear him 
 elucidate from the landlord some points of the horses entered 
 for the Derby, an object only to be properly accomplished by 
 sitting with indifference on a corner of the kitchen table, and 
 carrying on the dialogue svitli careful pauses, and more by 
 winks than words. 
 
 The quieter men of the set were also some of them inter- 
 ested in my drawiug ; and one or two — Scott Murray, for in- 
 staTice, and Lord Kildare — were as punctual as I in chapel, 
 and had some thoughts concerning college life and its issues, 
 w'hich they w’ere glad to share with me. In this second year 
 of residence, my position in college was thus alike pleasant, 
 and satisfactorily to my parents, eminent : and I was received 
 without demur into the Christ Church society, which had its 
 quiet club-room at the corner of Oriel Lane, looking across 
 to the “ beautiful gate ” of St. Mary’s ; and on whose books 
 were entered the names of most of the good men belonging 
 to the upper table and its set, who had passed through Christ 
 Church for the last ten or twelve years. 
 
 Under these luxurious, and — in the world’s sight — honor- 
 
ROSLYN CHAPEL. 
 
 177 
 
 f able, conditions, my mind gradually recovering its tranquil- 
 i lity and spring, and making some daily, tliougb infinitesimal, 
 I progress toward the attainment of common sense, I believe 
 t tliat I did harder and better work in my college reading than 
 k I can at all remember. It seems to me now as if I had known 
 Thucydides, as I knev/ Homer (Pope’s !), since I could spell; 
 ])ut the fact was, that for a youth wlio had so little Greek to 
 bless himself ^Yith at seventeen, to know every syllable of his 
 Thucydides at half-past eighteen meant some steady silting 
 at it. The perfect honesty of the Greek soldier, his iiigh 
 breeding, his political insight, and the scorn of construction 
 with which he knotted his meaning into a rhythmic strength 
 that writhed and wrought every way at once, all interested 
 me intensely in him as a writer ; while his subject, the central 
 tragedy of all the world, the suicide of Greece, was felt b}^ 
 ' me with a sympathy in which the best powers of my heart 
 and brain were brought up to their fullest, for my years. 
 
 I open, and lay beside me as I write, the perfectly clean 
 and ^Yeli-preserved third volume of Arnold, over which I spent 
 so much toil, and burnt with such sorrow ; my close-written 
 abstracts still dovetailed into its pages ; and read with sur- 
 prised gratitude the editor’s final sentence in the preface dated 
 “Fox How, Ambleside, January, 1835.” 
 
 “Not the wildest extravagance of atheistic wickedness in 
 modern times can go further than the sophists of Greece 
 went before them. Whatever audacity can dare, and subtlety 
 contrive, to make the words ‘ good ’ and ‘ evil ’ change their 
 meaning, has been already tried in the da^^s of Plato, and by 
 his eloquence, and wisdom, and faith unshaken, put to shame.” 
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 ROSLYN CHAPEL. 
 
 I must yet return, before closing the broken record of 
 these first twenty years, to one or two scattered days in 1836, 
 when things happened which led forward into phases of work 
 to be given account of in next volume. 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 PB^TEBITA, 
 
 I cannot find the date of my father’s buying his first Cop- 
 ley Fielding, — “ Between King’s House and Inveroran, Ar- 
 gyllshire.” It cost a tremendous sum, for us — forty-seven 
 guineas ; and the day it came home was a festa, and many a 
 day after, in looking at it, and fancying the hills and the rain 
 were real. 
 
 My father and I were in absolute sympathy about Copley 
 Fielding, and I could find it in my heart now to wish I had 
 lived at the Laud’s End, and never seen any art but Front’s 
 and his. We were very much set up at making his acquaint- 
 ance, and then very happy in it : the modestest of presidents 
 he was ; the simplest of painters, without a vestige of ro- 
 mance, but the purest love of daily sunshine and the con- 
 stant hills. Fancy him, while Stanfield and Harding and 
 Boberts were grand-touring in Italy, and Sicily, and Styria, 
 and Bohemia, and Illyria, and the Alps, and the Pyrenees, and 
 the Sierra Moreua, — Fielding never crossing to Calais, but 
 year after year returning to Saddleback and Ben Venue, or, 
 less ambitious yet, to Sandgate and the Sussex Downs. 
 
 The drawings I made in 1835 were really interesting even 
 to artists, and appeared promising enough to my father to 
 justify him in promoting me from Mr. Runciman’s tutelage to 
 the higher privileges of art-instruction. Lessons from any of 
 the members of the Water-Color Society cost a guinea, and 
 six were supposed to have efficiency for the production of an 
 adequately skilled water-color amateur. There was, of course, 
 no question by what master they should be given ; and I 
 know not whether papa or I most enjoyed the six hours in 
 Newman Street: my father’s intense delight in Fielding’s 
 v/ork making it a real pleasure to the painter that he should 
 stay chatting while I had my lesson. Nor was my father’s 
 talk (if he could be got to talk) unworthy any painter’s atten- 
 tion, though he never put out his strength but in writing. I 
 chance in good time on a letter from Northcote in 1830, 
 showing how much value the old painter put on my father’s 
 judgment of a piece of literary work which remains classical 
 to this day, and is indeed the best piece of existing criticism 
 founded on the principles of Sir Joshua’s school : 
 
R08LTN CHAPEL. 
 
 179 
 
 “Dear Sir, — I received }^our most kind and consoling letter, 
 yet I was very sorry to find you had been so ill, but hope you 
 have now recovered your health. The praise you are so good 
 as to bestow on me and the “Volume of Conversations” gives 
 me more pleasure than perhaps you apprehend, as the book 
 was published against my consent, and, in its first appearance 
 in the magazines, totally without my knowledge. I have 
 done all in my power to prevent its coining before the public, 
 because there are several hard and cruel opinions of persons 
 that I would not have them see in a printed book ; besides 
 that, Hazlitt, although a man of real abilities, yet had a desire 
 to give pain to others, and has also frequently exaggerated 
 that which I had said in confidence to him. However, I 
 thank God that this book, which made me tremble at its 
 coming before the world, is received with unexpected fa- 
 
 OB- 
 
 vor A to my part, and the approbation of a mind like yours 
 give {sic — short for “ cannot but give ”) me the greatest con- 
 solation I can receive, and sets my mind more at ease. 
 
 “Please to present my respectful coraj^liments to Mrs. 
 Buskin, who I hope is well, and kind remembrances to your son. 
 
 “I remain always, dear Sir, 
 
 “Your most obliged friend ^ 
 
 “And very humble servant, 
 
 “James Northcote. 
 
 “Argyll House, October 13th, 1830. 
 
 “To John J. Buskin, Esq.” 
 
 And thus the proposed six lessons in Newman Street ran 
 on into perhaps eight or nine, during which Copley Fielding- 
 taught me to wash color smoothly in successive tints, to shade 
 cobalt through pink madder into yellow ochre for skies, to 
 use a broken scraggy touch for the tops of mountains, to 
 
 * In memory of the quiet old man who thus honored us with his 
 friendship, and in most true sense of their value, I hope to reprint the 
 parts of the Conversations which I think he would have wished to he 
 preserved. 
 
180 
 
 pumterita. 
 
 represent calm lakes by broad strips of shade with lines of 
 light between them (usually at about twice the distance of the 
 lines of this print), to produce dark clouds and rain with twelve 
 or twenty successive washes, and to crumble burnt umber 
 with a dry brush for foliage and foreground. With these 
 instructions, I succeeded in copying a drawing which Fielding 
 made before me, some twelve inches by nine, of Ben Venue 
 and the Trosachs, with brown cows standing in Loch Achray, 
 so much to my own satisfaction that I put my work up over 
 my bed room chimnej^-piece the last thing at night, and woke 
 to its contemplation in the morning wdth a rapture, mixed 
 of self-complacency and the sense of new faculty, in which 
 I floated all that day, as in a newly-discovered and strongly 
 buoyant species of air. 
 
 In a very little while, however, I found that this great first 
 step did not mean consistent progress at the same pace. I 
 saw that my washes, however careful or multitudinous, did 
 not in the end look as smooth as Fielding’s, and that my 
 Grumblings of burnt umber became uninteresting after a 
 certain number of repetitions. 
 
 With still greater discouragement, I perceived the Fielding 
 processes to be inapplicable to the Alps. My scraggy touches 
 did not to my satisfaction represent aiguilles, nor my ruled 
 lines of shade, the Lake of Geneva. The water-color drawing 
 was abandoned, with a dim undercurrent of feeling that I had 
 no gift for it, — and in truth I had none for color arrangement, 
 — and the pencil outline returned to with resolute energy. 
 
 I had never, up to this time, seen a Turner drawing, and 
 scarcely know whether to lay to the score of dulness, or 
 prudence, the tranquillity in wdiich I copied the engravings 
 of the Rogers vignettes, without so much as once asking 
 wLere the originals were. The facts being that they lay at 
 the bottom of an old drawer in Queen Anne Street, inaccessi- 
 ble to me as the bottom of the sea, — and that, if I had seen 
 them, they would only have destroyed my pleasure in the en- 
 gravings, — my rest in these was at least fortunate : and the 
 more I consider of this and other such forms of failure in 
 what most people would call laudable curiosity, the more I 
 
ROSLYN CHAPEL. 
 
 181 
 
 am disposed to regard witli thankfulness, and even respect, 
 the habits which have remained with me during life, of ah 
 ways working resignedly at the thing under my hand till I 
 could do it, and looking exclusively at the thing before my 
 eyes till I could see it. 
 
 On the other hand, the Academy Turners were too far be- 
 yond all hope of imitation to disturb me, and the impressions 
 they produced before 1836 were confused ; many of them, 
 like the “ Quilleboeuf,” or the “ Keelmen heaving in Coals,” 
 being of little charm in color ; and the “Fountain of Indo- 
 lence,” or “Golden Bough,” perhaps seeming to me already 
 fantastic, beside the naturalism of Landseer, and the human 
 interest and intelligible finish of Wilkie. 
 
 But in 1836 Turner exhibited three pictures, in which the 
 characteristics of his later manner were developed with his 
 best skill and enthusiasm; “Juliet and her Nurse,” “ Kome 
 from Mount Aventine,” and “Mercury and Argus.” His 
 freak in placing Juliet at Venice instead of Verona, and the 
 mysteries of lamp-light and rockets with whicli he had dis- 
 guised Venice herself, gave occasion to an article in Black- 
 wood's Magazine of sufficiently telling ribaldry, expressing, 
 with some force, and extreme discourtesy, the feelings of the 
 pupils of Sir George Beaumont at the appearance of these 
 unaccredited views of Nature. 
 
 The review raised me to the height of “black anger” in 
 which I have remained pretty nearly ever since ; and having 
 by that time some confidence in my power of words, and — not 
 merely judgment, but sincere experience — of the charm of 
 Turner’s work, I wrote an answer to Hlackioood, of which I 
 wish I could now find any fragment. But my father thought it 
 right to ask Turner’s leave for its publication ; it was copied 
 in my best hand, and sent to Queen Anne Street, and the old 
 man returned kindly answer, as follows : 
 
 “ 47, Queen Ann (sic) Street West, 
 
 “ October 6th, 1836. 
 
 “ My dear Sir, —I beg to thank you for your zeal, kindness, 
 and the trouble you have taken in my behalf, in regard of the 
 
182 
 
 PBJSTEBITA, 
 
 criticism of Blackwood's Magazine for October, respecting my 
 works ; but I never move in these matters, they are of no 
 import save mischief and the meal tub, which Maga fears for 
 by my having invaded the flour tub. 
 
 “P.S. — If you wish to have tlie manuscript back, have the 
 goodness to let me know. If not, with }^our sanction, I will 
 send it on to the possessor of the picture of Juliet.” 
 
 I cannot give the signature of this letter, which has been 
 cut off for some friend ! In later years it used to be, to my 
 father, “Yours most truly,” and to me, “Yours truly.” 
 
 The “ possessor of the picture ” was Mr. Munro of Novar, 
 who never spoke to me of the first chapter of “Modern 
 Painters ” thus coming into his hands. Nor did I ever care to 
 ask him about it ; and still, for a year or two longer, I j>erse- 
 vered in the study of Turner engravings only, and the use of 
 Cople}^ Fielding’s method for such efforts at color as I made on 
 the vacation journeys during Oxford days. 
 
 We made three tours in those summers, without crossing 
 Channel. In 1837, to Yorkshire and the Lakes ; in 1838, to 
 Scotland ; in 1839, to Cornwall. 
 
 On the journej’^ of 1837, when I was eighteen, I felt, for the 
 last time, the pure childish love of nature which V/ordsworth 
 so idly takes for an intimation of immortality. We went 
 down by the North Koad, as usual ; and on the fourth day 
 arrived at Catterick Bridge, where there is a clear pebble- 
 bedded stream, and both west and east some rising of hills, 
 foretelling the moorlands and dells of upland Yorkshire ; and 
 there the feeling came back to me— as it could never return 
 more. 
 
 It is a feeling only possible to youth, for all care, regret, 
 or knowledge of evil destroys it ; and it requires also the 
 full sensibility of nerve and blood, the conscious strength of 
 heart, and hope ; not but that I suppose the purity of youth 
 may feel what is best of it even through sickness and the 
 waiting for death ; but only in thinking death itself God’s 
 sending. 
 
 In myself, it has always been quite exclusively confined to 
 
BOSLYN CHAPEL. 
 
 183 
 
 wildy that is to say, wholly natural places, and especially to 
 scenery animated by streams, or by the sea. The sense oi 
 the freedom, spontaneous, unpolluted power of nature ^vas 
 essential in it. I enjoyed a lawn, a garden, a daisied field, a 
 quiet pond, as other children do ; but by the side of Wand el, 
 or on the downs of Sanclgate, or by a Yorkshire stream under 
 a cliff, I was different from other children, that ever I have 
 noticed ; but the feeling cannot be described by any of us 
 that have it. Wordsworth’s “ haunted me like a passion ” is 
 no description of it, for it is not like, but is, a passion ; the 
 point is to define how it differs from other passions, — what 
 sort of human, pre-eminently human, feeling it is that loves 
 a stone for a stone’s sake, and a cloud for a cloud’s. A mon- 
 key loves a monkey for a monkey’s sake, and a nut for the 
 kernel’s, but not a stone for a stone’s. I took stones for 
 bread, but not certainly at the Devil’s bidding. 
 
 I was different, be it once more said, from other children 
 even of my own type, not so much in the actual nature of the 
 feeling, but in the mixture of it. I had, in my little clay 
 pitcher, vialfuls, as it were, of Wordsworth’s reverence, 
 Shelley’s sensitiveness, Turner’s accurac}^ all in one. A 
 snow'drop was to me, as to Wordsworth, part of the Sermon 
 on the Mount ; but I never should have written sonnets to 
 the celandine, because it is of a coarse yellow, and imperfect 
 form. With Shelley, I loved blue sky and blue eyes, but 
 never in the least confused the heavens with my own poor 
 little Psychidion. And the reverence and passion were alike 
 kept in their places by the constructive Turnerian element ; 
 and I did not weary myself in wishing that a daisy could see 
 the beauty of its shadow, but in trying to draw the shadow 
 rightly, myself. 
 
 But so stubborn and chemically inalterable the laws of the 
 prescription were, that now, looking back from 1886 to tliat 
 brook shore of 1837, whence I could see the whole of my 
 youth, I find myself in nothing whatsoever changed. Some 
 of me is dead, more of me stronger. I have learned a few 
 things, forgotten many ; in the total of me, I am but the 
 same youth, disappointed and rheumatic. 
 
184 
 
 PRETERIT A. 
 
 And in illustration of this stubbornness, not by stiffening 
 of the wood with age, but in the structure of the pith, let me 
 insist a minute or two more on the curious joy I felt in 1837 
 in returning to the haunts of bo^daood. No boy could possi- 
 bly have been more excited than I was by seeing Italy and 
 the Alps ; neither boy nor man ever knew better the differ- 
 ence between a Cumberland cottage and Venetian palace, or 
 a Cumberland stream and the Ehone : — my very knowledge 
 of this difference will be found next year expressing itself in 
 the first bit of promising literary work I ever did ; but after 
 all the furious excitement and wild joy of the Continent, the 
 coming back to a Yorkshire stream-side felt like returning 
 to heaven. We went on into Vv^ell-known Cumberland ; my 
 father took me up Scawfell and Helvellyn, with a clever Kes- 
 wick guide, who knew mineralogy, Mr. Wright ; and the 
 summer passed beneficently and peacefully. 
 
 A little incident which happened, I fancy in the beginning 
 of ’38, shows that I had thus recovered some tranquillity and 
 sense, that might at that time have been settled down to 
 simple and healthy life, easily enough, had my parents seen 
 the chance. 
 
 I forgot to say, when speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Eichard 
 Gray, that, when I was a child my mother had another reli- 
 gious friend, who lived just at the top of Camberwell Grove, 
 or between it and the White Gate, — Mrs. Withers ; an ex- 
 tremely amiable and charitable person, with whom my 
 mother organized, I imagine, such schemes of almsgiving as 
 her own housekeeping prevented her seeing to herself. Mr. 
 Withers was a coal-merchant, ultimately not a successful one. 
 Of him I remember only a reddish and rather vacant face ; 
 of Mrs. Withers, no material aspect, only the above vague but 
 certain facts ; and that she was a familiar element in my 
 mother’s life, dying out of it however without much notice or 
 miss, before I was old enough to get any clear notion of her. 
 
 In this spring of ’38, however, the widowed Mr. Withers, 
 having by that time retired to the rural districts in reduced 
 circumstances, came up to town on some small vestige of car- 
 boniferous business, bringing his only daughter with him to 
 
1W8LYN GHAPEL. 
 
 185 
 
 show my mother ; — who, for a wonder, asked her to stay 
 with us, while her father visited his urnquwhile clientage 
 at the coal wharves. Charlotte Withers was a frugile, fair, 
 freckled, sensitive slip of a girl about sixteen ; graceful in an 
 unfinished and small wild-flower sort of a way, extremely in- 
 telligent, affectionate, wholly right-minded, and mild in piety. 
 An altogether sweet and delicate creature of ordinary sort, 
 not pretty, but quite pleasant to see, especially if her e^^es 
 were looking your way, and her mind with them. 
 
 We got to like each other in a mildly confidential way in 
 the course of a week. We disputed on the relative dignities 
 of music and painting ; and I wrote an essay nine foolscap 
 pages long, proposing the entire establishment of m}^ own 
 opinions, and the total discomfiture and overthrow of hers, 
 according to my usual manner of paying court to my mis- 
 tresses. Charlotte Withers, however, thought I did her 
 great honor, and carried away the essay as if it had been a 
 school prize. 
 
 And, as I said, if my father and mother had chosen to keep 
 her a month longer, we should have fallen quite melodiously 
 and quietly in love ; and they might have given me an excel- 
 lently pleasant little wife, and set me up, geology and all, in 
 the coal business, without any resistance or farther trouble 
 on my part. I don’t suppose the idea ever occurred to them ; 
 Charlotte was not the kind of person the}^ proposed for me. 
 So Charlotte went awny at the week’s end, when her father 
 was ready for her. I walked with her to Camberwell Green, 
 and we said good-by, rather sorrowfull}^, at the corner of the 
 New Koad ; and that possibility of meek happiness vanished 
 for ever. A little while afterward, her father “ negotiated ” a 
 marriage for her with a well-to-do Newcastle trader, whom 
 she took because she was bid. He treated her pretty much 
 as one of his coal sacks, and in a }"ear or two she died. 
 
 Very dimly, and rather against my own will, the incident 
 showed me what my mother had once or twice observed to 
 me, to my immense indignation, that Ad^le was not the only 
 girl in the world ; and my enjoyment of our tour in the 
 Trosachs was not described in any more Byronian heroics ; 
 
186 
 
 mMTERITA, 
 
 the tragedy also having been given up, because, when I had 
 described a gondola, a bravo, the heroine Bianca, and moon- 
 light on the Grand Canal, I found I had not much more to 
 say. 
 
 Scott’s country took me at last well out of it all. It is of 
 little use to the reader now to tell him that still at that date 
 the shore of Loch Katrine, at the east extremity of the lake, 
 was exactly as Scott had seen it, and described, 
 
 ‘ ‘ Onward, amid the copse ’gan peep, 
 
 A narrow inlet, still and deep.” 
 
 In literal and lovely truth, that was so : — by the side of the 
 footpath (it was no more) which wound through the Trosachs, 
 deep and calm under the blaeberry bushes, a dark winding, 
 clear-brown pool, not five feet wide at first, reflected the en- 
 tangled moss of its margin, and arch of branches above, with 
 scarcely a gleam of sky. 
 
 That inlet of Loch Katrine was in itself an extremely rare 
 thing ; I have never myself seen the like of it in lake shores. 
 A winding recess of deep water, without any entering stream 
 to account for it — possible only, I imagine, among rocks of 
 the quiet abnormal confusion of the Trosachs ; and besides 
 the natural sweetness and wonder of it, made sacred by the 
 most beautiful poem that Scotland ever sang by her stream 
 sides. And all that the nineteenth century conceived of wise 
 and right to do with this piece of mountain inheritance, was 
 to thrust the nose of a steamer into it, plank its blaeberries 
 over with a platform, and drive the populace headlong past it 
 as fast as they can scuffle. 
 
 It had been well for me if I had climbed Ben Venue and Ben 
 Ledi, hammer in hand, as Scawfell and Helvellyn. But I had 
 given myself some literary work instead, to which I Tvas farther 
 urged by the sight of Roslyn and Melrose. 
 
 The idea had come into my head in the summer of ’37, and, 
 I imagine, rose immediately out of my sense of the contrast 
 between the cottages of Westmoreland and those of Itah*. 
 Anyhow, the November number of Loudon’s Architectural 
 Magazine for 1837 opens with “ Introduction to the Poetry of 
 
R08LYN CHAPEL, 
 
 187 
 
 Architecture ; or, The Architecture of the Nations of Europe 
 considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and Na- 
 tional Character,” by Kataphusin. I could not have put in 
 fewer, or more inclusive words, the definition of what half my 
 future life was to be spent in discoursing of ; while the nom- 
 de-piume I chose “According to Nature,” was equally expres- 
 sive of the temper in which I was to discourse alike on that and 
 every other subject. The adoption of a nom-de-plume at alh 
 implied (as also the concealment of name on the first publica- 
 tion of “ Modern Painters ”) a sense of a power of judgment 
 in myself, which it would not have been becoming in a youth 
 of eighteen to claim. Had either my father or tutor then said 
 to me, “Write as it is becoming in a youth to write, — let the 
 reader discover what you know, and be persuaded to what you 
 judge,” I perhaps might not now have been ashamed of my 
 youth’s essays. Had they said to me more sternly, “Hold 
 your tongue till you need not ask the reader’s condescension 
 in listening to you,” I might perhaps have been satisfied with 
 my work when it was mature. 
 
 As it is, these youthful essays, though deformed by as- 
 sumption, and shallow in contents, are curiously right up to 
 the points they reach ; and already distinguished above most 
 of the literature of the time, for the skill of language which 
 the public at once felt for a pleasant gift in me. 
 
 I have above said that had it not been for constant reading 
 of the Bible, I might probably have taken Johnson for my 
 model of English. To a useful extent I have always done 
 so ; in these first essays, partly because I could not help it, 
 partly of set, and well set, purpose. 
 
 On our foreign journeys, it being of course desirable to 
 keep the luggage as light as possible, my father had judged 
 that four little volumes of Johnson — the “ Idler ” and the 
 “ Rambler ” — did, under names wholly appropriate to the cir- 
 cumstances, contain more substantial literary nourishment 
 than could be, from any other author, packed into so portable 
 compass. And accordingly, in spare hours, and on wet days, 
 the turns and returns of reiterated “ Rambler ” and iterated 
 “ Idler ” fastened themselves in my ears and mind ; nor was it 
 
188 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 possible for me, till long afterward, to quit myself of John* 
 sonian symmetry and balance in sentences intended, either 
 with swordman’s or pavior’s blow, to cleave an enemy’s 
 crest, or drive down the oaken pile of a principle. I never 
 for an instant compared Johnson to Scott, Pope, Byron, or 
 any of the really great writers whom I loved. But I at once 
 and forever recognized in him a man entirely sincere, and in- 
 fallibly wise in the view and estimate he gave of the common 
 questions, business, and ways of the world. I valued his 
 sentences not primarily because they were symmetrical, but 
 because they were just, and clear ; it is a method of judg- 
 ment rarely used by the average public, who ask from an au- 
 thor always, in the first place, arguments in favor of their own 
 opinions, in elegant terms ; and are just as ready with their 
 applause for a sentence of Macaulay’s, which may have no 
 more sense in it than a blot pinched between doubled paper, 
 as to reject one of Johnson’s, telling against their own pre- 
 judice, — though its symmetry be as of thunder answering 
 from tv/o horizons. 
 
 I hold it more than happy that, during those continen- 
 tal journeys, in which the vivid excitement of the greater 
 part of the day left me glad to give spare half-hours to the 
 study of a thoughtful book, Johnson was the one author ac- 
 cessible to me. No other writer could have secured me, as 
 he did, against all chance of being misled by my own san- 
 guine and metaphysical temperament. He taught me care- 
 fully to measure life, and distrust fortune ; and he secured 
 me, by his adamantine common-sense, for ever, from being 
 caught in the cobwebs of German metaphysics, or sloughed 
 in the English drainage of them. 
 
 I open, at this moment, the larger of the volumes of the 
 “ Idler ” to which I owe so much. After turning over a few 
 leaves, I chance on the closing sentence of No. 65, which 
 transcribing, I may show the reader in sum what it taught 
 me, — in words which, writing this account of myself, I con- 
 clusively obey. 
 
 “ Of these learned men, let those who aspire to the same 
 praise imitate the diligence, and avoid the scrupulosity. 
 
ROSLYN CHAPEL. 
 
 189 
 
 Let it be always remembered that life is short, that know- 
 ledge is endless, and that many doubts deserve not to be 
 cleared. Let those whom nature and study have qualified to 
 teach mankind, tell us what they have learned while they are 
 yet able to tell it, and trust their reputation only to them- 
 selves.” 
 
 It is impossible forme now to know how far my own honest 
 desire for truth, and compassionate sense of what is instantly 
 helpful to creatures who are every instant perishing, might 
 have brought me, in their own time, to think and judge as 
 Johnson thought and measured, — even had I never learned of 
 him. He at least set me in the straight path from the begin- 
 ning, and, whatever time I might waste in vain pleasure, or 
 weak effort, he saved me for ever from false thoughts and 
 futile speculations. 
 
 Wh}', I know not, for Mr. Loudon was certainly not tired of 
 me, the Katapbusiii papers close abruptly, as if their busi- 
 ness was at its natural end, without a word of allusion in any 
 part of them, or apology for the want of allusion, to the 
 higher forms of civil and religious architecture. I find, in- 
 deed, a casual indication of some ulterior purpose in a pon- 
 derous sentence of the paper on the Westmoreland cottage, 
 announcing that “ it will be seen hereafter, when we leave 
 the lowly valley for the torn ravine, and the grassy knoll for 
 the ribbed precipice, that if the continental architects can- 
 not adorn the pasture with the humble roof, they can crest 
 the crag with eternal battlements.” But this magnificent ^n'O- 
 mise ends in nothing more tremendous than a “ chapter on 
 chimneys,” illustrated, as I find this morning to my extreme 
 surprise, by a fairly good drawing of the building which is 
 now the principal feature in the view from my study win- 
 dow, — Coniston Hall. 
 
 On the whole, however, these papers, written at intervals 
 during 1838, indicate a fairly progressive and rightly consoli- 
 dated range of thought on these subjects, within the chrysa- 
 lid torpor of me. 
 
 From the Trosachs we drove to Edinburgh: and, some- 
 where on the road near Linlithgow, my father, reading some 
 
190 
 
 PBJETERITA, 
 
 letters got by that day’s post, coolly announced to my mother 
 and me that Mr. Domecq was going to bring his four daugh- 
 ters to England again, to finish their schooling at New Hall, 
 near Chelmsford. 
 
 And I am unconscious of anything more in that journey, 
 or of anything after it, until I found myself driving down to 
 Chelmsford. My mother had no business of course to take 
 me with her to pay a visit in a convent ; but I suppose felt it 
 would be too cruel to leave me behind. The young ladies 
 were allowed a chat with us in the parlor, and invited (with 
 acceptance) to spend their vacations always at Herne Hill. 
 And so began a second era of that part of my life which is 
 not “ worthy of memory,” but only of the “ Guarda e Passa.” 
 
 There was some solace during my autumnal studies in 
 thinking that she was really in England, really over there , — 
 I could see the sky over Chelmsford from my study win- 
 dow, — ^and that she was shut up in a convent and couldn’t be 
 seen by anybody, or spoken to, but by nuns ; and that j)er- 
 haps she wouldn’t quite like it, and would like to come to 
 Herne Hill again, and bear with me a little. 
 
 I wonder mightily now what sort of a creature I should 
 have turned out, if at this time Love had been with me in- 
 stead of against me ; and instead of the distracting and use- 
 less pain, I had had the joy of approved love, and the unten- 
 able, incalculable motive of its sympathy and praise. 
 
 It seems to me such things are not allowed in this world. 
 The men capable of the highest imaginative passion are al- 
 ways tossed on fiery waves by it : the men who find it smooth 
 water, and not scalding, are of another sort. My father’s 
 second clerk, Mr. Ritchie, wrote unfeelingly to his colleague, 
 bachelor Henry, who would not marry for his mother’s and 
 sister’s sakes, “If you want to know what happiness is, get a 
 wife, and half a dozen children, and come to Margate.” But 
 Mr. Ritchie remained all his life nothing more than a portly 
 gentleman with gooseberry eyes, of the Irvingite persuasion. 
 
 There must be great happiness in the love-matches of the 
 typical English squire. Yet English squires make their hap- 
 py lives only a portion for foxes. 
 
ROSLTN^ CHAPEL. 
 
 191 
 
 Of course, when Adele and her sisters came back at Christ- 
 mas, and stayed with us four or five weeks, every feeling and 
 folly that had been subdued or forgotten, returned in re- 
 doubled force. I don’t know what would have happened if 
 Adele had been a perfectly beautiful and amiable girl, and 
 had herself in the least liked me. I suppose then my mother 
 would have been overcome. But though extremely lovely at 
 fifteen, Adele was not prettier than French girls in general at 
 eighteen ; she was firm, and fiery, and high principled ; but, 
 ! as the light traits already noticed of her enough show, not 
 ill the least amiable ; and although she would have married 
 [ me, had her father wished it, was always glad to have me out 
 I of her way. My love was much too high and fantastic to be 
 I diminished by her loss of beauty ; but I perfectly' well saw 
 
 I and admitted it, having never at any time been in the slight- 
 
 est degree blinded by love, as I perceive other men are, out 
 of my critic nature. And day followed on day, and month to 
 month, of complex absurdity, pain, error, wasted affection, 
 t and rewardless semi-virtue, which I am content to sweep out 
 I ! of the way of what better things I can recollect at this time, 
 into the smallest possible size of dust heap, and wish the 
 Dustman Oblivion good clearance of them. 
 
 With this one general note, concerning children’s conduct 
 to their parents, that a great quantity of external and irk- 
 1 some obedience may be shown them, which virtually is no 
 obedience, because it is not cheerful and total. The wish to 
 disobey is already disobedience ; and although at this time I 
 was really doing a great many things I did not like, to please 
 my parents, I have not now 07 ie self-approving thought or con- 
 solation in having done so, so much did its sullenness and 
 maimedness pollute the meagre sacrifice. 
 
 But, before I quit, for this time, the field of romance, let 
 me write the epitaph of one of its sweet shadows, which some 
 who knew the shadow may be glad I should write. The 
 ground floor, under my father’s counting-house at Billiter 
 Street, I have already said was occupied by Messrs. Warded 
 i & Co. The head of this firm was an extremely intelligent and 
 refined elderly gentleman, darkish, with spiritedly curling 
 
192 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 and projecting dark hair, and bright eyes ; good-natured and 
 amiable in a high degree, well educated, not over wise, always 
 well pleased with himself, happy in a sensible wife, and a very 
 beautiful, and entirely gentle and good, only daughter. Not 
 over wise, I repeat, but an excellent man of business ; older 
 and, I suppose, already considerably richer, than my father. 
 He had a handsome house at Hampstead, and spared no pains 
 on his daughter’s education. 
 
 It must have been some time about this year 1839, or the 
 previous one, that my father having been deploring to Mr. 
 Warden the discomfortable state of mind I had got into 
 about Adele, Mr. Warded proposed to him to try whether 
 some slight diversion of my thoughts might not be effected 
 by a visit to Hampstead. M 3 " father’s fancy was still set on 
 Lady Clara Vere de Vere ; but Miss Warded was everything 
 that a girl should be, and an heiress, — of perhaps something 
 more than my own fortune was likely to come to. And the 
 two fathers agreed that nothing could be more fit, rational, 
 and desirable, than such an arrangement. So I was sent to 
 pass a summer afternoon, and dine at Hampstead* 
 
 It would have been an extremely delightful afternoon for 
 an}’ 3 "outh not a simpleton. Miss Warded had often enough 
 heard me spoken of by her father as a well-conducted youth, 
 already of some literary reputation — author of the “ Poetry of 
 Architecture” — winner of the Newdigate, — ^first class man in 
 expectation. She herself had been brought up in a way 
 closely resembling my own, in severe seclusion by devoted 
 parents, at a suburban villa with a pretty garden, to skip, and 
 gather flowers, in. The chief difference was that, from the 
 first. Miss Warded had had excellent masters, and was now 
 an extremely accomplished, intelligent, and faultless maid of 
 seventeen ; fragile and delicate to a degree enhancing her 
 beauty with some solemnity of fear, yet in perfect health, as 
 far as a fast-growing girl could be ; a softly moulded, slender 
 brunette, with her father’s dark curling hair transfigured into 
 playful grace round the pretty, modest, not unthoughtful, 
 gray-eyed face. Of the afternoon at Hampstead, I remember 
 only that it was a fine day, and that we walked in the garden ; 
 
ROSLTN CHAPEL. 
 
 193 
 
 mamma, as her mere duty to me in politeness at a first visit, 
 superintending, — it would have been wiser to have left us to 
 get on how we could. I very heartily and reverently admired 
 tJie pretty creature, and would fain have done, or said, any- 
 thing I could to please her. Literally to please her, for that is 
 indeed, my hope with all girls, in spite of what I have above 
 related of my mistaken ways of recommending myself. My 
 primary thought is how to serve them, and make them happy, 
 and if they could use me for a plank bridge over a stream, or 
 set me up for a post to tie a swing to, or anything of the sort 
 not requiring me to talk, I should be always quite happy in 
 such promotion. This sincere devotion to them, with intense 
 delight in whatever beauty or grace they chance to have, and 
 in most cases, perceptive sympathy, heightened by faith in 
 their right feelings, for the most part gives me considerable 
 power with girls ; but all this prevents me from ever being in 
 the least at ease with them, — and I have no doubt that dur- 
 ing the whole afternoon at Hampstead, I gave little pleasure 
 to my companion. For the rest, though I extremely admired 
 Miss Warded, she was not my sort of beauty. I like oval 
 faces, crystalline blonde, wnth straightish, at the utmost 
 wav}% (or, in length, wreathed) hair, and the form elastic, 
 and foot firm. Miss Wardell’s dark and tender grace had no 
 power over me, except to make me extremely afraid of being 
 tiresome to her. On the whole, I suppose I came oF pretty 
 w'ell, for she afterw^ard allowed herself to be brought out to 
 Herne Hill to see the pictures, and so on ; and I recollect her 
 looking a little frightenedly pleased at my kneeling down to 
 hold a book for her, or some such matter. 
 
 After this second interview, however, my father and mother 
 asking me seriously wdiat I thought of her, and I explaining 
 to them that though I saw all her beauty, and merit, and 
 niceness, she yet was not my sort of girl, — the negotiations 
 went no farther at that time, and a little while after, were 
 ended for all time ; for at Hamj^stead they went on teaching 
 the tender creature High German, and French of Paris, and 
 Kant’s “Metaphysics,” and Newton’s “Principia ; ” and then 
 they took her to Paris, and tired her out with seeing everything 
 13 
 
194 
 
 PMjETEPJTA. 
 
 every day, all day long, besides tbe dazzle and excitement of 
 such a first outing from Hampstead ; and she at last getting 
 too pale and weak, they brought her back to some English 
 seaside place, I forget where : and there she fell into nervous 
 fever and faded away, with the light of death flickering 
 clearer and clearer in her soft eyes, and never skipped in 
 Hampstead garden more. 
 
 How the parents, especially the father, lived on, I never 
 could understand ; but I suppose they were honestly religious 
 without talking of it, and they had nothing to blame them- 
 selves in, except not having known better. The father, 
 though with grave lines altering his face for ever, went stead- 
 ily on with his business, and lived to be old. 
 
 I cannot be sure of the date of either Miss Withers’ or Miss 
 Warden’s death ; that of Sybilla Dowie (told in “ Fors ”), 
 more sad than either, was much later ; but the loss of her 
 sweet spirit, following her lover’s, had been felt by us before 
 the time of which I am now writing. I had never myself seen 
 Death, nor had any part in the grief or anxiety of a sick 
 chamber ; nor had I ever seen, far less conceived, the misery 
 of unaided poverty. But I had been made to think of it ; and 
 in the deaths of the creatures whom I had seen joyful, the 
 sense of deep pity, not sorrow for myself, but for them, began 
 to mingle with all the thoughts, which, founded on the Ho- 
 meric, ^schylean, and Shakesperian tragedy, had now be- 
 gun to modify the untried faith of childhood. The blue 
 of the mountains became deep to me with the purple of 
 mourning, — the clouds that gather round the setting sun, not 
 subdued, but raised in awe as the harmonies of a Miserere, — 
 and all the strength and framework of my mind, lurid, like 
 the vaults of Koslyn, w^hen weird fire gleamed on its pillars, 
 foliage-bound, and far in the depth of twilight, “ blazed every 
 rose-carved buttress fair.” 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
PR^TERITA 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 
■f 
 
 » 
 
 I 
 
PR^TERITA. 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF AGE. 
 
 This second volume must, I fear, be less pleasing to the 
 general reader, with whom the first has found more favor 
 than I had hoped, — not because I tire of talking, but that 
 the talk must be less of other persons, and more of myself. 
 For as I look deeper into the mirror, I find myself a more 
 curious person than I had thought. 1 used to fancy that 
 everybody would like clouds and rocks as well as I did, if 
 once told to look at them ; whereas, after fifty years of trial, 
 I find that is not so, even in modern days ; having long ago 
 known that, in ancient ones, the clouds and mountains, which 
 liave been life to me, were mere inconvenience and horror to 
 most of mankind. 
 
 I related, in the first volume, page 80, some small part of 
 my pleasures under St. Vincent’s rock at Clifton, and the be- 
 ginning of quartz-study there with the now No. 51 of the 
 Brantwood series. Compare with these childish sentiments, 
 those of the maturely judging John Evelyn, at the same place, 
 30th June, 1654 
 
 “ The city ” (Bristol) “wholly mercantile, as standing neere 
 the famous Severne, commodiously for Ireland and the West- 
 ern world. Here I first saw the manner of refining suggar, 
 and casting it into loaves, where we had a collation of eggs 
 
198 
 
 PBuETERITA. 
 
 fried in the suggar furnace,* together with excellent Spanish 
 wine : but what appeared most stupendious to me, was the 
 rock of St. Vincent, a little distance from y® towne, the preci- 
 pice whereoff is equal to anything of that nature I have seen 
 in y® most confragose cataracts of the Alpes, the river gliding 
 between them at an extraordinary depth. Here we went 
 searching for diamonds, and to the Hot Wells at its foote. 
 There is also on the side of this horrid Alp a very romantic 
 seate : and so w^e returned to Bathe in the evening.” 
 
 Of course Evelyn uses the Avord “ horrid ” only in its Latin 
 sense ; but his mind is evidently relieved by returning to 
 Bath ; and although, farther on, he describes without alarm 
 the towne and county of Nottingham as “seeming to be but 
 one entire rock, as it were,” he explains his toleration of that 
 structure in the close of his sentence — “ an exceeding pleas- 
 ant shire, full of gentry.” Of his impressions of the “ stu- 
 pendious rocks of Fontainebleau, and ungentle people of the 
 Simplon,” I have to speak in another place. 
 
 In these and many other such particulars I find the typical 
 English mind, both then and now, so adverse to my own, as 
 also to those of my few companions through the sorrows of 
 this world, that it becomes for me a matter of acute Darwin- 
 ian interest to trace my species from origin to extinction : 
 and I have, therefore, to warn the reader, and ask his pardon, 
 that while a modest person writes his autobiography chiefly by 
 giving accounts of the people he has met, I find it only possi- 
 ble, within my planned limits, to take note of those who have 
 had distinct power in the training or the pruning of little me 
 to any good. 
 
 I return first to my true master in mathematics, poor Mr. 
 Rowbotham. Of course he missed his Herne Hill evenings 
 sadly when I went to Oxford. But always, when we came 
 home, it was understood that once in the fortnight, or so, as 
 he felt himself able, he should still toil up the hill to tea. We 
 
 ♦Note (by Evelyn’s editor in 1827): “A kind of entertainment like 
 that we now have of eating beefsteaks drest on the stoker's shovel, and 
 drinking porter at the famous brewhouses in London.” 
 
OF AGE. 
 
 199 
 
 were always sorry to see him at the gate ; but felt that it was 
 our clear small duty to put up with his sighing for an hour 
 or two in such rest as his woful life could find. Nor were Ave 
 without some real affection for him. His face had a certain 
 grandeur, from its constancy of patience, bewildered inno- 
 cence, and firm lines of faculty in geometric sort. Also he 
 brought us news from the mathematical and grammatical 
 world, and told us some interesting details of manufacture, if 
 he had been on a visit to his friend Mr. Crawsha3% His own 
 home became yearly more wTetched, till one day its little 
 ten-years-old Peepy choked himself with his teetotum. The 
 father told us, Avith real sorrow, the stages of the child’s pro- 
 tracted suffering before he died ; but observed, finally, that 
 it Avas better he should have been taken aAvay, — both for him 
 and his 2)arents. Evidently the poor mathematical mind was 
 relie A'ed from one of its least soluble burdens, and the sad 
 face, that evening, had an expression of more than usual 
 repose. 
 
 I never forgot the lesson it taught me of Avhat human life 
 meant in the suburbs of London. 
 
 The rigidly moral muse of Mr. Pringle had by this time 
 gone to Africa, or, let us hope, Arabia Felix, in the other 
 Avoiid ; and the reins of my poetical genius had been given 
 into the hand of kindly Mr. W. H. Harrison in the Vauxhall 
 Road, of Avhom account has already been given in the first 
 chapter of “ On the Old Road ” enough to carry us on for the 
 present. 
 
 I must next bring up to time the history of my father’s af- 
 fectionate physician, Dr. Grant. Increasing steadily in repu- 
 tation, he married a Avidowed lady, Mrs. Sidney, of good po- 
 sition in Richmond ; and became the guardian of her two 
 extremely nice and cleA^er daughters, Augusta and Emma, who 
 both felt great respect, and soon great regard, for their step- 
 father, and Avere every day more dutiful and pleasing children 
 to him. Estimating my mother’s character also as they 
 ought, later on, they were familiar visitors to us ; the younger, 
 Emma, having good taste for drawing, and other quiet ac- 
 complishments and pursuits. At the time I am now look- 
 
200 
 
 PE^TEBITA. 
 
 ing back to, however, the Star and Garter breakfasts had 
 become rarer, and were connected mostly with visits to 
 Hampton Court, where the great vine, and the maze, were of 
 thrilling attraction to me ; and the Cartoons began to take 
 the aspect of mild nightmare and nuisance which they have 
 ever since retained. 
 
 M}'' runs with cousin Mary in the maze, (once, as in Hau- 
 tesque alleys of lucent verdure in the Moon, with Adele and 
 Elise), always had something of an enchanted and Faery- 
 Qiieen glamor in them : and I went on designing more and 
 more complicated mazes in the blank leaves of my lesson 
 books — ^'wasting, I suppose, nearly as much time that way as 
 in the trisection of the angle. Howbeit, afterward, the coins 
 of Cnossus, and characters of Daedalus, Theseus, and the 
 Minotaur, became intelligible to me as to few : and I have 
 much unprinted MSS. about them, intended for expansion in 
 Ariadne Florentina,” and other labyrinthine volumes, but 
 which the world must get on now without the benefit of, as 
 it can. 
 
 Meantime, from the Grove, wdiite-haired mamma Monro, 
 and silvery-fringed Petite, had gone to their rest. Mrs. Gray 
 cared no longer for the pride of her house, or shade of her 
 avenue ; while more and more, Mr. Gray’s devotion to “ Don 
 Quixote,” and to my poetry in “ Friendships Offering ” inter- 
 fered with his business habits. At last it was thought that, 
 being true Scots both of them, they might better prosper 
 over the Border. They went to Glasgow, where Mr, Gray 
 took up some soid of a wine business, and read “ Rob Roy ” in- 
 stead of “Don Quixote.” We went to Glasgow to see them, on 
 our Scottish tour, and sorrowfully perceived them to be going 
 downward, even in their Scottish world. For a little change, 
 they were asked to Oxford that autumn, to see their spoiled 
 Johnnie carrying all before him ; and the good couple being 
 seated in Christ Church Cathedral under the organ, and see- 
 ing me walk in with my companions in our silken sleeves, 
 and with accompanying flourishes by Mr. Marshall on the 
 trumpet stop, and Rembrandtesque effects of candlelight 
 upon the Norman columns, were both of them melted into 
 
OF AGE. 201 
 
 tears ; and remained speechless with reverent delight all the 
 evening afterward. 
 
 I have left too long without word the continual benevo- 
 lence toward us of the family at Widmore, Mr. Telford 
 and his three sisters ; the latter absolutely well-educated 
 women — wise, without either severity or ostentation, using 
 all they knew for the good of their neighbors, and exhibiting 
 in their own lives every joy of sisterly love and active home- 
 liness. Mr. Henry Telford’s perfectly quiet, slightly melan- 
 choly, exquisitely sensitive face, browned by continual riding 
 from Bromley to Billiter Street, remains with me, among the 
 most precious of the pictures which, unseen of any guest, 
 hang on the walls of my refectory. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Kobert Cockburn, as the years drew on, be- 
 came more and more kindly, but less and less approvingly, 
 interested in our monastic ways at Herne Hill ; and in my 
 partly thwarted and uncomfortable, partly singular, develop- 
 ment of literary character. Mrs. Cockburn took earnest pains 
 with my mother to get her to send me more into society, that 
 I might be licked a little into shape. But my mother was 
 satisfied with me as I was : and besides, Mrs. Cockburn and 
 she never got quite well on together. My mother, according 
 to her established maimer, would no more dine with her than 
 with an^mne else, and was even careless in returning calls ; 
 and Mrs. Cockburn — which was wonderful in a woman of so 
 much sense — instead of being merely sorry for my mother’s 
 shyness, and trying to efface her sense of inferiority in edu- 
 cation and position, took this somewhat in pique. But among 
 the fateful chances of my own life in her endeavors to do 
 something for me, and somehow break the shell of me, she 
 one day asked me to dine with Lockhart, and see his little 
 harebell-like daintiness of a daughter. I suppose Mrs. Cock- 
 burn must have told him of my love of Scott, yet I do not 
 remember manifesting that sentiment in any wise during 
 dinner : I recollect only, over the wine, making some small 
 effort to display my Oxonian orthodoxy and sound learning, 
 with respect to the principles of Church Establishment , and 
 being surprised, and somewhat discomfited, by finding that 
 
202 
 
 PB^TEBITA. 
 
 Mr. Lockhart knew the Greek for “ bishop ” and “ elder” as 
 well as I did. On going into the drawing-room, however, I 
 made every effort to ingratiate myself with the little dark- 
 eyed, high-foreheaded Charlotte, and was very sorry, — but I 
 don’t think the cbild was, — when she was sent to bed. 
 
 But the most happy turn of Fortune’s wheel for me, in this 
 year ’39, was the coming of Osborne Gordon to Herne Hill 
 to be my private tutor, and read with me in our little nursery. 
 Taking up the ravelled ends of yet workable and spinnable 
 flax in me, he began to twist them, at first through much 
 wholesome pain, into such tenor as they were really caj^able 
 of. 
 
 The first thing he did was to stop all pressure in reading. 
 His inaugural sentence was, “ When you have got too much 
 to do, don’t do it,” — a golden saying which I have often re- 
 peated since, but not enough obeyed. 
 
 To Gordon himself, his own proverb was less serviceable. 
 He was a man of quite exceptional power, and there is no 
 saying what he might have done, with any strong motive. 
 Very early, a keen, though entirely benevolent, sense of the 
 absurdity of the world took away his heart in 'working for it : 
 — perhaps I should rather have said, the density and unmal- 
 leability of the world, than absurdity. He thought there was 
 nothing to be done with it, and that after all it would get on 
 by itself. Chiefly, that autumn, in our walks over the Nor- 
 wood hills, he, being then an ordained, or on the point of 
 being ordained, priest, surprised me greatly by avoiding, 
 evidently with the sense of its being useless bother, my 
 favorite topic of conversation, namely, the torpor of the 
 Protestant churches, and their duty, as it to me appeared, 
 before any thought of missionary work, out of Europe, or 
 comfortable settling to pastoral work at home, to trample 
 finally out the smouldering “diabolic fire” of the Papacy, 
 in all Papal-Catholic lands. For I was then by training, 
 thinking, and the teaching of such small experience as I had, 
 as zealous, pugnacious, and self-sure a Protestant as you 
 please. The first condition of my being so was, of course, 
 total ignorance of Christian history ; the second, — one for 
 
OF AGE. 
 
 203 
 
 which the Roman Church is indeed guiltily responsible,— that 
 all the Catholic Cantons of Switzerland, counting Savo}^ also 
 as a main point of Alpine territory, are idle and dirt}^, and all 
 Protestant ones bus}’’ and clean — a most impressive fact to my 
 evangelical mother, whose first duty and first luxury of life 
 consisted in purity of person and surroundings ; wliile she 
 and my father alike looked on idleness as indisputal)ly 
 Satanic. They failed not, therefore, to look carefully on the 
 map for the bridge, or gate, or vale, or ridge, which marked 
 the separation of Protestant from the benighted Catholic 
 cantons ; and it was rare if the first or second field and cot- 
 tage, beyond the border, did not too clearly justify their 
 exulting, — though also indignant and partly sorrowful, — 
 enforcement upon me of the natural consequences of Pop- 
 ery. 
 
 The third reason for my strength of feeling at this time was 
 a curious one. In proportion to the delight I felt in the 
 ceremonial of foreign churches, was my conviction of the 
 falseness of religious sentiment founded on these enjoyments. 
 I had no foolish scorn of them, as the proper expressions of 
 the Catholic Faith ; but infinite scorn of the lascivious sensi- 
 bility which could change its beliefs because it delighted in 
 these, and be “piped into a new creed by the whine of an 
 organ pipe.” So that alike my reason, and romantic pleasure, 
 on the Continent, combined to make a better Protestant of 
 me ; — yet not a malicious nor ungenerous one. I never 
 suspected Catholic priests of dishonesty, nor doubted the 
 purity of the former Catholic Church. I was a Protestant 
 Cavalier, not Protestant Roundhead, — entirely desirous of 
 keeping all that was noble and traditional in religious ritual, 
 and reverent to the existing piety of the Catholic peasantry. 
 So that tiie “diabolic fire ” which I wanted trampled out, was 
 only the corrupt Catholicism which rendered the vice of 
 Paris and the dirt of Savoy possible ; and which I was quite 
 riglit in thinking it the duty of every Christian priest to 
 attack, and end the schism and scandal of it. 
 
 Osborne, on the contrary, w^as a practical Englishman, of 
 the shrewdest, yet gentlest type ; keenly perceptive of folly, 
 
204 
 
 PR^^TEBITA, 
 
 but disposed to pardon most human failings as little more. 
 His ambition was restricted to the walls of Christ Church ; he 
 was already the chiefly trusted aid of the old Dean ; probably, 
 next to him, the best Greek scholar in Oxford, and perfectly 
 practised in all the college routine of business. He thought 
 that the Church of England had — even in Oxford — enough to 
 do in looking after her own faults ; and addressed himself, 
 ill our conversations on Forest Hill, mainly to mollify my 
 Protestant animosities, enlarge my small acquaintance with 
 ecclesiastical history, and recall my attention to the immediate 
 business in hand, of enjoying our walk, and recollecting what 
 we had read in the morning. 
 
 In his proper work with me, no tutor could have been more 
 diligent or patient. His own scholarly power was of the 
 highest order; his memory (the necessary instrument of 
 great scholarship) errorless and effortless; his judgment and 
 feeling in literature sound ; his interpretation of political 
 events always rational, and founded on wide detail of well- 
 balanced knowledge ; and all this without in the least priding 
 himself on his classic power, or wishing to check any of my 
 impulses in other directions. He had taken his double first 
 with the half of his strength, and wmuld have taken a triple 
 one without priding himself on it : he was amused by my 
 facility in rhyming, recognized my true instinct in paint- 
 ing, and sympathized with me in love of country life and 
 picturesque towns, but always in a quieting and reposeful 
 maimer. Once in after life, provoked at finding myself still 
 unable to read Greek easily, I intimated to him a half -formed 
 purpose to throw everything else aside, for a time, and make 
 myself a sound Greek scholar. “ I think it would give you 
 more trouble than it is worth,” said he. Another time, as I 
 was making the drawing of “ Chamouni in Afternoon Sun- 
 shine ” for him, (now at his sister’s,) I spoke of the constant 
 vexation I suffered because I could not draw better. “ And 
 I,” he said, simply, “ should be very content if I could draw 
 at all.” 
 
 During Gordon’s stay with us, this 1839 autumn, we got 
 cur second Turner drawing. Certainly the most curious 
 
OF AGE. 
 
 206 
 
 failure of memory — among the many I find — is that 1 don’t 
 know when I saw my first ! I feel as if Mr. Windiis’s parlor at 
 Tottenham had been familiar to me since the dawn of exist- 
 ence in Brunswick Square. 
 
 Mr. Godfrey Windus was a retired coachmaker, living in a 
 cheerful little villa, with low rooms on the ground floor open- 
 ing pleasantly into each other, like a sort of grouped conser- 
 vatory, between his front and back gardens : their walls beset, 
 but not crowded, with Turner drawings of the England se- 
 ries; while in his portfolio-stands, coming there straight from 
 the publishers of the books they illustrated, v/ere the entire 
 series of the illustrations to Scott, to Byron, to the South 
 Coast, and to Einden’s Bible. 
 
 Nobody, in all England, at that time, — and Turner was 
 already sixty, — cared, in the true sense of the word, for Turner, 
 but the retired coachmaker of Tottenham, and I. 
 
 Nor, indeed, could the public ever see the drawings, so as 
 to begin to care for them, Mr. Fawkes’s were shut up fit 
 Farnle}^ Sir Peregrine Acland’s, perishing of damj) in bis 
 passages, and Mr. Windus bought all that were made for 
 engravers as soon as the engraver had done with them. The 
 advantage, however, of seeing them all collected at bis bouse, 
 — he gave an open day each week, and to me the run of bis 
 rooms at any time, — was, to the general student, inestimable, 
 and, for me, the means of writing ‘'Modern Painters.” 
 
 It is, I think, noteworthy that, although first attracted to 
 Turner b}vthe mountain truth in Bogers’s “Italy,” — when I 
 saw the drawings, it was almost wholly the pure artistic qual- 
 ity that fascinated me, whatever the subject ; so that I was not 
 in the least hindered by the beauty of Mr. Windus’s “ Llan- 
 beris”or “ Melrose” from being quite happy when my father 
 at last gave me, not for a beginning of Turner collection, but 
 for a specimen of Turner’s work, which was all — as it was 
 supposed — I should ever need or aspire to possess, the 
 “Richmond Bridge, Surrey.” 
 
 The triumphant talk between us over it, when we brought 
 it home, consisted, as I remember, greatly in commendation 
 of the quantity of Turnerian subject and character which this 
 
206 
 
 PR^^TERITA, 
 
 single specimen united: — “it had trees, architecture, water, 
 a lovely sky, and a clustered bouquet of brilliant figures.” 
 
 And verily the Surrey “Richmond” remained for at least two 
 years our only Turner possession, and the second we bought, 
 the “ Gosport,” which came home when Gordon was staying 
 with us, had still none of the delicate beauty of Turner except 
 in its sky ; nor were either my father or I the least offended by 
 the ill-made bonnets of the lady-passengers in the cutter, nor 
 by the helmsman’s head being put on the wrong way. 
 
 The reader is not to think, because I speak thus frankly of 
 Turner’s faults, that I judge them gTeater, or know them 
 better, now, than I did then. I knew them at this time of 
 getting “ Richmond ” and “ Gosport ” just as well as other peo- 
 ple ; but knew also the power shown through these faults, to a 
 degree quite wonderful for a boy ; — it being my chief recrea- 
 tion, after Greek or trigonometry in the nursery-study, to go 
 down and feast on my “Gosport.” 
 
 And so, after Christmas, I went back to Oxford for the last 
 push, in January, 1840, and did very steady work with Gor- 
 don, in St. Aldate’s ; * the sense that I was coming of age 
 somewhat increasing the feeling of responsibility for one’s 
 time. On my twenty-first, birthday my father brought me for 
 a present the drawing of “ Winchelsea,” — a curious choice, and 
 an unlucky one. The thunderous sky and broken white light 
 of storm round the distant gate and scarcely visible church, 
 were but too true symbols of the time thiit was coming upon 
 us ; but neither he nor I were given to reading omens, or 
 dreading them. I suppose he had been struck by the power of 
 the drawing, and he always liked soldiers. I was disappointed, 
 and saw for the first time clearly that my father’s joy in Rubens 
 and Sir Joshua could never become sentient of Turner’s mi- 
 croscopic touch. But I was entirely grateful for his purpose, 
 
 * The street, named from its parish church, going down past Christ 
 Church to the river. It was tlie regular course of a gentleman com- 
 moner’s residence to be promoted from Peckwater to Tom Quad, and 
 turned out into the street for his last term. I have no notion at this 
 minute who St. Aldate was ; — American visitors may be advised that in 
 Oxford it will be expected of them to call him^t. Old. 
 
OF AGE. 
 
 207 
 
 and very thankful to have any new Turner drawiiig whatso- 
 ever ; and as at home the “Gosport,” so in St, Aldate’s the 
 “ Winchelsea,” was the chief recreation of my fatigued hours. 
 
 Tiiis Turner gift, however, was only complimeiitaiy. The 
 same day my father transferred into my name in the stocks as 
 much as would bring in at least £200 a year, and watched 
 with some anxiety the use I should make of this first com- 
 mand of money. Not that I had ever been under definite 
 restriction about it : at Oxford I ran what accounts with the 
 tradesmen I liked, and the bills were sent in to my mother 
 weekly ; there was never any difficulty or demur on either 
 side, and there was nothing out of the common way in Oxford 
 I wanted to buy, except the engraving of Turner’s “Grand 
 Canal,” for my room wall, — and “Monsieur Jabot,” the first I 
 ever saw of Topffer’s rivalless caricatures, one day when I had a 
 headache. For anything on which my state or comfort in the 
 least depended, ray father w^as more disposed to be extrava- 
 gant than I ; but he had always the most curious suspicion of 
 my taste for minerals, and only the year before, in the summer 
 term, was entirely vexed and discomfited at my giving eleven 
 shillings for a piece of Cornish chalcedony. That I never 
 thought of buying a mineral without telling him wdiat I had paid 
 for it, besides advising him duly of the fact, curiously marks 
 the intimate confidence betw^een us : but alas, my respect for 
 his judgment was at this time by these littlenesses gradually 
 diminished ; and my confidence in my own painfully mani- 
 fested to him a very little while after he had permitted me the 
 above-stated measure of independence. The Turner drawings 
 hitherto bought, — “ Richmond,” “ Gosport,” “ Winchelsea,” — 
 were all supplied by Mr. Griffith, an agent in whom Turner had 
 perfect confidence, and my father none. Both were fatally 
 wrong. Had Turner dealt straight wdth my father, there is no 
 saying how much happiness might have come of it for all three 
 of us ; had my father not been always afraid of being taken in 
 by Mr. Griffith, he might at that time have bought some of the 
 loveliest drawings that Turner ever made, at entirely fair 
 prices. But Mr. Griffith’s art-salesmanship entirely offended 
 my father from the first, and the best drawings were always 
 
208 
 
 PR.HJTERITA. 
 
 let pass, because Mr. Griffith recommended them, while 
 “ Wiiichelsea ” and ‘‘Gosport” were both bought — among 
 other reasons — because Mr. Griffith said they were not draw- 
 ings wdiich we ought to have ! 
 
 Among those of purest quality in his folios at this time w^as 
 one I especially coveted, the “Harlech.” There had been a 
 good deal of dealers’ yea and nay about it, whether it was for 
 sale or not ; it was a smaller drawing than most of the England 
 and Wales series, and there were many hints in the market 
 about its being iniquitous in price. The private view day of 
 the Old Water Color came ; and, arm in arm with my father, 
 I met Mr. Griffith in the crowd. After the proper five min- 
 utes of how we liked the exhibition, he turned specially to 
 me. “ I have some good news for you, the Harlech is really 
 for sale.” “ I’ll take it then,” I replied, without so much as a 
 glance at my father, and without asking the price. Smiling 
 a little ironically, Mr. Griffith went on, “And — seventy,” — 
 implying that seventy was a low price, at once told me in an- 
 sw^er to my confidence. But it w^as thirty above the “ Win- 
 chelsea,” twenty-four above “Gosport,” and my father w>^as of 
 course sure that Mr. Griffith had put twenty pounds on at 
 the instant. 
 
 The mingled grief and scorn on his face told me what I had 
 done ; but I w^as too happy on pouncing on my “Harlech ” to 
 feel for him. All sorts of blindness and error on both sides, 
 but, on his side, inevitable, — on mine, more foolish than cul- 
 pable ; fatal every way, beyond words. 
 
 I can scarcely understand my eagerness and delight in get- 
 ting the “ Harlech ” at this time, because, during the winter, 
 negotiations had been carried on in Paris for AdMe’s mar- 
 riage ; and it does not seem as if I had been really so much 
 crushed by that event as I expected to be. There are expres- 
 sions, however, in the foolish diaries I began to write, soon 
 after, of general disdain of life, and all that it could in future 
 bestow on me, which seem inconsistent with extreme satis- 
 faction in getting a water-color drawing, sixteen inches by 
 nine. But whatever germs of better things remained in me, 
 were then all centred in this love of Turner. It was not a 
 
OF AGE. 
 
 200 
 
 piece of painted paper, but a Welsh castle and village, and 
 Snowdon in blue cloud, that I bought for my seventy pounds. 
 This must have been in the Easter holidays ; — “ Harlech” was 
 brought home and safely installed in the drawing-room on 
 the other side of the fireplace from my idol-niche : and I went 
 triumphantly back to St. Aldate's and “ Wiiicbelsea.” 
 
 Ill spite of Gordon’s wholesome moderatorship, the work 
 had come by that time to high pressure, until twelve at night 
 from six in the morning, with little exercise, no cheerfulness, 
 and no sense of any use in what I read, to myself or anybody 
 else : things progressing also smoothly in Paris, to the abyss. 
 One evening, after Gordon had left me, about ten o’clock, a 
 short tickling cough surprised me, because preceded by a 
 curious sensation in the throat, and followed by a curious taste 
 in the mouth, which I presently perceived to be that of blood. 
 It must have been on a Saturday or Sunday evening, for my 
 father, as well as my mother, was in the High Street lodgings. 
 I walked round to them and told them what had happened. 
 
 My mother, an entirely skilled physician in all forms of 
 consumptive disease, was not frightened, but sent round to 
 the Deanery to ask leave for me to sleep out of my lodgings. 
 Morning consultations ended in our going up to town, and 
 town consultations in my being forbid any farther reading 
 under pressure, and in the Dean’s giving me, with many 
 growls, permission to put off taking my degree for a year. 
 During the month or two following, passed at Herne Hill, my 
 father’s disappointment at the end of his hopes of my obtain- 
 ing distinction in Oxford was sorrowfully silenced by his anx- 
 iety for my life. Once or twice the short cough and mouth- 
 taste — it was no more — of blood, returned ; but my mother 
 steadil}^ maintained there was nothing serious the matter, and 
 that I only wanted rest and fresh air. The doctors, almost 
 unanimously, — Sir James Clarke excepted, — gave gloomier 
 view^s. Sir James cheerfully, but decidedly, ordered me 
 abroad before autumn, to be as much in open carriages as 
 possible, and to winter in Italy. 
 
 And Mr. Telford consented to sit in the counting-house, 
 and the clerks promised to be diligent ; and my father, to 
 14 
 
210 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 whom the business was nothing, but for me, left his desk, 
 and all other cares of life, but that of nursing me. 
 
 Of his own feelings, he said little ; mine, in the sickly fer- 
 mentation of temper I was in, were little deserving of utter- 
 ance, describable indeed less as feelings than as the want of 
 them, in all wholesome directions but one ; — magnetic point- 
 ing to all presence of natural beauty, and to the poles of such 
 art and science as interpreted it. My preparations for the 
 journey were made with some renewal of spirit ; my mother 
 was steadil}", bravely, habituallj^ cheerful ; while my father, 
 capable to the utmost of every wise enjoyment in travelling, 
 and most of all, of that in lovely landscape, had some personal 
 joy in the thought of seeing South Italy. The attacks of the 
 throat cough seemed to have ceased, and the line of our jour- 
 ney began to be planned with some of the old exultation. 
 
 That we might not go through Paris, the route was ar- 
 ranged by Rouen and the Loire to Tours, then across France 
 by Auvergne, and down the Rlione to Avignon ; thence, by 
 the Riviera and Florence, to the South. 
 
 “ And is there to be no more Oxford asks Froude, a little 
 reproachfully, in a recent letter concerning these memoranda ; 
 for he was at Oriel while I was at Christ Church, and does 
 not think I have given an exhaustive view either of the stud- 
 ies or manners of the University in our day. 
 
 No, dear friend. I have no space in this story to describe 
 the advantages I never used ; nor does my own failure give 
 me right to blame, even were there an}'’ use in blaming, a sys- 
 tem now passed away. Oxford taught me as much Creek 
 and Latin as she could ; and though I think she might also 
 have told me that fritillaries grew in Ifiley meadow, it was 
 better that she left me to find them for myself, than that she 
 should have told me, as nowadays she would, that the paint- 
 ing on them was only to amuse the midges. For the rest, the 
 whole time I was there, my mind was simply in the state of a 
 squash before ’tis a peascod, — and remained so yet a year or 
 two afterward, I grieve to say ; — so that for any account of 
 my real life, the gossip hitherto given to its codling or cocoon 
 condition has brought us but a little way. I must get on 
 
HOME. 
 
 211 
 
 to the days of opening sight, and effective labor ; and to the 
 scenes of nobler education which all men, who keep their 
 hearts open, receive in the End of Days. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ROME. 
 
 However dearly bought, tlie permission to cease reading, 
 and put what strength was left into my sketching again, 
 gave healthy stimulus to all faculties which had been latently 
 progressive in me ; and the sketch-books and rulers were 
 prepared for this journey on hitherto unexampled stateliness 
 of system. 
 
 It had chanced, in the spring of the year, that David Rob- 
 erts had brought home and exhibited his sketches in Egypt 
 and the Holy Land. They were the first studies ever made 
 conscientiously by an English painter, not to exhibit his own 
 skill, or make capital out of his subjects, but to give true por- 
 traiture of scenes of historical and religious interest. They 
 were faithful and laborious beyond any outlines from nature 
 I had ever seen, and I felt also that their severely restricted 
 method was within reach of my own skill, and applicable to 
 all my own purposes. 
 
 With Roberts’s deficiencies or mannerism I have here no 
 concern. He taught me, of absolute good, the use of tlie 
 fine point instead of the blunt one ; attention and indefatiga- 
 ble correctness in detail ; and the simplest means of express- 
 ing ordinary light and shade on gray ground, flat wash for 
 the full shadows, and heightening of the gradated lights by 
 warm white. 
 
 I tried these adopted principles first in the courtyard of 
 the Chateau de Blois : and came in to papa and mamma de- 
 claring that “ Prout would give his ears to make such a draw- 
 ing as that.” 
 
 AVith some trutli and modesty, I might have said he would 
 have changed eyes with me ; ” for Prout’s manner was grave- 
 
212 
 
 PRJETERITA. 
 
 ly restricted by his nearness of sight. But also this Blois 
 sketch showed some dawning notions of grace in proportion, 
 and largeness of effect, which enabled me for the first time 
 that year, to render continental subjects with just expression 
 of their character and scale, and well-rounded solidification 
 of pillars and sculpture. 
 
 The last days of the summer were well spent at Amboise, 
 Tours, Aubusson, Pont Gibaud, and Le Puy ; but as we 
 emerged into the Khone valley, autumn broke angrily on us ; 
 and the journey by Yalence to Avignon was all made gloomy 
 by the ravage of a just past inundation, of which the main 
 mass at Montelimar had risen from six to eight feet in the 
 streets, and the slime remained, instead of fields, over — I for- 
 get in fact, and can scarcely venture to conceive, — what ex- 
 tent of plain. The Ehone, through these vast gravelly levels 
 a mere driving weight of discolored water ; — the Alps, on the 
 other side, now in late autumn snowless up to their lower 
 peaks, and showing few eminent ones ; — the bise, now first 
 letting one feel what malignant wind could be, — might, per- 
 haps, all be more depressing to me in my then state of tem- 
 per ; but I have never cared to see the lower Rhone any more ; 
 and to my love of cottage rather than castle, added at this 
 time another strong moral principle, that if ever one was 
 metamorphosed into a river, and could choose one’s own size, 
 it would be out of all doubt more prudent and delightful to 
 be Tees or Wharfe than Rhone. 
 
 And then, for the first time, at Frejus, and on the Esterello 
 and the Western Riviera, I saw some initial letters of Italy, as 
 distinct from Lombardy, — Italy of the stone pine and orange 
 and palm, white villa and blue sea ; and saw it with right 
 judgment, as a wreck, and a viciously neglected one. 
 
 I don’t think the reader has yet been informed that I inher- 
 ited to the full my mother’s love of tidiness and cleanliness ; 
 so that quite one of the most poetical charms of Switzerland 
 to me, next to her white snows, was her white sleeves. Also 
 I had my father’s love of solidity and soundness, — of unve- 
 neered, unrouged, and well finished things ; and here on the 
 Riviera there were lemons and palms, yes, — but the lemons 
 
ROME. 
 
 213 
 
 pale, and mostly skin ; the palms not much larger than para- 
 sols ; the sea — blue, yes, but its beach nasty ; the buildings, 
 pompous, luxurious, painted like Grimaldi, — usually broken 
 down at the ends, and in the middle, having sham architraves 
 daubed over windows with no glass in them ; the rocks shaly 
 and ragged, the people filthy : and over everything, a coat of 
 plaster dust. 
 
 I was in a bad humor? Yes, but everything I have de- 
 scribed is as I say, for all that ; and though the last time I 
 was at Sestri I wanted to stay there, the ladies with me 
 wouldn’t and couldn’t, because of the filth of the inn ; and 
 the last time I was at Genoa, 1882, my walk round the ram- 
 parts was only to study what uglinesses of plants liked to grow 
 in dust, and crawl, like the lizards, into clefts of ruin. 
 
 At Genoa I saw then for the first time the circular Pieta 
 by Michael Angelo, which was my initiation in all Italian art. 
 For at this time I understood no jot of Italian painting, but 
 onl^^ Rubens, Vandyke, and Velasquez. At Genoa, I did not 
 even hunt down the Vandykes, but went into the confused 
 frontage of the city at its port, (no traversing blank quay 
 blocking out the sea, then,) and drew the crescent of houses 
 round the harbor, borne on their ancient arches ; — a noble 
 subject, and one of the best sketches I ever made. 
 
 From Genoa, more happy journey by the Eastern Riviera 
 began to restore my spring of heart, I am just in time, in 
 wwiting these memories, to catch the vision of the crossing 
 Magra, in old time, and some of the other mountain streams 
 of the two Rivieras. 
 
 It seems unbelievable to myself, as I set it dowm, but there 
 were then only narrow mule bridges over the greater streams 
 on either side of which were grouped the villages, where the 
 river slackened behind its sea bar. Of course, in the large 
 towns, Albenga, Savona, Ventimiglia, and so on, there were 
 proper bridges ; but at the intermediate hamlets (and the 
 torrents round whose embouchures they grew were often 
 formidable), the country people trusted to the slack of the water 
 at the bar, and its frequent failure altogether in summer, for 
 traverse of their own carrioles : and had neither mind nor 
 
214 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 means to build Waterloo bridges for the convenience of 
 English carriages and four. The English carriage got across 
 the shingle how it could ; the boys of the village, if the horses 
 could not pull it through, harnessed themselves in front ; and 
 in wiudy weather, with deep water on the inside of the 
 bar, and blue breakers on the other, one really began some- 
 times to think of the slackening wheels of Pharaoh. 
 
 It chanced that there were two days of rain as we passed 
 the Western Kiviera ; there was a hot night at Albenga before 
 they came on, and my father wrote — which was extremely 
 wrong of him — a parody of “Woe is me, Alhama,” the refrain 
 being instead, “Woe is me, Albenga;” the Moorish minarets 
 of the old town and its Saracen legends, I suppose, having 
 brought “ the Moorish King rode up and down ” into his head. 
 Then the rain, with wild sirocco, came on ; and somewhere 
 near Savona there was a pause at the brink of one of the 
 streams, in rather angry flood, and some question if the car- 
 riage could get through. Loaded, it could not, and 
 everybody was ordered to get out and be carried across, the 
 carriage to follow, in such shifts as it might. Everybody 
 obeyed these orders, and submitted to the national customs 
 with great hilarity, except my mother, who absolutely refused 
 to be carried in the arms of an Italian ragged opera hero, 
 more or less resembling the figures wKom she had seen carry- 
 ing off into the mountains the terrified Taglioni, or Cerito. 
 Out of the carriage she would not move, on any solicitation ; 
 — -if they could pull the carriage through, they could pull her 
 too, she said. My father was alike alarmed and angry, but 
 ns the surrounding opera corps de ballet seemed to look on 
 the whole thing rather as a jest and an occasion for bajocco 
 gathering, than any crisis of fate, my mother had her way ; 
 a good team of bare-legged youngsters was put to, and she 
 and the carriage entered the stream with shouting. Two- 
 thirds through, the sand was soft, and horses and boys stopped 
 to breathe. There was another, and really now serious, re- 
 monstrance with my mother, we being all nervous about quick- 
 sands, as if it had been the middle of Lancaster Bay. But 
 stir she would not ; the horses got their wind again, and the 
 
HOME. 
 
 215 
 
 boys their way, and with much whip cracking and splashing, 
 carriage and dama Inglese were victoriously dragged to dry 
 land, with general promotion of good will between the two 
 nations. 
 
 Of the passage of Magra, a day or two afterward, my mem- 
 ory is vague as its own waves. There were all sorts of paths 
 across the tract of troubled shingle, and I was thinking of the 
 Carrara mountains beyond, all the while. Most of the streams 
 fordable easily enough ; a plank or two, loosely propped with 
 a heap of stones, for pier and buttress, replaced after every 
 storm, served the foot-passenger. The main stream could 
 neither be bridged nor forded, but was clumsily ferried, and 
 at one place my mother had no choice really but between 
 wading or being carried. She suffered the indignity, I think 
 with some feeling of its being a consequence of the French 
 Bevolution, and remained cross all the way to Carrara. 
 
 We were going on to Massa to sleep, but had time to stop 
 and walk up the dazzling white road to the lower quarry, and 
 even to look into one or two “ studios,” — beginnings of my 
 fixed contempt for rooms so called, ever since. Nevertheless, 
 partly in my father’s sense of what was kind and proper to 
 be done, — partly byway of buying “a trifle from Matlock,” — 
 and partly because he and I both liked the fancy of the 
 group, we bought a two-feet-high “Bacchus and Ariadne,” 
 copied from I know not what (we supposed classic) original, 
 and with as much art in it as usually goes to a French time- 
 piece. It remained long on a pedestal in the library at Den- 
 mark Hill, till it got smoked, and was put out of the way. 
 
 With the passage of the Magra, and the purchase of the 
 Bacchus and Ariadne, to remain for a sort of monument of 
 the two-feet high knowledge of classic art then possessed by 
 me, ended the state of mind in which my notions of sculp- 
 ture lay between Chantrey and Boubilliac. Across Magra I 
 felt that I was in Italy proper ; the next day we drove over 
 the bridge of Serchio into Lucca. 
 
 I am wrong in saying I “ felt,” then, I was in Italy proper. 
 It is only in looking back that I can mark the exact point 
 where the tide began to turn for me ; and total ignorance of 
 
216 
 
 PRMTEUITA. 
 
 what early Christian art meant, and of what living sculpture 
 meant, were first pierced by vague wonder and embarrassed 
 awe, at the new mystery round me. The effect of Lucca on 
 me at this time is now quite confused with the far greater one 
 in 1845. Not so that of the first sight of Pisa, where the so- 
 lemnity and purity of its architecture impressed me deeply ; 
 — yet chiefly in connection with Byron and Shelley. A 
 masked brother of the Misericordia first met us in the cathe- 
 dral of Lucca ; but the possible occurrence of the dark figures 
 in the open sunlight of the streets added greatly to the im- 
 aginative effect of Pisa on my then nervous and depressed 
 fancy. I drew the Spina Chapel with the Ponte-a-Mare be- 
 yond, very usefully and well ; but the languor of the muddy 
 Arno as against Reuss, or Genevoise Rhone, made me sus- 
 pect all past or future description of Italian rivers. Singu- 
 larly, I never saw Arno in full flood till 1882, nor understood 
 till then that all the rivers of Italy are mountain torrents. I 
 am ashamed, myself, to read, but feel it an inevitable duty to 
 print, the piece of diary which records my first impression of 
 Florence. 
 
 “ November 13th, 1840. I have just been walking, or 
 sauntering, in the square of the statues, the air perfectly 
 balmy ; and I shall not soon forget, I hope, the impression 
 left by this square as it opened from the river, with the enor- 
 mous mass of tower above, — or of the Duomo itself. I had 
 not expected any mass of a church, rather something grace- 
 ful, like La Salute at Venice ; and, luckily, coming on it at 
 the southeast angle, where the gallery round the dome is 
 complete, got nearly run over before I recovered from the 
 stun of the effect. Not that it is good as architecture even 
 in its own barbarous style. I cannot tell what to think of it ; 
 but the wealth of exterior marble is quite overwhelming, and 
 the motion of magnificent figure in marble and bronze about 
 the great square, thrilling. 
 
 “ Nov. 15tli. I still cannot make up my mind about this 
 place, though my present feelings are of grievous disappoint- 
 ment. The galleries, which I walked through yesterday, are 
 impressive enough ; but I had as soon be in the British Mu- 
 
HOME. 217 
 
 seum, as far as enjoyment goes, except for the Kapliaels. I 
 can understand nothing else, and not much of them” 
 
 At Florence then, this time, the Newgate -like palaces were 
 rightly hateful to me ; the old shop and market streets right- 
 ly pleasant ; the inside of the Duomo a horror, the outside 
 a Chinese puzzle. All sacred art, — frescoes, tempera, wdiat 
 not, mere zero, as they were to the Italians themselves ; 
 the country round, dead wall and dusty olive ; — the whole, 
 a provocation and weariness, except for one master, M. An- 
 gelo. 
 
 I saw at once in him that there w^as emotion and human 
 life, more than in the Greeks ; and a severity and meaning 
 which were not in Rubens. Eveiybody about me swearing 
 that Michael Angelo was the finest thing in the world, I was 
 extremely proud of being pleased with him ; confirmed great- 
 ly in my notion of my own infallibility, and with help of 
 Rogers in the Lorenzo Chapel, and long sittings and stand- 
 ings about the Bacchus in the XJfnzii, progressed greatly and 
 vitally in Michael-Angelesque directions. But I at once pro- 
 nounced the knife-grinder in the Tribune a vulgar nuisance, 
 as I do still ; the Venus de Medicis, an uninteresting little 
 person ; Raphael’s St. John, a piece of black bombast ; and 
 the Ufiizii collection in general, an unbecoming medley, got 
 together by people who knew nothing, and cared less than 
 nothing,^ about the arts. On the wLole, when I last wailk- 
 ed through the Ufiizii, in 1882, I was precisely of the same 
 opinion, and proud of having arrived at it so quickly. It >vas 
 not to be expected of me at that time to like either Angelico 
 or Botticelli ; and if I had, the upper corridor of the Ufiizii 
 was an entirely vile and contemptible place wherein to see 
 the great Madonna of the one, or the Venus Marina of the 
 other. Both were then in the outer passage from the en- 
 trance to the Tribune. 
 
 These conclusions being comfortably arrived at, I sate my- 
 self dowm in the middle of the Ponte Vecchio, and made 
 
 * That is, cared the wrong way, — liked them for their meanest skills, 
 and worst uses. 
 
218 
 
 mjETmiTA, 
 
 a very true and valuable sketch of the general perspective 
 of its shops and the buildings beyond, looking toward the 
 Duomo. I seem to have had time or will for no more in 
 Florence ; the Mercato Vecchio was too crowded to work in, 
 and the carving of the Duomo could not be disengaged from 
 its color. Hopeful, but now somewhat doubtful, of finding 
 things more to our mind in the south, we drove through the 
 Porta Eomana. 
 
 Siena, Eadicofani, Viterbo, and the fourth day, Eome ; — a 
 gloomy journey, with gloomier rests. I had a bad weary 
 headache at Siena ; and the cathedral seemed to me every 
 way absurd — over-cut, over-striped, over-crocketed, overga- 
 bled, a piece of costly confectionery, and faithless vanity. In 
 the main it is so : the power of Siena was in her old cathe- 
 dral, her Edward the Confessor’s Westminster. Is the ruin 
 of it yet spared ? 
 
 The volcanic desert of Eadicofani, with gathering storm, 
 and an ominously .dDolian keyhole in a vile inn, remained 
 long to all of us a terrific memory. At Viterbo I was better, 
 and made a sketch of the convent on one side of the square, 
 rightly felt and done. On the fourth day papa and mamma 
 observed with triumph, though much worried by the jolting, 
 that every mile nearer Eome the road got worse ! 
 
 My stock of Latin learning, with which to begin my studies 
 of the city, consisted of the two first books of Livy, never 
 well known, and the names of places remembered without 
 ever looking where they were on a map ; Juvenal, a page 
 or two of Tacitus, and in Virgil the burning of Troy, the story 
 of Dido, the episode of Euryalus, and the last battle. Of 
 course, I had nominally read the whole “.®neid,” but thought 
 most of it nonsense. Of later Eoman history, I had read 
 English abstracts of the imperial vices, and supposed the 
 malaria in the Campagna to be the consequence of the Papacy. 
 I had never heard of a good Eoman emperor, or a good pope ; 
 was not quite sure whether Trajan lived before Christ or 
 after, and would have thanked, with a sense of relieved satis- 
 faction, anybody who might have told me that Marcus Anto- 
 ninus was a Eoman philosopher contemporary with Socrates. 
 
ROME. 
 
 219 
 
 The first sight of St. Peter’s dome, twenty miles away, w'as 
 little more to any of us than the apparition of a gray mile- 
 stone, announcing twenty miles yet of stony road before rest. 
 The first sluggish reach of Tiber, with its mud shore and 
 ochreous water, was a quite vile and saddening sight to me, 
 — as compared witli breezy tide of Thames, seen from Nanny 
 Ciowsley’s. The Piazza del Popolo was as familiar to me, 
 from paintings, as Clieapside, and much less interesting. "Wo 
 went, of course, to some hotel in the Piazza di Spagna, and I 
 went to bed tired and sulky at finding myself in a big street- 
 of a big modern town, with nothing to draw, and no end ol 
 things to be bothered with. Next da}% waking refreshed, of 
 course I said, “I am in Rome,” after Mr. Rogers ; and acconn 
 panied papa and mamma, with a tinge of curiosity, to St. 
 Peter’s. 
 
 Most people and books had told me I should be disap- 
 pointed in its appearance of size. But I have not vainly 
 boasted my habit and faculty of measuring magnitudes, and 
 there was no question to me how big it was. The characters 
 I was not prepared for were the clumsy dulness of the facade, 
 and the entirely vile taste and vapid design of the interior. 
 We walked round it, saw the mosaic copies of pictures we did 
 not care for, the pompous tombs of people whose names we 
 did not know, got out to the fresh air and fountains again 
 with infinite sense of relief, and never again went near the 
 place, any of us, except to hear music, or see processions and 
 paraphernalia. 
 
 So we went home to lunch, and of course drove about the 
 town in the afternoon, and saw the Forum, Coliseum, and 
 so on. I had no distinct idea wFat the Forum was or ever 
 had been, or how the three pillars, or the seven, were connect- 
 ed with it, or the Arch of Severus, standing without any road 
 underneath, or the ragged block of buildings above, with 
 their tower of the commonest possible eighteenth century 
 t}^pe. There was, however, one extreme good in all this, that 
 I saw things, with whatever faculty was in me, exactly /or 
 what they were ; and though my religious instruction, as afore- 
 said, led me to suppose the malaria in the Campagna was the 
 
220 
 
 PBJETEBITA. 
 
 consequence of the Papacy, that did not in the least affect my 
 '’lear and invincible perception that the outline of Soracte 
 was good, and the outlines of tufo and pozzolana foregrounds 
 bad, whether it was Papal or Protestant pozzolana. What 
 the Forum or Capitol had been, I did not in the least care ; 
 the pillars of the Forum I saw were on a small scale, and their 
 capitals rudely carved, and the houses above them nothing 
 like so interesting as the side of any close in the “ Auld toun ” 
 of Edinburgh. 
 
 Having ascertained these general facts about the city and 
 its ruins, I had to begin my gallery work. Of course all the 
 great religious paintings, Perugino’s antechamber, Angelico’s 
 chapel, and the whole lower story of the Sistine, were entirely 
 useless to me. No soul ever bade me look at them, and I 
 had no sense yet to find them out for myself. Eveiybody 
 told me to look at the roof of the Sistine chapel, and I liked it ; 
 but eveiybody also told me to look at Raphael’s “Transfigura- 
 tion,” and Domenichino’s “St. Jerome which also I did at- 
 tentively, as I was bid, and pronounced — without the smallest 
 hesitation — Domenichino’s a bad picture, and Raphael’s an 
 ugly one ; and thenceforward paid no more attention to what 
 anybody said (unless I happened to agree with it) on the sub- 
 ject of painting. 
 
 Sir Joshua’s verdict on the “ Stanze ” was a different matter, 
 and I studied them long and carefull}', admitting at once that 
 there was more in them than I was the least able to see or 
 understand, but decisively ascertaining that they could not 
 give me the least pleasure, and contained a mixture of Pagan- 
 ism and Papacy wholly inconsistent with the religious in- 
 struction I had received in Walworth. 
 
 Having laid these foundations of future study, I never 
 afterward had occasion seriously to interfere with them. Do- 
 menichino is always spoken of — as long as, in deference to 
 Sir Joshua, I name him at all — as an entirely bad painter ; 
 the “Stanze,” as never giving, or likely to give, anybody in a 
 healthy state of mind, — that is to say, desirous of knowing 
 what sibyls were really like, or how a Greek conceived the 
 Muses, — the slightest pleasure ; and the opposition of the 
 
ROME. 
 
 221 
 
 Parnassus to the Disputa, shown, in the Stones of Venice,”* 
 to foretell the fall of Catholic Theology. 
 
 Tlie main wonders of Rome thus taken stock of, and the 
 coarse of minor sight-seeing begun, we thought it time to 
 present a letter of introduction which Henry Acland had given 
 me to Mr. Joseph Severn. 
 
 Although in the large octavo volume containing the Avorks 
 of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, Avhich so often lay on my 
 niclie-table at Herne Hill, the Keats part had never attracted 
 me, and always puzzled, I had got quite enough perception 
 of his natural j^ower, and felt enough regret for his death, 
 to make me wait with reverence on his guardian friend. I 
 forget exactly Avhere Mr. Severn lived at that time, but his 
 door was at the right of the lauding at the top of a long flight 
 of squarely reverting stair, — broad, to about the span of an 
 English lane that would allow two carts to pass ; and broad- 
 stepped also, its gentle incline attained by some three inches 
 of fall to a foot of flat. Up this I was advancing slowly, — it 
 being forbidden ms ever to strain breath, — and Avas Avithiu 
 eighteen or twenty steps of Mr. Severn’s door, Avhen it opened, 
 and two gentlemen came out, closed it behind them Avith an 
 expression of excluding the Avoiid for evermore from that side 
 of the house, and began to descend the stairs to meet me, 
 liolding to my left. One Avas a rather short, rubicund, se- 
 renely beaming person ; the other, not much taller, but paler, 
 Avith a beautifully modelled forehead, and extremely vivid, 
 though kind, dark eyes. 
 
 They looked hard at me as they passed, but in my usual 
 shyness, and also because I have held it a first principle of 
 manners not to waylay people ; — above all, not to stop them 
 Avhen they are going out, I made no sign, and leaving them 
 to descend the reverting stair in peace, climbed, at still slack- 
 ening pace, the remaining steps to Mr. Severn’s door, and left 
 
 * I have authorized the republicatioii of this book in its original text 
 and form, chietij for the sake of its clear, and the reader will Und, 
 wholly incontrovertible, statement of the deadly influence of Benais- 
 sauce Theology on the Arts in Italy, and on the religion of the World, 
 
222 
 
 PR^^TERITA. 
 
 my card and letter of introduction with the servant, who told me 
 he had just gone out. His dark-eyed companion was George 
 Eichmond, to whom, also, Acland had given me a letter. 
 Both Mr. Severn and he came immediately to see us. M}* 
 father and mother’s quiet out-of-the-wayness at first interest- 
 ed, soon pleased, and at last won them, so completel}", that 
 before Christmas came, out of all people in Eome they chose 
 us to eat their Christmas dinner vdth. Much more for my 
 father’s sake and mother’s, than mine ; not that they w^ere un- 
 interested in me also, but as my ways of out-of-the-wayness 
 were by no means quiet, but perpetually firing up under their 
 feet in little splutters and spitfires of the most appalling 
 heresy ; and those not only troublesome in immediate cackle, 
 but carried out into steady, and not always refutable, objec- 
 tion to nearly everything sacred in their sight, of the auto- 
 cratic masters and authentic splendors of Eome, their di- 
 alogues with me were apt to resolve themselves into delicate 
 disguises of necessary reproof ; and even with my father and 
 mother, into consultation as to what was best to be done to 
 bring me to anything like a right mind. The old people’s con- 
 fidence in them had been unbounded from the first, in conse- 
 quence of Mr. Severn’s having said to Mr. Eichmond when they 
 met me on the stairs, “What a poetical countenance!” — and 
 my recently fanatical misbehavior in the affair of the Harlech, 
 coupled with my now irrepressible impertinences to Eaphael 
 and Domenichino, began to give me in my parents’ eyes 
 something of the distant aspect of the Prodigal Son. 
 
 The weight of adverse authority which I had thus to sup- 
 port was soon increased by the zeal of Mr. Eichmond’s young- 
 er brother, Tom, whom I found, on the first occasion of my 
 visiting them in their common studio, eagerly painting a .torso 
 with shadows of smalt blue, which, it was explained to me, 
 w^ere afterward to be glazed so as to change into the flesh 
 color of Titian. As I did not at that time see an}dhing par- 
 ticular in the flesh color of Titian, and did not see the shght- 
 est probability — if there were — of its being imitable by that 
 process, here wvas at once another chasm of separation opened 
 between my friends and me, virtually never closed to the 
 
HOME. 
 
 223 
 
 end of time ; and in its immediately volcanic effect, decisive of 
 the manner in which I spent the rest of my time in Rome and 
 Italy. For, making up my mind thenceforward that the sen- 
 timent of Raphael and tints of Titian were alike bej^ond me, 
 if not wholly out of my way ; and that the sculpture galleries 
 of the Vatican were mere bewilderment and worry, I took the 
 bit in my teeth, and proceeded to sketch what I could find in 
 Rome to represent in my own v/ay, bringing in primarity, — 
 by way of defiance to Raphael, Titian, and the Apollo Belvi- 
 dere all in one, — a careful study of old clothes hanging out of 
 old windows in the Jews’ quarter. 
 
 The gauntlet being thus thrown, the two Mr. Richmonds 
 and my father had nothing for it but to amuse themselves 
 as best they could wdth my unclassical efforts, not, taken on 
 my own terms, without interest. I did the best I could for 
 the Forum, in a careful general view ; a study of the aque- 
 ducts of the Cainpagna from St. John Lateran, and of the 
 Aventine from the Ponte Rotto, were extremely pleasant to 
 most beholders ; and at last even Mr. Richmond was so far 
 mollified as to ask me to draw the street of the Trinita di 
 Monte for him, with which he had many ha23py associations. 
 There w^as another practical chance for me in life at this crisis, 
 — I might have made the most precious records of all the 
 cities in Italy. But all my chances of being anything but 
 what I am were thrown a\vay, or broken short, one after 
 another. An entirely" mocking and mirage-colored one, as it 
 seemed then, yet became, many a year later, a great and beau- 
 tiful influence on my life. 
 
 Between my Protestantism and, as Tom Richmond rightly 
 called it, Proutism, I had now abjured Roman shows alto- 
 gether, and was equally rude and restive, whether I was asked 
 to go to a church, a palace, or a gallery, — when papa and 
 mamma began to perceive some dawn of docility in me about 
 going to hear musical church services. This they naturally 
 attributed to my native taste for Gregorian chants, and my 
 increasing aptitude for musical composition. But the fact 
 was, that at services of this kind there was always a chance of 
 seeing, at intervals, above the bowed heads of the Italian 
 
224 : 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 crowd, for an instant or two before she also stooped — or 
 sometimes, eminent in her grace above a stunted group of 
 them, — a fair English girl, who was not only the admitted 
 Queen of beauty in the English circle of that winter in Eome, 
 but v/as so, in the kind of beauty which I had only hitherto 
 dreamed of as possible, but never yet seen living : statuesque 
 severity with womanly sweetness joined. I don’t think I ever 
 succeeded in getting nearer than within fifty yards of her; 
 but she was the light and solace of all the Eoman winter to 
 me, in the mere chance glimpses of her far away, and the hope 
 of them. 
 
 Meantime, my father, to whom our Roman physician had 
 given an encouraging report of me, recovered some of his 
 natural cheerfulness, and enjoyed, with his niece, who if not 
 an enthusiastic, was an indefatigable and attentive sight- 
 seeker and seer, everything that Rome had to show; the 
 musical festas especially, whenever his cross-grained boy con- 
 sented, for Miss Tollemache’s secret sake, to go with him ; 
 while Mr. Severn and George Richmond became every day 
 more kindly — nor, w'e felt, without real pleasure to them- 
 selves — helpful to us all. No habitue of the brightest circles 
 of present London society will doubt the privilege we had in 
 better and better knowing George Richmond. But there is 
 nothing in any circle that ever I saw or heard of, like what 
 Mr. Joseph Severn then was in Rome. He understood every- 
 body, native and foreign, civil and ecclesiastic, in what was 
 nicest in them, and never saw anything else than the nicest ; 
 or saw what other people got angry about as only a humoious 
 part of the nature of things. It w^as the nature of things 
 that the Pope should be at St. Peter’s, and the beggars on 
 the Pincian steps. He forgave the Pope his papacy, rever- 
 enced the beggar’s beard, and felt that alike the steps of the 
 Pincian, and the Araceli, and the Lateran, and the Capitol, 
 led to heaven, and everybody was going up, somehow ; but 
 might be happy where they were in the meantime. Lightly 
 sagacious, lovingly humorous, daintily sentimental, he was in 
 council with the cardinals to-day, and at picnic in Campagna 
 with the brightest English belles to-morrow ; and caught the 
 
CUM.K 
 
 225 
 
 hearts of all in tlie golden net of his good will and good un- 
 derstanding, as if life were but for him the rippling chant of 
 his favorite song, — 
 
 Gente, e qui Fuccellatore.” 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CUM^. 
 
 In my needful and fixed resolve to set the facts down con- 
 tinuously, leaving the reader to his refiections on them, I am 
 slipping a little too fast over the surfaces of things ; and it 
 becomes at this point desirable that I should know, or at least 
 try to guess, something of what the reader’s reflections are! 
 and whether in the main he is getting at the sense of the facts 
 I tell him. 
 
 Does he think me a lucky or unlucky youth, I wonder? 
 Commendable, on the whole, and exemplary — or the reverse? 
 Of promising gifts — or merely glitter of morning, to pass at 
 noon ? I ask him at this point, because several letters from 
 pleased acquaintances have announced to me, of late, that 
 they have obtained quite new lights upon my character from 
 these jottings, and like me much better than they ever did 
 before. Which was not the least the effect I intended to pro- 
 duce on them ; and which moreover is the exact opposite of 
 the effect on my own mind of meeting myself, by turning 
 back, face to face. 
 
 On the contrary, I suffer great pain, and shame, in perceiv- 
 ing 'vvith better knowledge the little that I was, and the much 
 that I lost — of time, cliance, and — duty, (a duty missed is the 
 worst of loss) ; and I cannot in the least understand what iny 
 acquaintances have found, in anything hitherto told them of 
 my childhood, more amiable than they might have guessed of 
 the author of “Time and Tide,” or “ Unto This Last.” The 
 real fact being, whatever they make of it, that hitherto, and 
 for a year or two on, yet, I was simply a little floppy and 
 15 
 
226 
 
 PBJSTERITA, 
 
 soppy tadpole, — little more than a stomacli with a tail to it, \ 
 flattening and wriggling itself up the crystal ripples and in J 
 the pure sands of the spring-head of youth. 
 
 But there were always good eyes in me, and a good habit 
 of keeping head up stream ; and now the time was coming 
 when I began to think about helping princesses by fetching 
 up their balls from the bottom ; when I got a sudden glimpse 
 of myself in the true shape of me, extremely startling and 
 discouraging : — here, in Rome it was, toward the Christmas 
 time. 
 
 Among the living Roman arts of which polite travellers 
 were expected to carry specimens home with them, one of 
 the prettiest used to be the cutting cameos out of pink shells. 
 
 We bought, according to custom, some coquillage of Gods 
 and Graces ; but the cameo cutters were also skilful in mortal 
 portraiture, and papa and mamma, still expectant of my future 
 greatness, resolved to have me carved in cameo. 
 
 I had always been content enough with my front face in the 
 glass, and had never thought of contriving vision of the pro- 
 file. The cameo finished, I saw at a glance to be well cut ; 
 but the image it gave of me was not to my mind. I did not 
 analyze its elements at the time, but should now describe it 
 as a George the Third’s penny, with a halfpenny worth of 
 George the Fourth, the pride of Amurath the Fifth, and the 
 temper of eight little Lucifers in a swept lodging. 
 
 Now I knew myself proud ; yes, and of late, sullen ; but did 
 not in the least recognize pride or sulkiness for leading faults 
 of my nature. On the contrary, I knew myself wholly rever- 
 ent to all real greatness, and wholly good-humored — when I 
 got my own way. What more can you expect of average boy, 
 or beast ? 
 
 And it seemed hard to me that only the excrescent faults, 
 and by no means the constant capacities, should be set forth, 
 carved by the petty justice of the practical cameo. Con- 
 cerning which, as also other later portraits of me, I will be 
 thus far proud as to tell the disappointed spectator, once for 
 all, that the main good of my face, as of my life, is in the 
 eyes, — and only in those, seen near ; that a very dear and 
 
CUMjE. 
 
 227 
 
 wise Frencli friend also told me, a long while after this, that 
 the lips, though not Apolline, were kind : the George the 
 Third and Fourth character I recognize very definitely among 
 my people, as already noticed in my cousin George of Croy- 
 don ; and of the shape of head, fore and aft, I have my own 
 opinions, but do not think it time, yet, to tell them. 
 
 I think it, however, quite time to say a little more fully, 
 not only what happened to me, now of age, but what was in 
 mo : to which end I permit a passage or two out of my diary, 
 written for the first time this year wholly for my own use, 
 and note of things I saw and thought ; and neither to please 
 papa, nor to be printed, — with corrections, — b}' IVIi*. Harri- 
 son. 
 
 1 see, indeed, in turning the old leaves, that I have been 
 a little too morose in my record of impressions on the 
 Eiviera. Here is a page more pleasant, giving first sight of a 
 place afterward much important in my life — the promontory 
 of Sestri di Levan te. 
 
 “ Sestri, Nov. 4th (1840). Very wet all morning ; merely 
 able to get the four miles to this most lovely village, the 
 clouds drifting like smoke from the hills, and hanging in 
 wreaths about tlie white churches on their woody slopes. 
 Kept in hero till three, then the clouds broke, and we got up 
 the woody promontory that overhangs the village. The 
 clouds were rising gradually from the Apennines, fragments 
 entangled here and there in the ravines catching the level 
 sunlight like so many tongues of fire ; the dark blue outline 
 of the hills clear as crystal against a pale distant purity of 
 green sky, the sun touching here and there upon their turfy 
 precipices, and the white, square villages along the gulf 
 gleaming like silver to the northwest; — a mass of higher 
 mountain, plunging down into broad valleys dark with olive, 
 their summits at first gray with rain, then deep blue with fij^- 
 ing showers — the sun suddenly catching the near woods at 
 their base, already colored exquisitely by the autumn, wdth 
 such a burst of robing, — penetrating, glow as Turner only 
 could even imagine, set off by the gray storm behind. To 
 Che south, an expanse of sea, varied by refiection of white 
 
22S 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 Alpine cloud, and delicate lines of most pure blue, tlie low sun 
 sending its line of light — forty miles long — from the horizon ; 
 the surges dashing far below against rocks of black marble, 
 and lines of foam drifting back with the current into the 
 open sea. Overhead, a group of dark Italian pine and ever- 
 green oak, with such lovely ground about their roots as we 
 have in the best bits of the islands of Derwentwater. This 
 continued till near sunset, when a tall double rainbow rose to 
 the east over the fiery woods, and as tlie sun sank, the storm 
 of falling rain on the mountains became suddenly purple— 
 nearly crimson ; the rainbow, its hues scarcely traceable, one 
 broad belt of crimson, the clouds above all fire. The whole 
 scene such as can only come once or twice in a lifetime.” 
 
 I see that we got to Rome on a Saturday, November 28th. 
 The actual first entry next morning is, perhaps, worth keep- 
 ing : 
 
 “Nov. 29th, Sunday. A great fuss about Pope officiating 
 in the Sistine Chapel — Advent Sunday. Got into a crowd, 
 and made myself very uncomfortable for nothing : no music 
 wortli hearing, a little mummery with Pope and dirty car- 
 dinals. Outside and west facade of St. Peter’s certainly very 
 fine : the inside would make a nice ball-room, but is good 
 for notliing else.” 
 
 “Nov. 30th. Drove up to the Capitol — a filthy, melain 
 ’I choly-looking, rubbish}'’ place ; and down to the Forum, 
 which is certainly a very good sul>ject ; and then a little far- 
 ^ ther on, among quantities of bricks and rubbish, till I was 
 quite sick.” 
 
 V/ith disgust, I meant ; but from December 20th to 25th I 
 had a qualm of real fever, which it was a wonder came to no 
 worse. On the 30th I am afoot again ; thus : — 
 
 “I have been walking backward and forward on the 
 Pincian, being unable to do anything else since this con- 
 founded illness, and trying to find out why every imaginable 
 delight palls so very rapidly on even the keenest feelings. I 
 had all Rome before me ; towers, cupolas, cypresses, and 
 palaces mingled in every possible grouping ; a light Decem- 
 berish mist, mixed with the slightest vestige of wood smoke, 
 
CUM^. 
 
 229 
 
 hovering between the distances, and giving beautiful gray 
 outlines of every form between the eye and the sun ; and 
 over the rich evergreen oaks of the Borghese gardens, a 
 range of Apennine, with one principal pyramid of pure snow, 
 like a piece of sudden comet-light fallen on the earth. It was 
 not like moonlight, nor like sunlight, but as soft as the one, 
 and as powerful as the other. And yet, with all this around 
 me, I could not feel it. I was as tired of my walk, and as 
 glad when I thought I had done duty, as ever on the Norwood 
 ro-xl.” 
 
 There was a girl walking up and down with some chil- 
 dren, her light cap prettily set on very well dressed hair: of 
 whose country I had no doubt ; long before I heard her 
 complain to one of her charges, who was jabbering English as 
 fast as the fountain tinkled on the other side of the road, 
 “Qu’elle n’en comprenait pas un mot.” This girl after two 
 or three turns sat down beside another bonne. There they 
 sate laughing and chattering, with the expression of perfect 
 happiness on their faces, thinking no more of the Alpine 
 heights behind them, or the city beneath them, than of Con- 
 stantinople ; while I, with every feeling raised, I should think 
 to a great degree above theirs, was in a state of actually 
 severe mental pain, because I could perceive materials of 
 the highest pleasure around me, and felt the time hang heavy 
 on my hands. Here is the pride, you perceive, good reader, 
 and the sullens — dum pituita molestat — both plain enough. 
 But it is no lofty pride in which I say my feelings'’ w^ere 
 raised above the French bonne's. Very solemnly, I did not 
 think myself a better creature than she, nor so good ; but 
 only I knew there was a link between far Soracte and me, — 
 najg even between unseen Voltur and me, — which was not 
 between her and them ; and meant a wider, earthly, if not 
 heavenly, horizon, under the birth-star. 
 
 Meantime, beneath the hill, my mother knitted, as cjuietly 
 as if she had been at home, in the corner of the great Roman 
 room in which she cared for nothing but the cleanliness, as 
 distinguishing it from the accommodation of provincial inns ; 
 and the days turned, and it was time to think of the journey 
 
230 
 
 PRJSTERITA. 
 
 to Naples, before any of us were tired of Kome. And simple 
 cousin Mary, whom I never condescended to ask for either 
 sympathy or opinion, was really making better use of her 
 Homan days than any of us. She was a sound, plain musi- 
 cian ; (having been finished by Moscheles) ; attended to the 
 church orchestras carefully, read her guide-books accurately, 
 knew always where she was, and in her sincere religion, con- 
 quered her early Puritanism to the point of reverently visit- 
 ing St. Paul’s grave and St. Cecilia’s house, and at last going 
 up the Scala Santa on her knees, like any good girl of Kome. 
 
 So passed the days, till there was spring sunshine in the 
 air as we climbed the Alban mount, and went down into the ra- 
 vine under La Kiccia, afterward described in perhaps the 
 oftenest quoted passage of ‘^Modern Painters.” The diary 
 says : A hollow with another village on the hill opposite, a 
 
 most elegant and finished group of church tower and roof, 
 descending by delicate upright sprigs^ of tree into a dark 
 rich-toned depth of ravine, out of which rose nearer, and clear 
 against its shade, a gray wall of rock, an absolute miracle for 
 blending of bright lichenous color.” 
 
 With a few sentences more, to similar effect, and then a bit 
 of Pontine marsh description, dwelling much on the moving 
 points of the “ black cattle, ■white gulls, black, bristly high- 
 bred swine, and birds of all sorts, w^aders and dippers innu- 
 merable.” It is very interesting, at least to myself, to find 
 how, so early as this, while I never drew anything but in 
 pencil outline, I saw everything first in color, as it ought to 
 be seen. 
 
 I must give room to the detail of the day from Mola to 
 Naples, because it shows, to proof enough, the constant watch- 
 fulness upon which the statements in “ Modern Painters ” | 
 were afterward founded, though neither that nor any other 
 book had yet been dreamed of, and I wrote only to keep ; 
 memory of things seen, for what good might come of the 
 memory anyhow. 
 
 * I have substituted this word for a sketch like the end of a broom, 
 which would convey no idea to anybody but myself. 
 
CUMM. 
 
 231 
 
 “ Naples, January 9tli (1841). Dressed yesterday at Mola 
 by a window commanding a misty sunrise over the sea — a 
 grove of oranges sloping down to the beach, flushed with its 
 light ; Gaeta opposite, glittering along its promontory. Ran 
 out to terrace at side of the house, a leaden bit of roof, with 
 pots of orange and Indian fig. There was a range of Skiddaw- 
 like mountains rising from the shore, the ravines just like 
 those of Saddleback, or the west side of Skiddaw ; the higher 
 parts bright with fresh-fallen snow ; the highest, misty with 
 a touch of soft white, swift * cloud. Nearer, they softened 
 into green, bare masses of hill, like Malvern, but with their 
 tops covered with olives and lines of vine, — the village of Mola 
 showing its white walls and level roofs above the olives, with 
 a breath of blue smoke floating above them, and a long range 
 of distant hills running out into the sea beyond. The air was 
 fresh, and yet so pure and soft, and so full of perfume from 
 the orange trees below the terrace, that it seemed more like 
 an early summer morning than January. It got soon threat- 
 ening, however, though the sun kept with us as we drove 
 through the village ; — confined streets, but bright and varied, 
 down to the shore, and then under the slopes of the snowy 
 precipice, now thoroughly dazzling with the risen sun, and be- 
 ' tween hedges of tall myrtle, into the plain of Garigliano. A 
 heavy rain-cloud raced *j- us the ten miles, and stooped over 
 us, stealing the blue sky inch by inch, till it had left only a 
 strip of amber-blue J behind the Apennines, the near hills 
 thrown into deep dark purple shade, the snow behind them, 
 first blazing — the only strong light in the picture — then in 
 shade, dark against the pure sky ; the gray above, warm and 
 lurid — a little w’ashed with rain in parts ; below, a copse of 
 wdllow coming against the dark purples, nearly pure Indian 
 
 * Note tlie instatit marking the 'pace of the cloud, — the work of Coeli 
 Enarrant having been begun practically years before this. See beloW 
 also of the rain-cloud. 
 
 I This distinct approach, or chase, by rain-cloud is opposed, ic my 
 last lectures on sky, to the (lathering of rain-cloud all through the air, 
 under the influence of plague wind. 
 
 f Palest transparent blue passing into gold. 
 
232 
 
 PB^TEBITA, 
 
 yellow, a little touched with red. Then came a lovely bit of 
 aqueduct, with coats of shattered mosaic, the hills seen 
 through its arches, and pieces of bright green meadow mix- 
 ing with the yellov/ of the willows. At Capua, detained by a 
 rascally Dogana, — we had one at Garigliano as well, howling 
 beggars all about (Caffe del Gigiio d’Oro), one ape of a creat- 
 ure clinging with its legs about another’s neck, and chopping 
 its jaws with its fists. Hence a dead flat of vines hanging 
 from elms, and road perfectly straight, and cut utterly up by 
 a deluge of rain. I was quite tired as it grew dark, frag- 
 ments of blue and amber sky showing through colossal thun- 
 der clouds, and two or three pure stars laboring among the 
 dark masses. It lightened fast as we got into Naples, and 
 w'e were stopped again, first by Dogana, and then at passport 
 office, till I lost temper and patience, and could have cried 
 like a girl, for I was quite wearied with the bad roads, and 
 disappointed with the approach to Naples, and cold. I could 
 not help wondering at this. How little could I have imag- 
 ined, sitting in my home corner, yearning for a glance of the 
 hill snow, or the orange leaf, that I should, at entering Naples, 
 be as thoroughly out of humor as ever after a monotonous 
 day in London. More so ! ” 
 
 For full ten years, since earliest geologic reading, I had 
 thoroughly known the structure and present look of Vesuvius 
 and Monte Somma ; nor had “ Friendship’s Offering ” and 
 “ Forget-me-not,” in the days of the Bandit Leoni, left me 
 without useful notions of the Bay of Naples. But the beau- 
 tiful forms of Monte St. Angelo and Capri were new to me,, 
 and the first feeling of being in the presence of the power 
 and mystery of the under earth, unspeakably solemn ; though 
 Vesuvius was virtually in repose, and the slow' changes in the 
 heaped white cloud above the crater were only like those of a 
 thunder cloud. 
 
 The first sight of the Alps had been to me as a direct rev- 
 elation of the benevolent wull in creation. Long since, in the 
 volcanic powers of destruction, I had been taught by Homer, 
 and further forced by my own reason, to see, if not the per- 
 sonality of an Evil Spirit, at all events the permitted sym- 
 
‘CUMM. 
 
 23.3 
 
 bol of evil, unredeemed ; wholly distinct from the conditions 
 of storm, or heat, or frost, on which the healthy courses of 
 organic life depended. In the same literal way in which the 
 snows and Alpine roses of Lauterbrunnen were visible Par- 
 adise, here, in tlie valley of ashes and throat of lava, were vis- 
 ible Heli. If thus in the natural, how else should it be in 
 the spiritual, world? 
 
 I had never yet read a line of Dante. From the moment 
 when I knew the words, — 
 
 “It now is evening there, where buried lies 
 The body in which I cast a sliade, removed 
 To Naples from Briindusium’s wall,” 
 
 not Naples onty, but Italy, became forever flushed with the 
 sacred twilight of them. But even now, what pieces I knew 
 of Virgil, in that kind, became all at once true, when I saw 
 the birdless lake ; for me also, the voice of it had teaching 
 which was to be practically a warning law of future life : — 
 
 “ Nec te 
 
 Nequidquam lucis Hecate prsefecit Avernis.” 
 
 The legends became true , — began to come true, I should 
 have said, — trains of thought now first rising which did not 
 take clear current till forty years afterward ; and in this first 
 trickling, sorrowful in disappointment, “There were such 
 places then, and Sybils did live in them ! — but is this all ? ” 
 
 Frightful enough, yes, the spasmodic ground— the boiling- 
 sulphur lake— the Dog’s grotto with its floor a foot deep in 
 poisoned air that could be stirred with the hand. Awful, but 
 also for the Delphi of Italy, ignoble. And all that was fairest 
 in the w^hole sweep of isle and sea, I saw, as was already my 
 wont, with precise note of its faults. 
 
 The common English traveller, if he can gather a black 
 bunch of grapes with his own fingers, and have his bottle of 
 Falernian brought him by a girl with black eyes, asks no 
 more of this world, nor the next ; and declares Naples a 
 Paradise, But I knew, from the first moment when my foot 
 furrowed volcanic ashes, that no mountain form or color could 
 
234 
 
 PB^TEELTA, 
 
 exist in perfection wlien everything was made of scoria, and 
 that blue sea was to be little boasted if it broke on black 
 sand. And I saw also, with really wise anger, the horror of 
 neglect in the governing power, which Mr. Gladstone found, 
 forsooth, in the Neapolitan prisons ! but which neither he 
 nor any other Englishman, so far as I know,' except Byron 
 and I, saw to have made the Apennines one prison wall, and 
 all the modern life of Italy one captivity of shame and crime ; 
 alike against the honor of her ancestors, and the kindness of 
 her God. 
 
 With these strong insights into the faults of others, there 
 came also at Naples, I am thankful to say, some stroke of 
 volcanic lightning on my own. Tbe sense of the uselessness 
 of all Naples and its gulf to me, in my then state of illness 
 and gloom, was borne in upon me with reproach : the chrysa- 
 lid envelope began to tear itself open here and there to some 
 purpose, and I bade farewell to the last outlines of Monte St. 
 Angelo as they faded in the south, with dim notions of better- 
 ing my ways in future. 
 
 At Mola di Gaeta we stopped a whole day that I might go 
 back to draw the castle of Itri. It was hinted darkly to us 
 that Itri was of no good repute ; we disdained all imputa- 
 tions on such a lovely place, and drove back there for a day’s 
 rambling. While I drew, my mother and Mary went at their 
 own sweet wills up and down ; Maiy had by this time, at 
 school and on the road, made herself mistress of sjdlables 
 enough to express some sympathy with any contadina who 
 wore a pretty cap, or carried a pretty baby ; and, the appear- 
 ance of English women being rare at Itri, the contadine were 
 ])leased, and everything that was amiable to mamma and 
 Mary. I made an excellent sketch, and we returned in exulta- 
 tion to the orange-groves of Mola. AVe afterward heard that 
 the entire population of Itri consisted of banditti, and never 
 troubled ourselves about banditti any more. 
 
 We stopped at Albano for the Sunday, and I went out in 
 tlie morning for a walk through its ilex groves with my father 
 and mother and Mary. For some time back, the little cough 
 briuging blood had not troubled me, and I had been taking 
 
CUM^, 
 
 235 
 
 longer walks and otherwise counting on comparative safety, 
 when here suddenly, in the gentle morning saunter through 
 the shade, the cough came back — with a little darker stain on 
 the handkerchief than usual. I sat down on a bank by the 
 roadside, and my father’s face w^as very grave. 
 
 We got quietly back to the inn, where he found some sort 
 of light carriole disposable, and set out, himself, to fetch the 
 doctor from Rome. 
 
 It has alv^^ays been one of the great shadows of thought to 
 me, to fancy my father’s feelings as he was driven that day 
 those eighteen miles across the Campagna. 
 
 Good Dr. Gloag comforted him, and returned wdth him. 
 But there was nothing new to be done, nor said. Such 
 chance attack was natural in the spring, he said, only I must 
 be cautious for a while. My mother never lost her courage 
 for an instant. Next day we w^ent on to Rome, and it was the 
 last time the cougli ever troubled me. 
 
 The weather -was tine at Easter, and I saw the Benediction, 
 and sate in the open air of twilight opposite the castle of St. 
 Angelo, and saw the dome-linea kindle on St. Peter’s, and the 
 castle veil the sky with flying fire. Bearing with me from 
 that last night in Rome many tlioughts that ripened slowly 
 afterward, cliiefly convincing me how guiltily and meanly 
 dead the Protestant mind was to the whole meaning and end 
 of medimval Church splendor ; and how meanly and guiltily 
 dead the existing Catholic mind was, to the course by wdiich 
 to recicii the Italian soul, instead of its eyes. 
 
 Re-opening, but a few days since, the book which my Christ 
 Church official tutor, Walter Brown, recommended to me as 
 the most useful code of English religious wisdom, the “ Nat- 
 ural History of Enthusiasm,” I chanced on this following pas- 
 sage, which I think must have been one of the first to startle 
 the complacency of my Puritan creed. My since experience 
 in theological writing furnishes me with no more terrific 
 example of the absence alike of charity and understanding in 
 the leading masters of that sect, beyond all others into which 
 the Church has ever been divided : — 
 
 ‘Mf it be for a moment forgotten that in every bell, and 
 
236 
 
 FR^TERITA. 
 
 bowl, and vest of the Eomish service there is hid a device 
 against the liberty and welfare of mankind, and that its gold, 
 and peai-ls, and fine linen are the deckings of eternal ruin ; 
 and if this apparatus of worship be compared with the impu- 
 rities and the cruelties of the old Pol3dheistic rites, great 
 praise may seem due to its contrivers. All tbe materials of 
 poetic and scenic effect have been elaborated by the genius 
 and taste of the Italian artists until a spectacle has been got 
 up which leaves the most splendid shows of the ancient idol 
 worship of Greece and Eome at a vast distance of inferi- 
 ority.” 
 
 Yet I cannot distinctly remember being shocked, even at 
 this passage, and I know there was much in the rest of the 
 book that pleased me ; but I had already the advantage over 
 its author, and over all such authors, of knowing, when I saw 
 them, sincere art from lying art, and happy faith from inso- 
 lent dogmatism. I knew that the voices in the Trinita di 
 Monte did not sing to deceive me ; and that the kneeling mul- 
 titude before the Pontiff were indeed bettered and strength- 
 ened by his benediction. 
 
 Although I had been able, w^eather favoring, to see the 
 Easter ceremonies without danger, there was no sign, take 
 all in all, of gain to my health from Eoman winter. My own 
 discouragement was great ; and the first cautious journejdngs 
 back by Teriii and Fuligno were sad enough ; — the night at 
 Terni very deeply so. For in the evening, when we came 
 back from seeing the falls, the servant of a young Englishman 
 asked to speak with us, saying that he was alone in charge of 
 his master, who had been stopped there by sudden, he feared 
 mortal, illness. Would m3' father come and see him ? My 
 father went, and found a beautifully featured Scottish youth 
 of three or four and twent3’, indeed in the last day of decline. 
 He died during the night, and we were of some use to the 
 despairing servant afterward. I forget now whether we ever 
 knew who tlie youth was. I find his name in my diaiy, ^‘Far- 
 quharson,” but no more. 
 
 As we drew northward, however, oat of the volcanic coun- 
 try, I recovered heart ; the enchanted world of Venice enlarg- 
 
CUMuT]. 
 
 237 
 
 ing ill front of me. I had only yet once seen lier, and that 
 six years ago, when still a child. That the fairy tale should 
 come true now seemed wholly incredible, and the start from 
 the gate of Padua in the morning, — Venice, asserted by peo- 
 ple wliom we could not but believe, to be reallj^ over there, 
 on the horizon, in the sea ! How to tell the feeling of it! 
 
 I hawe not yet fancied the reader’s answer to the first ques- 
 tion proposed in outset of this chapter, — does he think me a 
 fortunate or unfortunate youth? 
 
 As to preparation for the future world, terrestrial or celes- 
 tial, or future self in either, there may be two opinions — two 
 or three perhaps — on the matter. But, there is no question 
 that, of absolute happiness, I had the share of about a quarter 
 of a million of average people, all to myself. Isay “peo]3le,” 
 not “ boys.” I don’t know what delight boys take in cricket, 
 or boating, or throwing stones at birds, or learning to shoot 
 them. But of average people in continuity of occupation, 
 shopmen, clerks. Stock Exchange people, club and Pall Mall 
 people, certainly there was no reckoning the quantity of hap- 
 piness I had in comparison, followed indeed by times of reac- 
 tion, or of puzzled satiety; and partly avenged by extremes of 
 vexation at what vexed nobody else; but indisputably and in- 
 finitely precious in itself, every day complete at the end, as with 
 Sydney Smith’s salad : “ Pate cannot harm me ; I have dined, 
 to-day. ” 
 
 The two clmpters closing the first, and beginning the sec- 
 ond volume of the Stones of Venice ” were written, I see on 
 re-reading, in the melancholy experience of 1852, with hon- 
 est effort to tell every traveller what was really to be seen. 
 They do not attempt to recall my own joys of 1835 and 1841, 
 wlien tliere was not even beginning of railway bridge ; when 
 everything, muddy Brenta, vulgar villa, dusty causeway, sandy 
 beach, was equally rich in rapture, on the morning that 
 brought us in sight of Venice : and the black knot of gondolas 
 in the canal of Mestre, more beautiful to me than a sunrise 
 full of clouds all scarlet and gold. 
 
 But again, how to tell of it? or even explain it to myself, — 
 the English mind, high or common, being utterly without 
 
238 
 
 PllMTERITA. 
 
 trace of the feeling. Sir Philip Sidney goes to Venice, and 1 
 seems unconscious that it is in the sea at all. Elizabeth Lady f 
 
 Craven, in 1789, “ expected to see a gay clean-looking town, ,j 
 
 with quays on each side of the canals, but was extremely ( 
 disappointed ; the houses are in the water, and look dirty and ? 
 
 uncomfortable on the outside ; the innumerable quantity of \ 
 
 gondolas too, that look like swimming coffins, added to the \ 
 
 dismal scene, and, I confess, Venice on my arrival struck me ! 
 
 with horror rather than pleasure.” 
 
 After this, she goes to the Casiui, and is happy. It does 
 not appear she had ever read the “ Merchant,” or “ Othello 
 still less has Evelyn read them, though for him, as for Sidney, 
 Othello'’ s and Antonio’s Venice was still all but living. My 
 Venice, like Turner’s, had been chiefly created for us by Byron ; 
 but for me, there was also still the pure childish passion of 
 pleasure in seeing boats float in clear water. The beginning 
 of everything was in seeing the gondola-beak come actually 
 inside the door at Danieli’s, when the tide was up, and the 
 water two feet deep at the foot of the stairs ; and then, all 
 along the canal sides, actual marble walls rising out of tlie 
 salt sea, with hosts of little brown crabs on them, and Titians 
 inside. 
 
 Between May Gth and 16th I made notes on effects of light, 
 afterward greatly useful in “Modern Painters ;” and two pen- 
 cil drawings, “ Ca’ Contarini Fasan,” and the “ Giant’s Stair- 
 case,” of which, with two more made at Bologna in passing, 
 and some half dozen at Naples and Amalfi, I can say, now 
 forty years later, with certitude, that they could not have 
 been much better done. I knew absolutely nothing of archi- 
 tecture proper, had never drawn a section nor a leaf mould- 
 ing ; but liked, as Turner did to the end of his days, anything 
 that was graceful and rich, whether Gothic or Renaissance ; 
 was entirely certain and delicate in pencil-touch ; and drew 
 with an acuteness of delight in the thing as it actually stood, 
 which makes the sketch living and like, from corner to corner. 
 Thus much I could do, and did do, for the last time. Next 
 year I began trying to do what I could not, and have gone on 
 ever since, spending half of my days in that mannero 
 
OUM^. 
 
 239 
 
 I find a sentence in diary on 6tli May, which seems incon- 
 sistent with what I have said of the centres of my life work. 
 
 “ Thank God I am here ; it is the Paradise of cities.” 
 
 “This, and Cliamoimi, are my two bournes of Earth.” 
 
 Put then, I knew neither liouen nor Pisa, though I had 
 seen both. (Geneva, when I spoke of it with them, is meant 
 to include Charnouni.) Venice I regard more and more as a 
 vain temptation — the diary says — where the stars are. “There 
 is moon enough to make half the sanities of the earth lunatic, 
 striking its pure flashes of light on the gray water.” 
 
 From Venice, by Padua, where St. Antonio, — by Milan, 
 where the Duomo, — were still faultless to me, and each a 
 perfect bliss ; to Turin — to Susa; my health still bettering in 
 the siglit of Alps, and what breeze came dowii from them — 
 and over Cenis for the first time. I woke froin a sound 
 tired sleep in a little one-windowed room at Lans-le-bourg, at 
 six of the summer morning, June 2d, 1841; the red aiguilles 
 on the north relieved against pure blue -the great pyramid 
 of snow down the valley in one sheet of eastern light. I 
 dressed in three minutes, ran down the village street, across 
 the stream, and climbed the grassy slope on the south side of 
 the valley, uj) to the first pines. 
 
 I had found my life again ;~all the best of it. V/hat good of 
 religion, love, admiration or hope, had ever been taught me, 
 or felt by my best nature, rekindled at once ; and my line of 
 work, both by my own will and the aid granted to it by fate 
 in the future, determined for me. I went down thankfully to 
 my father and mother, and told them I was sure I should get 
 well. 
 
 As to my mere physical state, the doctors had been entirely 
 mistaken about me. I wanted bracing air, exercise, and rest 
 from all artificial excitement. The air of the Carapagna was 
 the worst they could have sent me into — the life of Rome the 
 worst they could have chosen. 
 
 The three following diary entries, which meant much after- 
 ward, may summarily end what I fear has been a tiresome 
 chapter. 
 
240 
 
 PR^TEUITA, 
 
 I. “Geneva, June 5th. Yesterday from Chambery, — a 
 fresh north wind blowing away the dust. Much pleased with 
 the respectable young wife of a confectioner, at one of the 
 mid-towns where I went to get some Savoy biscuits — and 
 asked for ‘a pound.’ ‘Mais, Monsieur, une livre sera un pen 
 — volumineuse ! je vous en donnemi la moitie ; vous verrez 
 si cela vous suffii-a ; ’ — ‘ Ah, Louise ’ (to a little bright-e}^ed 
 lady in the inner room, who was expressing her disapproba- 
 tion of some of the affairs of life too loudly), ‘ si tu n’es pas 
 sage, tu vas savoir’ — but so playfully and kindly ! Got here 
 on a lovely afternoon near sunset, and the green bastions and 
 bright Saleve and rushing Ehone and far Jura, aU so lovely 
 that I was nearly vowing never to go into Italy again.” 
 
 II. “June 6th. Pouring rain all day, and slow extempore 
 sermon from a weak-voiced young man in a white arched 
 small chapel, with a braying organ and doggerel hymns. 
 Several times, about the same hour on Sunday mornings, a 
 fit of self-reproach has come upon me for my idling at pres- 
 ent, and I have formed resolutions to be always trying to get 
 knowledge of some kind or other, or bodily strength, or 
 some real available, continuing good, rather than the mere 
 amusement of the time. It came on me to-day very strongly, 
 and I would give anything and everything-^ to keep myself in 
 the temper, for I always slip out of it next day.” 
 
 in. “December 11th, 1842. Vei*y odd \ Exactly the same 
 fit came on me in the same church, next year, and was the 
 origin of Turneffs work.” 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FONTAINEBLEAU. 
 
 We reached Rochester on the 29th of June, and a month 
 was spent at home, considering what was to be done next. 
 My own feeling, ever since the morning at Lans-le-bourg, 
 was that, if only left free in mountain air, I should get well, 
 fast enough. After debate with London doctors, it was 
 
FONTAINEBLEA U. 
 
 . 241 
 
 tboiiglit best to give me my way ; and, stipulating only that 
 Richard Fall should go with me, papa and mamma sent me, 
 early in August, on my first independent journey, into ¥/ales. 
 
 But they desired me, on my way there, to stop at Leam- 
 ington, and show myself to its dominant physician, Dr. Jeph- 
 son — called a quack by all the Faculty, yet of whom they 
 had heard favorably from wise friends. 
 
 Jephson was no quack ; but a man of the highest general 
 i^ower, and keenest medical instincts. He had risen, by 
 stubborn industry and acute observation, from an apothe- 
 cary’s boy to be the first physician in Leamington ; and was 
 the first true ph^^sician I ever knew — nor since, till I knew 
 Sir William Gull, have I met the match of him. 
 
 He examined me for ten minutes ; then said, Stay here, 
 and I’ll put you to rights in six weeks.” I said I was not 
 the least disposed to stay there, and was going into Wales, 
 but would obey any directions and follow^ any prescriptions 
 he chose to give me. No, he said, I must stay, or he could 
 do nothing for me. I thought this did look a little like 
 cjuackery, and accordingly made my bow, and proceeded on 
 my journey into Wales, after writing a full account of the 
 interview to father. 
 
 At Pont-y-Monach lay for me a letter from him, bidding 
 me go back to Leamington at once, and place myself under 
 Jephson ’s care. Richard therefore went on to Snov/don by 
 himself ; and I, returning with what speed the mail could 
 make, presented myself to the doctor penitently. He sent 
 me into tiny lodgings near the Wells, where I spent six weeks 
 of life extremely ne^v to me ; much grumbled at in my diary, 
 — not unpleasant, now remembered. 
 
 Salt water from the Wells in the morning, and iron, visibly 
 glittering in deposit at bottom of glass, twice a day. Break- 
 fast at eight, with herb tea — dandelion, I think ; dinner at 
 one, supper at six, both of meat, bread, and w'ater, only ; — 
 fish, meat, or fowl, as I chose, but only one dish of the meat 
 chosen, and no vegetables nor fruit. Walk, forenoon and 
 afternoon, and early to bed. Such the regimen suddenly en- 
 forced on my luxurious life. 
 
 16 
 
242 ' 
 
 PR^^TERITA. 
 
 To which discipline I submitted accurately : and found life 
 still worth having on these terms, and the renewed hope of 
 its continuance, extremely interesting. 
 
 Nor wanting in interest, the grotesquely prosaic position 
 itself. Here I was, in a small square brick lodging-house, 
 number what you like of its row, looking out on a bit of 
 suburban paddock, and a broken paling ; mean litter every- 
 where about ; the muddy lingering of Learn, about three 
 yards broad, at the other side of the paddock; a- ragged 
 brambly bank at the other side of it. Down the row, begin- 
 nings of poor people’s shops, then an aristocratic grocer 
 and mercer or two, the circulating library, and the Pump 
 Eoom. 
 
 After the Bay of Naples, Mount Aventine, and St. Mark’s 
 Place, it felt like the first practical scene of a pantomime, 
 after the transformation, and before the business begins. 
 But I had been extremel}'' dull under Mount Aventine ; and 
 did not, to my surprise, feel at all disposed to be dull here, — 
 but somowdiat amused, and with a pleasant feeling of things 
 being really at last all right, for me at least ; though it 
 wasn’t as grand as Peckwater, nor as pretty as St. Mark’s 
 Place. Any how, I was down to Croydon level again in the 
 world ; and might do what I liked in my own lodgings, and 
 hadn’t any Collections to get readj^ for. 
 
 The first tiling I did was to go to the library and choose a 
 book to work at. After due examination, I bought Agassiz’s 
 “ Poissons Fossiles ! ” and set myself to counting of scales 
 and learning of hard names, — thinking, as some people do 
 still, that ill that manner I might best advance in geology. 
 Also I supplied myself with some Captain Marryat ; and 
 some beautiful new cakes of color wherewith to finish a draw- 
 ing, in Turner’s grandest manner, of the Chateau of Amboise 
 at sunset, witli the moon rising in the distance, and shining 
 through a bridge. 
 
 The “Poissons Fossiles ” turned out a most useful pur- 
 chase, enabling me finally to perceive, after steady work on 
 them, that Agassiz was a mere blockhead to have paid for 
 all that good drawing of the nasty ugly things, and that it 
 
FONTAINEBLEA U. 
 
 243 
 
 didn’t matter a stale herring to any mortal whether they had 
 any names or not. 
 
 Fcr any positive or useful purpose, I could not more ut- 
 terly have wasted my time ; but it was no small gain to know 
 that time spent in that sort of work was wasted ; and that to 
 have caught a chub in the Avon, and learned how to cook it 
 spicily and herbaceously, so as to have pleased Izaak Walton, 
 if the odor of it could reach him in the Anglers’ Paradise, 
 would have been a better result of six weeks’ study than to 
 be able to count and call by their right names every scale 
 stuck in the mud of the universe. 
 
 Also I got a wholesome perception, from that book, of the 
 true relation between artists and scientific gentlemen. For I 
 saw that the real genius concerned in the “ Poissons Fossiles ” 
 was the lithographer’s, and not at all the scientific gentle- 
 man’s ; and that the book ought to have been called after the 
 litliographer, his fishes, only with their scales counted and 
 called bad names by subservient Mons. Agassiz. 
 
 The second thing of specific meaning that went on in Leam- 
 ington lodgings was the aforesaid highly labored drawing of 
 the Chateau of Amboise, “ out of my head ; ” representing the 
 castle as about seven hundred feet above the river, (it is per- 
 haps eighty or ninety,) v/ith sunset light on it, in imitation 
 of Turner ; and the moon rising behind it, in imitation of 
 Turner ; and some steps and balustrades (which are not 
 there) going down to the river, in imitation of Turner ; with 
 the fretwork of St. Hubert’s Chapel done very carefully 
 in my own way, — I thought perhaps a little better than Tur- 
 ner. 
 
 This drawing, and the poem of the “Broken Chain,” which 
 it was to illustrate, after being beautifully engraved by Good- 
 all, turned out afterward equally salutary exercises ; proving 
 to me that in those directions of imagination I was even a 
 worse blockhead than Agassiz himself. Meantime, the autumn 
 weather was fine, the corn wns ripe, and once out of sight of 
 the paddock, the Pump Room, and the Parade, the space of 
 surrounding Warwickshire within afternoon walk was ex- 
 tremely impressive to me, in its English way. Warwick tow- 
 
244 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 ers in sight over the near tree tops; Kenilworth, within 
 an afternoon’s walk ; Stratford, to be reached by an hour’s 
 drive with a trotting pony ; and, round them, as far as eye 
 could reach, a space of perfect England, not hill and dale, 
 — that might be anywhere; — but hill and flat, through 
 which the streams linger, and where the canals wind with- 
 out lock. 
 
 Under these peaceful conditions I began to look carefully 
 at cornflowers, thistles, and holUhocks ; and find, by entry on 
 Sept. 15th, that I was writing a bit of the “ King of the Gold- 
 en River,” and reading Alison’s “ Europe ” and Turner’s 
 “ Chemistry.” 
 
 Anent the “ King of the River,” I remorsefully bethink me 
 no word has been said of the dawn and sunrise of Dickens 
 on us ; from the first syllable of him in the “ Sketches,” alto- 
 gether precious and admirable to m}'' father and me ; and the 
 new number of “ Pickwick ” and following “ Nickleby ” looked 
 to, through whatever laborious or tragic realities might be 
 upon us, as unmixed bliss, for the next day. But Dickens 
 iiught us nothing wdth which we were not familiar, — only 
 painted it perfectly for us. We knew quite as much about 
 coachmen and hostlers as he did ; and rather more about 
 Yorkshire. As a caricaturist, both in the studied develop- 
 ment of his own manner, and that of the illustrative etchings, 
 he put himself out of the pale of great authors ; so that he 
 never became an educational element of mj^ life, but only one 
 of its chief comforts and restoratives. 
 
 The “King of the Golden River” was written to amuse a 
 little girl ; and being a fairly good imitation of Grimm and 
 Dickens, mixed with a little true Alpine feeling of my own, 
 has been rightly pleasing to nice children, and good for them. 
 But it is totally valueless, for all that. I can no more write a 
 story than compose a picture. 
 
 Jephson kept his word, and let me go in six weeks, with 
 my health, he told me, —I doubt not, truly, — in my own 
 hands. And indeed, if I had continued to live on mutton and 
 iron, learned to swim in the sea which I loved, and set myself 
 wholly upon my geology and poissons — vivants instead of 
 
FONTAINEBLEA U. 
 
 245 
 
 fossiles, Well, I suppose I should have been drowned like 
 
 Charles, or lain within a j^ear or two, 
 
 “ on a glacier, half way up to heaven. 
 
 Taking my final rest.” 
 
 What might have been, the mute Fates know. I myself 
 know only, with certainty, what ought not to have been, — 
 that, getting released from Leamington, I took again to brown 
 potatoes and cherry-pie ; instead of learning to swim and 
 climb, continued writing pathetic verses, and at this particu- 
 larly foolish crisis of life, as aforesaid, trying to paint twilight 
 like Turner. I was not simpleton enough to think I could 
 follow him in daylight, but I thought I could do something 
 like his “ Kenilworth Castle ” at sunset, with the milkmaid 
 and the moon. 
 
 I have passed without notice what the reader might suppose 
 a principal event of my life, — the being introduced to him 
 by Mr. Griffith, at Norwood dinner, June 22d, 1840. 
 
 The diary says, “Introduced to-day to the man who beyond 
 all doubt is the greatest of the age ; greatest in every faculty 
 of the imagination, in every branch of scenic* knowledge ; at 
 once the painter and poet of the day, J. M. W. Turner. 
 Everybody had described him to me as coarse, boorish, unin- 
 tellectual, vulgar. This I knew to be impossible. I found in 
 him a somewhat eccentric, keen-mannered, matter-of-fact, 
 English-minded — gentleman : good-natured evidently, bad- 
 tempered evidently, hating humbug of all sorts, shrewd, per- 
 haps a little selfish, highly intellectual, the powers of the 
 mind not brought out with any delight in their manifestation, 
 or intention of display, but flashing out occasionally in a word 
 or a look.” 
 
 Pretty close, that, and full, to be seen at a first glimpse, 
 and set down the same evening. 
 
 Curiously, the drawing of Kenilworth was one of those that 
 came out of Mr. Griffith’s folio after dinner ; and I believe 
 I must have talked some folly about it, as being “ a leading 
 
 * Meaning;, I suppose, knowledge of what could rightly be represented 
 or composed as a scene. 
 
24G 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 one of the England series ; ” which would displease Turner 
 greatl 3 ^ There were few thing he hated more than hearing 
 people gush about particular drawings. He knew it merely 
 meant they could not see the others. 
 
 Anyhow, he stood silent ; the general talk went on as if he 
 had not been there. He washed me good-night kindl}% and 
 I did not see him again till I came back from Home. 
 
 If he had but asked me to come and see him the next day 1 
 shown me a pencil sketch, and let me see him lay a wash ! 
 He would have saved me ten years of life, and w'ould not have 
 been less happy in the close of his own. One can only say, 
 Such things are never to be ; every soul of us has to do its 
 fight with the Untoward, and for itself discover the Unseen. 
 
 So here I was at Leamington, trying to paint twilight at 
 Amboise, and meditating over the “Poissons Fossiles,” and 
 Michael Angelo. Set free of the Parade, I went to stay a few 
 days with my college tutor, Walter Brown, Kector now of 
 “ Wendlebury,” a village in the flats, eleven miles north of 
 Oxford. Flats, not marshes : wholesome pastoral fields, sep- 
 arated by hedges ; here and there a haystack, a gate, or a 
 stile. The village consisted of twelve or fifteen thatched cot- 
 tages, and the Kectory. The Rectory was a square house, 
 with a garden fifty yards square. The church, close by, 
 about four yards high by twenty yards long, had a square 
 tower at the end, and a weather-cock. 
 
 Good Mr. Walter Brown had married an entirely worthy, 
 very plain, somewhat middle-aged wife, and settled himself 
 down, with all his scholarship and good gifts, to promote the 
 spiritual welfare of Wendlebury. He interested himself en- 
 tirely in that object ; dug his garden himself ; took a scholar 
 or two to prepare for Oxford examinations, with whom in the 
 mornings he read in the old way ; studied the “Natural His- 
 tory of Enthusiasm,” and was perfectly happy and contented,- 
 to the end of his time. 
 
 Finding him proud of his little church and its weather- 
 cock, I made a drawing of it for him, in my best manner, at 
 sunset, with a moonrise behind. He objected a little to hav- 
 ing the sky upside down, with the darkest blue at the hot- 
 
FONTAINEBLEA U. 
 
 247 
 
 tom, to brio" out the church ; but somehow, everybody at 
 this time had begun to believe in me, and thinl: I knew more 
 about drawing than other people : and the meekness with 
 which Mr. Brown would listen to me lecturing on Michael 
 Angelo, from a series of outlines of the Last Judgment which 
 I had brought from Rome, with the muscles engraved all over 
 the bodies like branch railroads, remains wholly phenomenal 
 and mystic in my memory. Nobody is ever the least meek 
 to me now, when I do know something about it. 
 
 But Mr. Brown and his wife vv'ere in all wa 3 's extremely 
 kind to me, and seemed to like having me with them. It was 
 perhaps only their only politeness : I can neither fancy" nor 
 find anything in myself at this time which could have been 
 pleasant to anybody", unless the mere wish to be pleasant, 
 which I had always ; seeking to saj", so far as I could hon- 
 estl}", what would be agreeable to whomsoever I spoke to. 
 
 From Wendlebury I went home, and made final prepara» 
 tion, with Gordon’s help, for taking my degree in the spring. 
 I find entry on Nov. loth, 1841, at Herne Hill, “I have got 
 my rooms in order at last ; I shall set to work on my reading 
 to-morrow, methodicalh", but not hard.” Setting my rooms 
 in order has, throughout life, been an occasionally compla- 
 cent recreation to me ; but I have never succeeded in keep- 
 ing them in order three days after they w'ere in it. 
 
 On the da}^ following comes this : “ Mem,, wh}" is hoarfrost 
 formed in larger ciystals on the ribs and edges of leaves than 
 ill other places ? ” (on other parts of the leaf, I meant) — ques- 
 tion which I had thought asked for the first time in 1113 " ice- 
 stud 3 ' of ’79, and which is not answered yet. 
 
 The entry next day is also worth copying: “Read the 
 Clementina part of ‘ Sir Charles Grandison.’ I never met 
 with anything which affected me so powerfully ; at present 
 I feel disposed to place this ivork above all other works of 
 fiction I know. It is very, very grand ; and has, I think, a 
 greater practical effect on me for good than anything I ever 
 read in my life.” 
 
 I find my first lessons from Harding were also at this time ; 
 very delightful for what they w"ere worth, though I saw well 
 
248 
 
 PRyETERITA. 
 
 11 
 
 enough his shortcomings. But it was lovely to see him draw, 
 in his own way, and up to a certain point. His knowledge 
 of tree form was true, and entirely w’on for himself, with an 
 honest original perception. Also, he was a violent hater of 
 the old Dutch school, and I imagine the first who told me 
 that they were “sots, gamblers, and debauchees, delighting 
 in the reality of the alehouse more than in its pictures.” All 
 Avhich was awakening and beneficial to no small extent. 
 
 And so the year 1842 dawned for me, with many things in 
 its morning cloud. In the early spring of it, a change came 
 over Turner’s mind. He w^anted to make some drawings to 
 please himself ; but also to be paid for making them. He 
 gave Mr. Griffith fifteen sketches for choice of subject by any 
 one who Avould give him a commission. He got commissions 
 for nine, of which m 3 ' father let me choose at first one, then 
 was coaxed and tricked into letting me have two. Turner 
 got orders, out of all the round world besides, for seven 
 more. With the sketches, four finished drawings were shown 
 for samples of the sort of thing Turner meant to make of 
 them, and for immediate purchase by anybody. 
 
 Among them was the “ Splugen,” wffiich I had some hope of 
 obtaining by supplication, when my father, who w'as travelling, 
 came home. I waited dutifully till he should come. In the 
 meantime it was bought, with the loveliest “Lake Lucerne,” 
 by Mr. IMunro of Novar. 
 
 The thing became to me grave matter for meditation. In 
 a story by Miss Edgeworth, the father would have come 
 home in the nick of time, effaced Mr. Munro as he hesitated 
 with the “Splugen” in his hand, and given the dutiful son 
 that, and another. I found, after meditation, that Miss Edge- 
 worth’s way w'as not the world’s, nor Providence’s. I per- 
 ceived then, and conclusively, that if you do a foolish thing, 
 you suffer for it exactly the same, whether you do it piously 
 or not. I knew perfectly well that this drawing was the 
 best Swiss landscape yet painted by man ; and that it was 
 entirely proper for me to have it, and inexpedient that 
 anybody else should. I ought to have secured it instant- 
 ly, and begged my father’s pardon, tenderly. He would 
 
FONTAINEBLEA U. 
 
 249 
 
 have been angry, and surprised, and grieved ; but loved me 
 none the less, found in the end I was right, and been 
 entirely pleased. I should have been very uncomfortable 
 and penitent for a while, but loved my father all the more 
 for having hurt him, and, in the good of the thing itself, 
 finally satisfied and triumphant. As it was, the “ Splugen ” 
 was a thorn in both our sides, ail our lives. My father was 
 always trying to get it ; Mr. Munro, aided by dealers, always 
 raising the price on him, till it got up from 80 to 400 guineas. 
 Then we gave it u]^, — with unspeakable wear and tear of best 
 feelings on both sides. 
 
 And how about “ Thou shalt not covet,” etc. ? Good read- 
 er, if you ask this, please consult my philosophical works. 
 Here, I can only tell you facts, whether of circumstance or 
 law. It is a law that if you do a foolish thing you suffer for 
 it, whatever your motive. I do not say the motive itself may 
 not be rewarded or punished on its o^yn merits. In this case, 
 nothing but mischief, as far as I know, came of the whole 
 matter. 
 
 In the meantime, bearing the disappointment as best I 
 couM, I rejoiced in the sight of the sketches, and the hope of 
 the drawings that were to be. And they gave me much more 
 to think of than my mischance. I saw that these sketches 
 were straight impressions from nature, — not artificial designs, 
 like tlie Garthages and Koines. And it began to occur to me 
 that perhaps even in the artifice of Turner there might be 
 more truth than I had understood. I was by this time very 
 learned in his principles of composition ; but it seemed to me 
 that in these later subjects Nature herself was composing with 
 him. 
 
 Considering of these matters, one day on the road to Nor- 
 wood, I noticed a bit of ivy round a thorn stem, which 
 seemed, even to my critical judgment, not ill “composed;” 
 and proceeded to make a light and shade pencil study of it in 
 my gray paper pocket-book, carefully, as if it had been a bit 
 of sculpture, liking it more and more as I drew. When it 
 was done, I saw that I had virtually lost all my time since I 
 was twelve years old, because no one had ever told me to 
 
250 
 
 PR^TEMITA. 
 
 draw wliat was really there ! All my time, I mean, given to 
 drawing as an art ; of course I had the records of places, but 
 had never seen the beauty of anything, not even of a stone — 
 how much less of a leaf ! 
 
 I was neither so crushed nor so elated by the discovery 
 as I ought to have been, but it ended the chrysalid days. 
 Thenceforward my advance was steady, however slow. 
 
 This must have been in May, and a week or two afterward 
 I went up for my degree, but find no entry of it. I only 
 went up for a pass, and still wrote Latin so badly that there 
 was a chance of my not passing ! but the examiners forgave it 
 because the divinity, philosophy, and mathematics were all 
 above the average ; and they gave me a complimentary 
 double-fourth. 
 
 When I was sure I had got through, I went out for a walk 
 in the fields north of New College, (since turned into the 
 Parks,) happy in the sense of recovered freedom, but ex- 
 tremely doubtful to what use I should put it. There I was, 
 at two and twentj', with such and such powers, all second- 
 rate except the analytic ones, which were as much in embryo 
 as the rest, and w'hich I had no means of measuring ; such 
 and such likings, hitherto indulged rather against conscience ; 
 and a dim sense of duty to myself, my parents, and a daily 
 more vague shadow of Eternal Law. 
 
 What should I be, or do? my utterly indulgent father 
 ready to let me do anything ; with my room always luxuri- 
 ously furnished in his house, — my expenses paid if I chose to 
 travel. I was not heartless enough, yet, to choose to do that, 
 alone. Perhaps it may deserve, some dim praise that I never 
 seriously thought of leaving my father and mother to explore 
 foreign countries ; and certainly the fear of grieving them was 
 intermingled more or less with all my thoughts ; but then, I 
 did not much leant to explore foreign countries. I had not 
 the least love of adventure, but liked to have comfortable 
 rooms always ordered, and a three-course dinner ready by 
 four o’clock. Although no coward under circumstances of 
 accidental danger, I extremely objected to any vestige of 
 danger as a continuous element in one’s life. 1 would not go 
 
FONTAINEBLEA JJ, 
 
 251 
 
 to India, for fear of tigers, nor to Enssia for fear of bears, 
 nor to Peru for fear of earthquakes ; and finalij^ though I had 
 no rightly glowing or grateful affection for either father or 
 mother, yet as they could not well do without me, so also I 
 found I was not altogether comfortable without them. 
 
 So for the present, we planned a summer-time in Switzer- 
 land, not of travelling, but chie% stay in Chamouni, to give 
 me mountain air, and the long- coveted power of examining 
 the Mont Blanc rocks accurately. My mother loved Cha- 
 mouni nearly as much as I ; but this plan was of severe self- 
 denial to my father, avIio did not like snow, nor wooden- 
 walled rooms. 
 
 But he gave up all his own likings for me, and let me plan 
 the stages through France as I chose, by Eoiien, Chartres, 
 Fontainebleau, and Auxerre. A pencil- sketch or two at first 
 show only want of faith in my old manner, and more endea- 
 vor for light and shade, futile enough. The fiat cross-coun- 
 try between Chartres and Fontainebleau, with an oppressive 
 sense of Paris to the north, fretted me wickedly ; when we 
 got to the Fountain of Fair Water I lay feverishly wakeful 
 through the night, and was so heavy and ill in the morniug 
 that I could not safely travel, and fancied some bad sickness 
 was coming on. However, toward twelve o’clock the inn peo- 
 ple brought me a little basket of wild strawberries ; and they 
 ref^shed me, and I put my sketch-book in pocket and tot- 
 tered out, though still in an extremely languid and woe- be- 
 gone condition ; and getting into a cart-road among some 
 young trees, where there was nothing to see but the blue 
 sky through thin branches, lay down on the bank by the 
 roadside to see if I could sleep. But I couldn’t, and the 
 branches against the blue sky began to interest me, motion- 
 less as the branches of a tree of Jesse on a painted wdndow. 
 
 Feeling gradually somewhat livelier, and that I wasn’t go- 
 ing to die this time, and be buried in the sand, though I 
 couldn’t for the present walk any farther, I took out my book, 
 and began to draw a little aspen tree, on the other side of the 
 cart-road, carefully. 
 
 How I had managed to get into that utterly dull cart- 
 
252 
 
 PR^ETERITA. 
 
 road, when there were sandstone rocks to be sought for, the 
 Fates, as I have so often to observe, only know ; but I was 
 never fortunate enough to find at Fontainebleau any of the 
 sublimities which I hear vaunted by French artists, and which 
 disturbed poor Evelyn’s mind nearly as much as the “ horrid 
 Alp ” of Clifton 
 
 “7th March (1644). I set forwards with some company 
 towards Fontaine Bleau, a sumptuous palace of the King’s 
 like ours at Hampton Court. By the way we passe through 
 a forest so prodigiously encompass’d with hideous rocks of 
 whitish hard stone, heaped one on another in mountainous 
 heights, that I think the like is nowhere to be found more 
 horrid and solitary. On the summit of one of these gloomy 
 precipices, intermingled with trees and shrubs, the stones 
 hanging over and menacing ruin, is built an liermitage.” 
 
 I believe this passage to be accurately characteristic of the 
 pure English mind about rocks. If they are only big enough 
 to look as if they would break 3'our head if thej’’ fell on it, it 
 is all an Englishman asks, or can understand, of them. The 
 modern thirst for self-glorification in getting to the top of 
 them is indeed often accompanied with good interest in geo- 
 graphical and other science ; and nice boys and girls do enjoy 
 their climbing, and lunching in fields of primula. But I 
 never trace a word in one of their journals of sorrow for the 
 destruction of any Swiss scene or Swiss character, so only 
 that they have their own champagne at lunch. 
 
 The “hideous rocks” of Fontainebleau were, I grieve to 
 sa}", never hideous enough to please me. They always seemed 
 to me no bigger than I could pack and send home for speci- 
 mens, had they been worth carriage ; and in my savage 
 dislike of palaces and straight gravel walks, I never found out 
 the spring which was the soul of the place. And to-day, I 
 missed rocks, palace, and fountain all alike, and found myself 
 lying on the bank of a cart-road in the sand, with no pros- 
 pect whatever but that small aspen tree against the blue sky. 
 
 Languidly, but not idly, I began to draw it ; and as I drew, 
 the languor passed away : the beautiful lines insisted on 
 being traced, — without weariness. More and more beautiful 
 
PONTAINEBLEA U. 
 
 253 
 
 they became, as each rose out of the rest, and took its place 
 in the air. With wonder increasing every instant, I saw that 
 they “ composed ” themselves, by finer laws than any known 
 of men. At last, the tree was there, and everything that I 
 had thought before about trees, nowhere. 
 
 The Norwood ivy had not abased me in that final manner, 
 because one had always felt that ivy was an ornamental 
 creature, and expected it to behave prettily, on occasion. But 
 tliat all the trees of the wood (for I saw surely that my little 
 aspen was only one of their millions) should be beautiful — 
 more than Gothic tracery, more than Greek vase-imagery, 
 more than the daintiest embroiderers of the East could 
 embroider, or the artfullest painters of the West could limn, 
 
 • — this was indeed an end to all former thoughts with me, an 
 insight into a new sylvan world. 
 
 Not sylvan only. The woods, which I had only looked on 
 as wilderness, fulfilled I then saw, in their beauty, the same 
 laws which guided the clouds, divided the light, and balanced 
 the wave. “He hatli made everything beautiful, in his time,’' 
 became for me thenceforward the interpretation of the bond 
 between the human mind and all visible things ; and I returned 
 along the wood-road feeling that it had led me far ; — farther 
 than ever fancy had reached, or theodolite measured. 
 
 To my sorrow, and extreme surprise, I find no diary what- 
 ever of the feelings or discoveries of this year. They were 
 too many, and bewildering, to be written. I did not even 
 draw much, — the things I now saw were beyond drawing, — 
 but took to careful botany, while the month’s time set apart 
 for the rocks of Chamouni was spent in merely finding out 
 what was to be done, and where. By the chance of guide 
 dispensation, I had only one of the average standard, Michel 
 Bevouassoud, who knew his waj^ to the show places, and little 
 more ; but I got the fresh air and the climbing ; and thought 
 over my Fontainebleau thoughts, hj sweeter springs. The 
 entry above quoted (p, 240), of Dec. 11th, the onl}" one I can 
 find of all the year’s journeying, is very notable to me, in 
 showing that the impulse which threw the new thoughts into 
 the form of “Modern Painters,” came to me in the fulfilment 
 
25i 
 
 PR^^TEBITA. 
 
 of the one disagreeable duty I persisted in, — going to church ! 
 But it came to me, two years following, in my true mother- 
 town of Geneva. 
 
 We went home in 1842 by the Ehine and Flanders : and at 
 Cologne and St. Quentin I made the last drawings ever 
 executed in my old manner. That of the great square at 
 Cologne was given to Osborne Gordon, and remains I believe 
 with his sister, Mrs. Pritchard. The St. Quentin has vanished 
 into space. 
 
 We returned once more to the house at Herne Hill, and 
 the lovely drawings Turner had made for me, Ehrenbreitstein 
 and Lucerne, were first hung in its little front dining-room. 
 But the Herne Hill days, and many joys with them, were now 
 ended. 
 
 Perhaps my mother had sometimes — at Hampton Court, or 
 Chats worth, or Isola-Bella — admitted into her quiet soul the 
 idea that it might be nice to have a larger garden. Some- 
 times a gold-tasselled Oxford friend would come out from 
 Cavendish or Grosvenor Square to see me ; and ^there was 
 only the little back room opposite the nursery for him to wash 
 his hands in. As his bank-balance enlarged, even my father 
 thought it possible that his country customers might be more 
 impressed by enjoying their after-dinner sherry wdtli more 
 room for their legs. And, now that I was of age and B.A. 
 and so on — did not I also want a larger house ? 
 
 No, good reader ; but ever since first I could drive a spade, 
 I had wanted to dig a canal, and make locks on it, like Harry 
 in “Plarry and Lucy.” And in the field at the back of the 
 Denmark Hill house, now, in this hour of all our weaknesses, 
 oiiered in temptation, I saw my Avay to a canal with any 
 number of locks down toward Dulwich. 
 
 It is very wonderful to me, looking back, to remember this, 
 and liow entirely boyish — and very young-boyish, too — I was 
 still, in all instincts of personal delight ; while yet, looking 
 out of myself, I saw farther than Kings of Naples or Cardinals 
 of Rome. 
 
 Yet there was much, and very closely balanced, debate, 
 before the house was taken. My mother wisely, though 
 
FONTAINEBLEA U. 
 
 255 
 
 sadly, said it was too late for her ; — she could not now man- 
 age a large garden : and my father, feeling his vanity had 
 more than a word in the matter, besides all that might rightly 
 be alleged of what was now convenient and becoming, hesi- 
 tated painfully, as he had done about his first Copley Field- 
 ing. 
 
 But at last the lease of the larger house was bought : and 
 everybody said how wise and proper ; and my mother did 
 like arrauging the rows of pots in the big greenhouse ; and 
 the view from the breakfast-room into the field was really 
 very lovely. And we bought three co\vs, and skimmed our 
 own cream, and churned our own butter. And there was a 
 stable, and a farmyard, and a haystack, and a pigsty, and a 
 j)orter’s lodge, where undesirable visitoi’s could be stopped 
 before startling us with a knock. But, for all these things, 
 we never were so happy again. Never anymore “ at home.'’ 
 
 At Champagnole, }"es ; and in Chamouni,— in La Cloche, 
 at Dijon, — in Le Cygne, at Lucerne. All these jnaces w^ere 
 of the old time. But thougli we had many ha]^py days in the 
 Denmark Hill liouse, none of our new ways ever wmre the 
 same to us as the old : the basketfuls of peaches had not the 
 flavor of the iimiibered dozen or score ; nor were all the 
 a])ples of the great orchard worth a single dishful of the 
 Siberian crabs of Herne Hill. 
 
 And I never got my canal dug, after all ! Harry’s making 
 the lock-gates himself had indeed always seemed to me too 
 magniticent ! inimitable if not incredible; but also, I had 
 ]iever, till now that the need came, entered into the statistics 
 of water-supply. Tlie gardeners wanted all that was in the 
 butts for the greenhouse. Nothing but a dry ditch, incom- 
 modious to the cows, I saw to be possible, and resigned m^"- 
 self to destiny : yet the bewitching idea never v/ent out of 
 my head, and some water- works, on the model of Fontaine- 
 bleau, wmre verily set aflownug — twenty years afterward, as 
 will be told. 
 
 The next year, there v/as travelling eiiough for us up and 
 down the new garden walks. Also, the first volume of 
 “Modern Painters” took the best of the winter’s leisure ; 
 
256 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 the summer was broken by some formal term-keeping at Ox- 
 ford. There is nothing in diary worth noting, except a word 
 about Camberwell church window, to which I must return 
 ill connection with things yet far ahead. 
 
 The said first volume must have been out by my father’s 
 birthday ; its success was assured by the end of the year, and 
 on January 1st, 184J, my father brought me in the ^Slaver’ 
 for a New Year’s gift,” — knowing well, this time, how to please 
 me. I had it at the foot of my bed next morning, like my 
 own “ Loch Achray ” of old. But the pleasure of one’s own 
 first painting everybody can understand. The pleasure of a 
 new Turner to me, nobody ever will, and it’s no use talking 
 of it. 
 
 For the second volume, (not meant to be the least like 
 what it is,) I wanted more Chamouni. The journey of 1844 
 was planned entirely for central Alps, and on June 1st, 1844, 
 we were happy by Lake Leman shore, again. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THE SIMPLON. 
 
 More and more deeply every hour, in retracing Alpine 
 paths, — by my fireside, — the wonder grows on me, what 
 Heaven made the Alps for, and gave the chamois its foot, and 
 the gentian its blue, — yet gave no one the heart to love them. 
 And in the Alps, why especially that mighty central pass was 
 so divinely planned, yet no one to pass it but against their 
 wills, till Napoleon came, and made a road over it. 
 
 Nor often, since, witli any joy ; though in truth there is no 
 other such piece of beauty and power, full of human interest 
 of the most strangely varied kind, in all the mountain scenery 
 of the globe, as that traverse, with its two terminal cities, 
 Geneva and Milan ; its two lovely lakes of approach, Leman 
 and Maggiore ; its two tremendous valleys of vestibule, the 
 Valais and Val d’Ossola ; and its own, not desolate nor terri- 
 ble, but wholly beautiful, upper region of rose and snow. 
 
THE SIMPLON. 
 
 257 
 
 Of my early joy in Milan, I have already told ; of Geneva, 
 there is no telling, though I must now give what poor picture 
 I may of the days we spent there, happy to young and old 
 alike, again and again, in ’33, ’35, ’42, and now, with full 
 deliberation, in ’44, knowing, and, in their repetitions twice, 
 and thrice, and four times, magnifying, the Avell-remem- 
 bered joys. And still I am more thankful, through every 
 year of added life, that I was born in London, near enough 
 to Geneva for me to reach it easily ; — and yet a city so con- 
 trary to everything Genevoise as best to teach me what the 
 wonders of the little canton were. 
 
 A little canton, four miles square, and wdhch did not wish 
 to be six miles square ! A little town, composed of a cluster 
 of water-mills, a street of penthouses, two wooden bridges, 
 two dozen of stone houses on a little hill, and three or four 
 perpendicular lanes up and down the hill. The four miles 
 of acreage round, in grass, with modest gardens, and farm- 
 dwelling houses ; the people, pious, learned, and busy, to a 
 man, to a woman — to a boy, to a girl, of them ; progressing 
 to and fro mostly on their feet, and only where they had 
 business. And this bird’s-nest of a place, to be the centre 
 of religious and social thought, and of physical beauty, to 
 all living Europe ! That is to say, thinking and designing 
 Europe,- — France, Germany, and Italy. The}^ and their pie- 
 ties, and their prides, their arts and their insanities, their 
 waths and slaughters, springing and flowering, building and 
 fortifying, foaming and thundering round this inconceivable 
 point of patience : the most lovely spot, and the most nota- 
 ble, without any possible dispute, of the European universe ; 
 yet the nations do not covet it, do not gravitate to it, — what 
 is more wonderful, do not make a wilderness of it. They 
 fight their battles at Chalons and Leipsic ; they build their 
 cotton-mills on the Aire, and leave the Ehone running with a 
 million of Aire power, —all pure. They build their pleasure- 
 houses on Thames shingle, and Seine mud, to look across to 
 Lambeth, and — whatever is on the other side of the Seine. 
 They found their military powers in the sand of Berlin, and 
 leave this precipice-guarded plain in peace. And yet it rules 
 17 
 
25S 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 them, — is the focus of thought to them, and of passion, of 
 science, and of coiitrat social ; of rational conduct, and of 
 decent — and other — manners. Saiissure’s school and Calvin’s, 
 — Kousseau’s and Byron’s, — Turner’s, — 
 
 And of course, I was going to snj, mine ; but I didn’t write 
 all that last page to end so. Yet Geneva had better have 
 ended with educating me and the likes of me, instead of the 
 people who have hold of it now, Avitb their polypous knots of 
 houses, communal with “London, Paris, and New York.” 
 
 Beneath which, and on the esplanades of the modern casino, 
 New York and London ]iow live — no more the Genevese. 
 AYhat their home once was, I must try to tell, as I saw it. 
 
 First, it was a notable town for keeping all its poor, — inside 
 of it. In tlie very centre, where an English towm has its big- 
 gest square, and its Exchange on the model of the Parthenon, 
 built for the sake of the builder’s commission on the cost ; 
 there, on their little pile-propped island, and by the steep 
 lane-sides, lived the Genevoise poor ; in their garrets, — their 
 laborious upper spinning or waatch-wheel cutting rooms, — 
 their dark niches aud angles of lane ; mostly busy ; the in- 
 firm and old all seen to and cared for, their porringers filled 
 and their pallet-beds made, by household care. 
 
 But, outside the ramparts, no more poor. A sputter, per- 
 haps, soutlnvard along the Savoy road ; but in all the cham- 
 paign rouiul, no mean row's of cubic lodgings wuth Doric 
 l^orches ; no squfdid fields of mud and thistles ; no deserts of 
 abandoned brickfield and insolvent kitchen garden. On the 
 instant, outside Geneva gates, j)erfectly smooth, clean, trim- 
 liedged or prim-walled country roads ; the main broad one 
 intent on far-aw’ay things, its signal-posts inscribed “ Eoute 
 de Paris branching from it, right and left, a labyrinth of 
 equally well-kept ways for fine carriage wheels, between the 
 gentlemen’s houses wdth their farms ; each having its owui 
 fifteen to tw'enty to fifty acres of mostly meadow, rich-waving 
 al'ways (in my time for being there) with grass and flowers, 
 like a kaleidoscope. Stately plane trees, aspen and walnut, — 
 sometimes in avenue, — casting breezy, never gloomy, shade 
 round the dwelling-house. A dwelling-house indeed, all the 
 
THE SIMPLON. 
 
 259 
 
 year round ; no travelling from it to fairer lands possible ; no 
 shutting up for seasons in town ; hay-time and fruit-time, 
 school-time and play, for generation after generation, within 
 the c-lieerful white do»nicile with its green shutters and 
 shingle roof, — pinnacled perhaps, humorously, at tlie corners, 
 glittering on the edges wdth silvery tin. “ Kept up ” the whole 
 j)lace, and all the “neighbors” places, not ostentatiously, but 
 perfectly ; enough gardeners to mow, eiiough vintagers to 
 }>ress, enough nurses to nurse ; no foxes to hunt, no birds to 
 shoot ; but every household felicity jjossible to prudence and 
 honor, felt and fullilled from infancy to age. 
 
 Where the grounds came down to the Avaterside, they were 
 mostly built out into it, till the Avater Avas four or live feet 
 deep, lap])ing up, or lashing, under breeze, against the terrace 
 Avail. Not much boating ; fancy wherries, unmanageable, or 
 too adventurous, upon the Avild blue ; and Swiss boating a 
 serious market and trade business, unfashionable in the high 
 rural empyrean of Geneva. But between the Hotel des 
 Etrangers, (one of these country-houses open to the polite 
 stranger, some half-mile out of the gates, Avhere Salvador 
 took us in ’33 and ’ 35 ) and the towm, there Avero one or two 
 landing-places for the raft-like flat feluccas ; and glimpses of 
 the open lake and things beyond, — glimpses only, shut off 
 quickly by garden-walls, until one came to the inlet of lakc- 
 W'ater moat which bent itself under the ramparts back to the 
 city gate. This Avas crossed, for people afoot who did not 
 like going round to that main gate, by the delicatest of fili- 
 form suspension bridges ; strong enough it looked io carry 
 a couple of lovers over in safety, or a nursemaid and children, 
 but nothing heavier. One Avas allowed to cross it for a cen- 
 time, Avhich seemed to me always a most profitable transaction, 
 the portress receiving placidly a sort of dirty flattened six- 
 pence, (I forget its name) and returning me a Avnistcoat- 
 pocketful of the loveliest little clean-struck centimes ; and 
 then one might stand on the bridge any time, in perfect 
 quiet. (The Genevese didn’t like paying the centime, and 
 Avent round by the gate.) Tavo sw^ans, drifting about under- 
 neath, over a couple of fathoms of purest green Avater, and 
 
200 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 the lake really opening from the moat, exactly where the 
 Chamouni range of aiguilles rose beyond it far away. In our 
 town walks we used always to time getting back to the little 
 bridge at sunset, there to wait and watch. 
 
 That was the way of things on the north side ; on the 
 south, the town is still, in the main buildings of it, as then ; 
 the group of officially aristocratic houses round the cathedral 
 and college presenting the same inaccessible sort of family 
 dignity that they do to-day; only, since then, the Geneva 
 
 Liberals Well, I will not say what they have done ; the 
 
 main town stands still on its height of pebble-gravel, knit 
 almost into rock ; and still the upper terraces look across the 
 variously mischievous Liberal works to the open southern 
 country, rising in steady slope of garden, orchard, and vine- 
 yard — sprinkled with pretty farm-houses and bits of chateau, 
 like a sea shore with shells ; rising always steeper and steeper, 
 till the air gets rosy in the distance, then blue, and the great 
 walnut-trees have become dots, and the farmsteads, minikin 
 as if they were the fairy-finest of models made to be packed 
 in a box ; and then, instant — above vineyard, above farm- 
 stead, above field and wood, leaps up the Saleve cliff, two 
 thousand feet into the air. 
 
 I don’t think anybody who goes to Geneva ever sees the 
 Saleve. For the most part, no English creature ever does see 
 farther than over the way ; and the Saleve, unless you care- 
 fully peer into it, and make out what it is, pretends to be noth- 
 ing, — a long, low swell like the South Downs, I fancy most 
 people take it for, and look no more. Yet there are few rocks 
 in the high Alps more awful than the “ Angle ” of the Saleve, 
 at its foot— seven Shakespeare’s Cliffs set one on the top of 
 another, and all of marble.'* 
 
 On the other side of the high town the houses stand closer, 
 leaving yet space for a little sycamore-shaded walk, whence 
 one looks down on the whole southern reach of lake, opening 
 
 * Not Parian, indeed, nor Carrara, but an extremely compact lime- 
 stone, in which the compressed faulted veins are of marble indeed, and 
 polish beautifully. 
 
THE SIMPLON. 
 
 261 
 
 wide to the horizon, and edged there like the sea, but in the 
 summer sunshine looking as if it was the one well of blue 
 'which the sunbeams drank to make the sky of. Be^^ond it, 
 ghostly ranges of incredible mountains — the Dent d’Oche, 
 and first cliffs toward Fribourg ; to the west, the long wave 
 of Jura, fading into the air above Neuchatel. 
 
 That was the view for full noon, when the lake was bright- 
 est and bluest. Then you fell down a perpendicular lane into 
 the lower town again, and you went to Mr. Bautte’s. 
 
 Virtually there was no other jeweller in Geneva, in the 
 great times. There were some respectable, uncompetitive 
 shops, not dazzling, in the main street ; and smaller ones, 
 with an average supply of miniature watches, that would go 
 well for ten years ; and uncostly, but honest, trinketry. But 
 one went to Mr. Bautte’s with awe, and of necessity, as one 
 did to one’s bankers. There was scarcely any external sign of 
 Bautte whatever — a small brass plate at the side of a narrow 
 arched door, into an alley — into a secluded alley — leading 
 into a monastic courtyard, out of which — or rather out of the 
 alley, ’^diere it opened to the court, you ascended a winding 
 stair, wide enough for two only, and came to a green door, 
 swinging, at the top of it ; and there you paused to summon 
 courage to enter. 
 
 A not large room, with a single counter at the further side. 
 Nothing shown on the counter. Tw^o confidential attendants 
 behind it, and — it might possibly be Mr. Bautte ! — or his son 
 — or his partner — or anyhow the Killing power — -at his desk 
 beside the back window. You told what you wanted : it 
 was necessary to know your mind, and to be sure you did 
 'u^ant it ; there was no showing of things for temptation at 
 Bautte’s. You wanted a bracelet, a brooch, a watch — plain 
 or enamelled. Choice of what was wanted was quietly given. 
 There were no big stones, nor blinding galaxies of wealth. 
 Entirely sound workmanship in the purest gold that could be 
 worked ; fine enamel for the most part, for color, rather than 
 jewels ; and a certain Bauttesque subtlet}” of linked and 
 wreathed design, which the experienced eye recognized when 
 worn in Paris or London. Absolutely just and moderate 
 
262 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 price ; -wear, — to the end of your days. You came away with 
 a sense of duty fulfilled, of treasure possessed, and of a new 
 foundation to the respectability of your family. 
 
 You returned into the light of the open street with a bliss- 
 ful sense of a parcel being made up to be sent after you, and 
 in the consequently calm expatiation of mind, went usually to 
 watch the Rhone. 
 
 Bautte’s was in the main street, out of which one caught 
 glimpses, down the short cross ones of the passing water, as 
 at Sandgate, or the like fishing towns, one got peeps of the 
 sea. With twenty steps you were beside it. 
 
 For all other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath, 
 and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the 
 Rhone flows like one lambent jewel ; its surface is nowhere, 
 its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and trans- 
 lucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to the 
 depth. 
 
 Fifteen feet thick, of not flowing, but flying w^ater ; not 
 water, neither, — melted glacier, rather, one should call it ; the 
 force of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of the clouds, 
 the gladness of the sky, and the continuance of Time. 
 
 Waves of clear sea, are, indeed, lovely to w^atch, but the}' are 
 always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be seen 
 for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always 
 itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the w'reathing 
 of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for 
 gathering of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil ; 
 but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never- 
 pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and never-hushing 
 whisper, and, while the sun was up, the ever-answering glow 
 of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet-blue, gentian- 
 blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradise blue, glass of a painted 
 window melted in the sun, and the witch of the Alps flinging 
 the spun tresses of it for ever from her snow. 
 
 The innocent way, too, in which the river used to stop to 
 look into every little corner. Great torrents always seem 
 angry, and great rivers too often sullen ; but there is no 
 anger, no disdain, in the Rhone. It seemed as if the moun- 
 
THE SIMPLON. 
 
 263 
 
 tain stream was in mere bliss at recovering itself again out of 
 the lake-sleep, and raced because it rejoiced in racing, fain 
 yet to return and stay. There were pieces of wave that danced 
 all day as if Perdita were looking on to learn ; there were 
 little streams that skipped like lambs and leaped like chamois ; 
 there were pools that shook the sunshine ail through them, 
 and were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, like crystal 
 sand ; there were currents that twisted the light into golden 
 braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel ; there 
 were strips of stream that had certainly above the lake been 
 mill-streams, and were looking busily for mills to turn again ; 
 there were shoots of stream that had once shot fearfully into 
 the air, and now sprang up again laughing that they had only 
 fallen a foot or two ; — and in the midst of all the gay glitter- 
 ing and eddied lingering, the noble bearing by of the midmost 
 depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harmless, with its 
 swallows skimming instead of petrels, and the dear old de- 
 crepit town as safe in the embracing sweep of it as if it were 
 set ill a brooch of sapphire. 
 
 And the day went on, as the river ; but I never felt that I 
 wasted time in watching the Khone. One used to get giddy 
 sometimes, or discontentedly envious of the fish. Then one 
 went back for a walk in the penthouse street, long ago gone. 
 There was no such other street anywhere. Penthouses five 
 stories high, not so much for the protection of the people in 
 the street as to keep the plash of heavy rain from the house 
 windows, so that these might be the more safely open. Beam- 
 pillars of squared pine, with one cross-tie beam, the undeco- 
 rative structural arrangement, Swiss to the very heart and 
 pitch of it, picturesque in comfort, stately and ancient without 
 decay, and rough, here in mid Geneva, more than in the hill 
 solitudes. 
 
 We arrived at Geneva on 1st June, 1844, with plan of an- 
 other month at Chamouni ; and fine things afterward, which 
 also came prosperously to pass. I had learned to draw now 
 with great botanical precision; and could color delicately, to 
 a point of high finish. I was interested in everything, from 
 clouds to lichens. Geneva was more wonderful to me, the 
 
264 
 
 PRu^TEBITA. 
 
 Alps more living and mighty, than ever ; Chamouni more 
 peaceful. 
 
 We reached the Prieure on the Gth June, and found poor 
 Michel Devouassoud’s climbing days ended. He had got a 
 chill, and a cough ; medicined himself with absinthe, and Vv^as 
 now fast dying. The body of guides had just sustained a 
 graver loss, by the superannuation, according to law, in his 
 sixtieth year, of Joseph Couttet, the Captain of Mont Blanc, 
 and bravest at once and most sagacious of the old school 
 of guides. Partly in regard for the old man, partly in 
 respect for us, now favorably known in Chamouni, the law 
 was relaxed by the Chef des Guides in our favor, and Couttet 
 came to us on the morning of the 7th of June. My father 
 explained to him that he wanted me taken charge of on the 
 hills, and not permitted in any ambitious attempts, or taken 
 into any dangerous places ; and that, from what he had heard 
 of Couttet’s trustworthiness, and knowledge of his mountain, 
 he had no doubt that I should be safe with him, and might 
 learn more under his tutelage, in safety, than by the most 
 daring expeditions under inferior masters. Couttet said little, 
 but accepted the charge with a kindly glitter in his eyes, and a 
 cheerful word or two, signifying that my father need not fear 
 for me ; and we set out together for the base of the Buet, — I 
 on niLileback, he walking. 
 
 For thirty years he remained my tutor and companion. 
 Had he been my drawing-master also, it would have been 
 better for me : if my work pleased Couttet, I found afterward 
 it was always good ; and he knew perfectly when I was trying 
 vainly to do what I could not, or foolishly what no one else 
 would care for. 
 
 The month at Chamouni, however, passed with his approval, 
 and to m}^ perfect benefit. I made two foreground studies in 
 color, of considerable beauty ; and, under his teaching, began 
 to use my alpenstock easily, and to walk with firmness. 
 
 Of our habitual Chamouni life — papa’s, mamma’s, and mine 
 — I shall give account further on : I take from this year’s 
 diary only the note on first reaching the bases of the aiguilles. 
 
 “ At last, on steep inclined planes of snow, reached the base 
 
THE SIMPLON. 
 
 265 
 
 of the little Charmoz ; but was amazed to find that the size of 
 the aiguilles seemed to diminish with every step of approach, 
 after a certain point, and that, thus seen (the aiguille) 
 Blaitiere, though still 3,000 feet above us, looked a mere rock, 
 asceiidable in a quarter of an hour. Of course, after being 
 used to the higher rocks, one begins to measure them in their 
 own way ; but where there is nothing to test scale — where the 
 air is perfectly mistless, and the mountain masses are divided 
 info sheets whose edgea are the height of Dover cliffs, it is 
 impossible effectually to estimate their magnitude but by 
 trving them.” 
 
 This bit of moonlight is perhaps worth keeping : “ 28th 
 June, half-past ten. — I never was dazzled by mooniiglit until 
 now ; but as it rose from behind the Mont Blanc du Tacul, the 
 full moon almost blinded me : it burst forth into the sky like 
 a vast star. For an hour before, the aiguilles had appeared 
 as dark masses against a sky looking as transparent as clear 
 sea, edged at their summits with fleeces of cloud breaking into 
 glorious spray and foam of white fire. A meteor fell over the 
 Dome as the moon rose : now it is so intensely bright that I 
 cannot see the Mont Blanc underneath it ; the form is lost in 
 its light.” 
 
 Many and many an hour of precious time and perfect 
 sight was spent, during these years, in thus watching skies ; 
 much was written which would be useful — if I took a year to 
 put it together, — to myself ; but, in the present smoky world, 
 to no other creature : and much was learned, which is of no 
 use now to anybody ; for to me it is only sorrowful memory, 
 and to others, an old man’s fantasy. 
 
 AVe left Chamouni on 4th July ; on the 8th I find this en- 
 try at St. Gingolph : “ AVe dined late, which kept me later 
 from my walk than I like, and it was wet with recent rain ; but 
 the glades of greensv/ard under groves of Spanish chestnut 
 all the greener for it. Such richness I never saw in Italy ; 
 the liay just cut, leaving the grass crisp and short ; the gray 
 trunks and rich leaves mixed with mossy rock, and the cliffs 
 above, nobler than Amalfi : the sunset sent down rays of 
 opaque gold between me and the Jura, bringing out the sue- 
 
266 
 
 PR^^TERITA. 
 
 cessive rises of the Pcays de Vaud : the Jura a golden shadow, 
 sharp-edged and baseless in the sky.” 
 
 Hence, we crossed the Simplon to Baveno and back, — for 
 the Simplon’s and Lago Maggiore’s sake only. 
 
 “ Baveno, jLily 12th. — I have more feeling for Italy than 
 ever, but it makes me deeply sad. The vines and pasture 
 about this place make it a Paradise ; the people are fine- 
 featured, and singularly graceful in motion ; but there is every 
 appearance of hopeless vice. Four men have been playing 
 cards and drinking, without stirring, in the inn-yard since 
 twelve o’clock (noon. I had come in from an evening walk), 
 and the gardens and enclosed spots of ground are foul as 
 dunghills. The Isola Bella is fast going to decay — all the 
 stucco of it green, damp, shattered, covered with weeds 
 and dead leaves ; }^et the flowers and foliage of surpassing 
 beaut}’.” 
 
 And to this day, the uselessness of San Carlo’s memory is 
 to me one of the entirely wonderfullest things in Catholic 
 liistory ; — that Koine should go on sending missionaries to 
 China, and, within a thousand yards across the water from 
 St. Carlo’s isle, leave the people of her own Italy’s Garden of 
 Eden in guilt and misery. I call the Lago Maggiore district 
 the Eden of Italy ; for there are no solfataras there, no earth- 
 quakes, no pestiferous marsh, no fever-striking sunshine. 
 Purest air, richest earth, loveliest wave ; and the same noble 
 race that founded the architecture of Italy at Como. 
 
 Left to die, like the green lizards, in the blind clefts of 
 their rocks, whence they see no God. 
 
 “Village of Simplon, 15th June. — At eight this evening 
 I was sitting on the highest col of the Simplon, watching the 
 light die on the Breithorn ; nothing round me but rock and 
 lichen, except one purple flower,” (colored and very accurate 
 drawing, at the side, of Linaria Alpina,) “ and the forget-me- 
 not, which grows everywhere. My walk home was very lovely, 
 star after star coining out above my head, the white hills 
 gleaming among them ; the gulph of pines, w’ith the torrent, 
 black and awful below ; lights breaking softly through cot- 
 tage windows. 
 
THE SIMPLON. 
 
 267 
 
 “ Cassiopeia is rising above a piny mountain, exactly oppo- 
 site my window.” 
 
 The linaria must have been brought “ home ” (the Simplon 
 village inn was already more that to me than ever Denmark 
 Hill), and painted next morning — it could not have been so 
 rightly colored at night ; also the day had been a heavy one. 
 At six, morning, I had visited Signor Zauetti, and reviewed 
 his collection of pictures on Isola Pescatore ; walked up most 
 of the defile of Gondo ; and the moment we got to the Sim- 
 plon village, dashed off to catch the sunset from the col ; five 
 miles up hill against time, (and walk against time up a regu- 
 lar slope of eight feet in the hundred is the most trying foot- 
 work I know,) five miles back under the stars, with the hills 
 not wider but among them, and careful entry, of which I have 
 only given a sentence, make up a day which shows there 
 was now no farther need to be alarmed about my health. My 
 good father, who was never well in the high air, and hated 
 the chills from patches of melting snow, stayed, nevertheless, 
 all next day at the village, to let me climb the long-coveted 
 peak west of the Simplon col, which forms the great precipice 
 on the Brieg side. “It commanded the Valais far down, the 
 Bernese Alps in their whole extent, and two great raountains 
 beyond the valley of Saas.” These were the Weisshorn, and 
 lower peak near Zermatt. 
 
 Tliat evening James Forbes and his wife were with us in 
 the otherwise untenanted salle-a-manger (see “Deucalion,” 
 Chap. X.), and next morning, tlie 17th, “ I set oil at six to 
 visit the Pere Barras, formerly Clavendier of the great St. 
 Bernard, now at the monastery of the Simplon.” “ On 
 the Sempione,” (I meant the Fletscli-horn,) “a field of cirri, 
 bounded by a contour like that of common cirrostrati, convex 
 and fishy, but composed of the most exquisite sandy and silky 
 forms, all in most rapid motion, but forming and vanishing, 
 as usual, exactly at the same point, so that tlie mass was sta- 
 tionary. Reached the col in two hours of very slow waalking, 
 and breakfasted with the Father. He showed me the spot 
 where the green actynolite is found, directly behind the con- 
 vent. One of his dogs saw him with his hat on, and waited 
 
268 
 
 PR^TEBITA, 
 
 in tlie passage, barking furiously with delight. He parted 
 from me half a mile down on this side (Brieg side), and I 
 waited at the second gallery for the carriage.” 
 
 “lOthJul}', Zermatt. — Clouds on the Matterhorn all day 
 till sunset, when there were playing lights over the sky, and 
 the IMatterhorn appeared in full ruby, with a wreath of crim- 
 son cloud drifting from its top.” 
 
 That day Gordon was to come up from Chamouni to meet 
 us ; he had slept at Visp, and vv^as first at Zermatt. Just as 
 w^e came in sight of the Matterhorn he met us, with his most 
 settledly practical and constitutional face — 
 
 “Yes, the Matterhorn is all very fine ; but do you know 
 there’s nothing to eat ? ” 
 
 “Nonsense ; we can eat anything here.” 
 
 “ Well, the black bread’s two months old, and there’s noth- 
 ing else but potatoes.” 
 
 “ There must be milk, anyhow.” 
 
 Yes, there was milk, he supposed. 
 
 “You can sop your bread in it then; what could be 
 mcer?” 
 
 But Gordon’s downcast mien did not change ; and I had 
 to admit myself, when supper-time came, that one might 
 almost as hoj^elessly have sopped the Matterhorn as the 
 loaf. 
 
 Thus tlie Christian p>easant had lived in the Alps, un thought 
 of, for two thousand years — since Christ broke bread for His 
 multitude ; and lived thus under the direct care of the Cath- 
 olic Church — for Sion, the capital of the Valais, is one of the 
 grandest of old bishoprics ; and just below this valley of 
 black bread, the little mountain towns of Visp and Brieg are 
 more groups of tinkling towers and convent cloisters than 
 civic dwelling-places. As for the Catholic State, for a thou- 
 sand year^, while at every sunset Monte Rosa glowed across 
 the whole Lombard plain, not a Lombard noble knew where 
 the mountain was. 
 
 Yet, it may be, I err in my pity. I have many things yet 
 to say of the Valais ; meantime this passage from Saussure re- 
 cords a social state in 1796, which, as compared with that of 
 
THE SIMPLOK, 
 
 269 
 
 the poor in our great capitals, is one neither of discomfort nor 
 disgrace : 
 
 ‘•'La sobriete, compagiie ordinaire de I’amoiir du travail, est 
 encore mie qualite remarquable des habitants de ces valises. 
 Ce pain de seigie, dont j ai parlo, qu’on ne mange que six mois 
 apves qu’il est cuit, on le ramollit dans dii petit lait ou dans 
 dll lait de beurre, et cette espece de soiipe fait leur priiicipale 
 nouLTiture ; le fromage et mi pen de vieille vacbe ou de chevre 
 salees, se reserveiit pour les jours de fete ou pour les temps de 
 grands travaux ; car pour la viande fraiche, ils n’en man gent 
 jamais, c’est uii mets trop dispendieux. Les gens riches du 
 pays vivent avec la mome economie ; je voyois notre hdte do 
 IVIacugnaga, qui n’etoit rien moins que pauvre, aller tons les 
 soil's prendre, dans un en droit ferine a clef, une pincee d’aulx 
 dont il distribuoit gravement une gousse a sa femme, etautant 
 a chacun de ses enfants, et cette gousse d’ail etoit rassaisonne- 
 ment unique d’un morceau de pain sec qu’ils brisoient entre 
 deux pierres, & qu’ils mangeoient pour leur souper, Ceux 
 d’entr’eux qui negocient au-dehors, viennent au moins une 
 fois tons les deux ans passer quelques mois dans leur village ; 
 et quoique hors de chez eux ils prennent riiabitude d'une 
 meilleure nourriture, ils se remettent sans peine a celle de leur 
 jiays, et ne le quittent qu’avec un extreme regret ; j’ai etc 
 temoin d’un ou deux de ces departs, qui m’ont attendri 
 j Lisqu’aux larmes, ” 
 
 By the morning, however, our hosts had found some meat 
 for the over-greedy foreigners, and the wine was good enough ; 
 but it was no place for papa and mamma to stay in ; and, 
 bravado apart, I liked black bread no better tiian they. So 
 we went up to the Riffelberg, where I saw that on the north 
 Monte Rosa was only a vast source of glacier, and, as a moun- 
 tain, existed only for tlie Italian side ; the Matterhorn was too 
 much of an Egyptian obelisk to please me (I trace continually 
 the tacit reference in my Cumberland-built soul to moorish 
 Skiddaw and far-sweeping Saddleback as the projDer types of 
 majestic form) ; and I went down to Visp again next day with- 
 out lamentation : my mother, sixty-three on next 2d Septem- 
 ber, walking with me the ten miles from St. Nicholas to Visp 
 
270 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 as lijvhtly as a girl. And the old people went back to Brieg 
 with me, that I might climb the Bell Alp (then unknown), 
 whence I drew the panoramti of the Simplon and Bernese 
 range, now in Walkley Museum. Bat the more I got, the 
 more I asked. After drawing the Weisshorn and Aletsch-horii, 
 I wanted to see the Aiguille Verte again, and was given another 
 fortnight for Chamouni ; the old people staying at tlie Trois 
 Couronnes of Vevay. I spent the days usefully, going first up 
 to the base of the Aiguille d’Argentiere, which commands the 
 glorious white ocean of the Tours glacier below, and, opposite, 
 the four precipices of the Aiguille Verte on its northeast flank ; 
 and that day, 27th July, we saw a herd of more than thirty 
 chamois on the Argentiere. “Pour les voir, faut aller ou ils 
 sont,” said Couttet ; and he might have added, where other 
 living things are not ; for, whether by shepherd or traveller, 
 the snows round the Aiguilles of Chardonnet and Argentiere 
 are the least trodden of all the Mont Blanc fields. The herd 
 was in three groups, twelve in one of them only ; and did not 
 put itself to speed, but retired slowly when we got within a 
 quarter of a mile of them, each stopping to look back from the 
 ridge behind which they disappeared. 
 
 “Iceland moss” (says the diary), “in enormous quantities 
 among the Alpine roses, above the Argentiere glacier — not 
 growing at all, so far as I recollect,, but on the hills on the 
 northeast of the valley. Where we took the snow, the top 
 of the glacier” (Tours) “was wreathed in vast surges which 
 took us from twenty minutes to half an hour (each) to climb, 
 — green lovely lakes in their hollows, no crevices.” On the 
 29th July I went up the Buet, and down to Sixt, where I 
 found myself very stiff and tired, and determined that the 
 Alps were, on the whole, best seen from below. And after a 
 walk to the Fer-a-cheval, considering the wild strawberries 
 there to taste of slate, I went rather penitently down to 
 Geneva again. 
 
 Feeling also a little ashamed of myself before papa — in the 
 consciousness that all his pining in cold air, and dining on 
 black bread, and waiting, day after day, not without anxiety, 
 while I rambled he knew not whither, had not in the least 
 
THE SIM PLOW. 
 
 271 
 
 advanced the object nearest liis lieart, — the second volume of 
 ‘‘Modern Painters.” I had, on the contrary, been acutely 
 and minutely at work in quite other directions — felt tempted 
 now to write on Alpine botany, or devote myself to painting 
 myrtilies and mica-slate for the rest of my dfiys. Tiie Turner 
 chann was indeed as potent as ever; but I felt that other 
 powers were now telling on me besides his, — even beyond 
 his ; not in delight, but in vital strengdh ; and that no word 
 more could bo written of him, till I had tried the range of 
 these. 
 
 It surprises me to find, by entries at Paris (which I was 
 reasonable enough now to bear the sight of again), in August 
 of this year, how far I had advanced in picture knowledge 
 since tlie Roman da^^s; progress which I see no ground for, 
 and remember iio steps of, — except onl^'' a lesson given me by 
 George Richmond at one of Mr. Rogers’s breakfasts (the old 
 man used to ask me, finding me always reverent to him, joy- 
 ful in liis pictures, and sometimes amusing, as an object of 
 cmlosiiy to his guests) — date uncertain, but probably in 1812. 
 Until that year, Rubens had remained the type of color power 
 to me, and (p. 222 above) Titian’s flesh tints of little worth ! 
 But that morning, as I vv^as getting talkative over the wild 
 Rubens sketch, (AVar or Discord, or Victory or the Furies, I 
 forget \vhat,) Richmond said, pointing to the Veronese be- 
 neath it, “ Why are you not looking at this,— so much greater 
 in manner?” “Greater, — how?” I asked, in surprise; “it 
 seesns to me quite tame beside the Rubens.” “That may 
 be,” said Richmond, “but the Veronese is true, the other 
 violently conventional.” “In what way true?” I asked, still 
 not understanding. “AATll,”said Richmond, “compare the 
 pure shavlows on the flesh, in Veronese, and its clear edge, 
 with Rubens’s ochre and vermilion, and outline of asphalt.” 
 
 No more wais needed. From that moment, I saw what 
 was meant by Venetian color; yet during 1843, and early 
 1844, was so occupied with “Modern Painters,” degree-get- 
 ting, and studies of foliage and foreground, that I cannot 
 understand how I had reached, in picture knowledge, the 
 point shown by these following entries, of which indeed the 
 
272 
 
 PRETERIT A. 
 
 first shows that the gain surprised me at the time, but fool- 
 ishl}^ regards it only as a change coming to pass in the Louvre 
 on the instant, and does not recognize it as the result of 
 growth : the fact being, I suppose, that the habit of looking 
 for true color in nature had made me sensitive to the modesty 
 and dignity of hues in painting also, before possessing no 
 charm for me. 
 
 “Aug. 17th. — I have had a change wrought in me, and a 
 strong one, by this visit to the Louvre, and know not how far 
 it may go, chiefly in my full understanding of Titian, John 
 Bellini, and Perugino, and being able to abandon everything 
 for them ; or rather, being i^aable to look at anything else.” 
 
 I allow the following technical note only for proof of the 
 length I had got to. There shall be no more of the kind let 
 
 into PniETEKITA. 
 
 “ 1252 (‘ The Entombment ’) is the finest Titian in the 
 gallery, — glowing, simple, broad, and grand. It is to be op- 
 posed to 1251 (‘The Flagellation’), in which the shades are 
 brown instead of gra3% the outlines strong brown lines, the 
 draperies broken up by folds, the lights very round and vivid, 
 and foiled by deep shades, the flesh forms, the brightest 
 lights, and the draperies subdued. 
 
 “ In 1252 every one of these conditions is reversed. Even 
 the palest flesh is solemn and dark, in juxtaposition with 
 golden white drapeiy; all the masses broad and flat, the 
 shades gray, the outlines chaste and severe. It may be taken 
 as an example of the highest dignity of expression wrought 
 out by mere grandeur of color and composition. 
 
 “ I found myself finally in the Louvre, fixed by this Titian, 
 and turning to it, and to the one (picture), exactly opposite, 
 ‘ John and Gentile Bellini,’ by John Bellini. I was a long 
 time hesitating between this and Kaphael’s dark portrait; but 
 decided for the John Bellini. 
 
 “Aug. 18th. — To-morrow we leave. I have been watching 
 the twilight on the Tuileries, which was very grand and 
 clear ; and planning works. I shall try to paint a Madonna 
 some day, I believe.” 
 
THE CAMFO BANTO. 
 
 2t3 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CAMPO SANTO. 
 
 The summer’s work of 1844, so far from advancing the de- 
 sign of “Modern Painters,” had thrown me off it— first into 
 fine botany, then into difficult geology, and lastl}^ as that 
 entry about the Madonna shows, into a fit of figure study 
 which meant much. It meant, especially, at last some look- 
 ing into ecclesiastical history,^ — some notion of the merit of 
 fourteenth century painting, and the total abandonment of 
 Rubens and Rembrandt for the Venetian school. Which, the 
 reader will please observe, signified not merely the advance 
 in sense of color, but in perception of truth and modesty in 
 light and shade. Aud on getting home, I felt that in the 
 cyclone of confused new knowledge, this was the thing first 
 to be got firm. 
 
 Scarcely any book writing was done that winter, — and there 
 are no diaries ; but, for the first time, I took up Turner’s 
 “Liber Studiorum ” instead of engravings; mastered its 
 principles, practised its method, and by spring-time in 1845 
 was able to study from nature accurately in full chiaroscuro, 
 with a good frank power over the sepia tinting. 
 
 I must liave read also, that winter, Rio’s “Poesie Chre- 
 tienne,” and Lord Lindsay’s introduction to his “Christian 
 Art.” And perceiving thus, in some degree, what a blind bat 
 and puppy I had been, all through Italy, determined that 
 at least I must see Pisa and Florence again before writing 
 another word of “Modern IMinters.” 
 
 How papa and mamma took this new vagary, I have no 
 recollection ; resignedly, at least : perhaps they also had some 
 notion that I might think differently, and it was to be hoped 
 in a more orthodox ami becoming manner, after another sight 
 of the Tribune. At all events, the^^ concluded to give me my 
 own way entirely this time ; and what time I chose. My 
 health caused them no farther anxiety ; they could trust my 
 word to take care of myself every day, just the same as if I 
 18 
 
274 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 v>^ere coming home to tea : my mother was satisfied of Cout- 
 tet’s skill as a pli3^sician, and care, if needed, as a nurse ; — he 
 was engaged for the summer in those capacities, — and, about 
 the first week in April, I found myself dining on a trout of 
 the Ain, at Champagnole ; with Switzerland and Italy at my 
 feet — for to-morrow. 
 
 Curiously, the principal opposition to this unprincipled 
 escapade had been made b}^ Turner. He knew that one of 
 my chief objects was to see the motives of his last sketches 
 on the St. Gothard ; and he feared my getting into some 
 scrape in the then disturbed state of the cantons. He had 
 probably himself seen some of their doings in 1843, when 
 “la vieille Suisse prit les armes, prevint les Bas Valaisans, qui 
 furent vaincus et massacres au Pont du Trient, pres de Mar- 
 tigny ; ” * and again an expedition of the Corps Francs of tlie 
 liberal cantons “pour expulser les Jesuites, et renverser le 
 gouvernement,”at Lucerne, had been summarily “renversee” 
 itself by the Lucernois, 8th December, 1844, only three 
 moiilhs before my intended start for the Alps. Every time 
 Turner saw mo during the winter, he said something to dis- 
 suade me from going abroad ; when at last I went to say 
 good-by, he came down with me into the haU in Queen 
 Anne Street, and opening the door just enough for me to 
 pass, laid hold of my arm, gripping it strongly. “ Why iclll 
 you go to Switzerland — there’ll be such a fidge about you, 
 when you’re gone.” 
 
 I am never able to collect myself in a moment, and am 
 simply helpless on any sudden need for decision like this ; 
 the result being, usually, that I go on doing what I meant to 
 do. If I say anything, it is sure to be wrong. I made no 
 answer, but grasped his hand closely, and went. I believe he 
 made up his mind that I was heartless and selfish ; anyhow he 
 took no more pains with me. 
 
 As it chanced, even while I sat over my trout at Champag- 
 nole, there was another expedition of the Francs Corps — M. 
 
 La Suisse Historique,” par E. H. Gaullieur. Geneve, 1855, p. 
 
 428 . 
 
THE GAMrO SANTO. 
 
 275 
 
 Gaullieur does not say against -wliom, but only that it had 
 “ une issue encore plus tragique que la premiere.” But there 
 had been no instance of annoyance to English or any other 
 travellers, in all the course of these Swiss squabbles since 
 1833, in wdhch year — by the way, the first of our journeys — 
 we drove under some posted field-batteries into Basle, just 
 after the fight at Liesthal between the liberal townspeople 
 and Catholic peasants. The landlord of the “Three Kings” 
 had been out ; and run — or at least made the best speed he 
 could — three leagues to the town gates. 
 
 It was no part of my plan, however, as my parents knew, to 
 enter Switzerland in this spring-time : but to do what I could 
 in Italy first. Geneva itself was quiet enough : Couttet met 
 me there, and next da}'' we drove over the ledges of the Saleve, 
 all aglow with primrose and soldanelle, down upon Annecy. 
 
 I had with me, besides Couttet, a young servant who be- 
 came of great use to me in succeeding years ; with respect to 
 whom I must glance back at some of the past revolutions in 
 our domestic dynasties. The cook and housemaid at Herne 
 Hill, in its mainly characteristic time — 1827-1834 — were sis- 
 ters, Mary and Elizabeth Stone. I have never seen a fillet of 
 veal rightly roasted, nor a Yorkshire pudding rightly basted, 
 since Mary Stone left us to be married in 1836. Elizabeth, 
 also not to be excelled in her line, was }mt replaceable, wdien 
 her career ended in the same catastrophe, by a third younger 
 sister, Hannah ; but I can’t in the least remember who waited 
 on us, till our perennial parlor-maid, Lucy Tovey, came to us 
 in 1829 — remaining with us till 1875. Her sister Harriet re- 
 placed Hannah Stone, who must needs be married, like Mary 
 and Elizabeth, in 1834 ; nor did she leave us till the Den- 
 mark Hill household w^as broken up. But in 1842 another 
 young housemaid came, Anne Hobbs, whose brother John 
 Hobbs, called always at Denmark Hill, George, to distinguish 
 him, in vocal summons, from my father and me, became my 
 body-servant in the same year, and only left me to push his 
 higher fortune in 1854. I could not say before, without 
 interrupting graver matters, that the idea of my not being able 
 to dress myself began at Oxford, where it was thought be- 
 
276 
 
 PRJETERITA. 
 
 coming in a gentleman-commoner to have a squire to manage 
 bis scout. My good, honest, uninteresting Thomas Hughes, 
 being vigilant that I put my v/aistcoat on right side outward, 
 went abroad with us, instead of Salvador; my father, after the 
 first two journeys, being quite able to do his courier’s work 
 himself. When we came home in ’42, Hughes wanted to pro- 
 mote himself to some lionor or other in the public-house line, 
 and George Hobbs, a sensible and merry-minded youth of 
 eighteen, came in his stead. Couttet and he sat in the back 
 seat of the light-hooded barouche which I took for this 
 Italian journey ; the hood seldom raised, as I never travelled 
 in bad weather unless surprised by it ; and the three of us 
 walked that April morning up the Saleve slope, and trotted 
 down to Annecy, in great peace of mind. 
 
 At Annecy I made the first careful trial of my new way of 
 work. I herewith reproduce the study ; it is very pleasant 
 to me still ; and certainly any artist who once accustoms him- 
 self to the method cannot afterward fall into any mean trick- 
 ery or dull conventionalism. The outline must be made 
 clearly and quietly, conveying as much accurate information 
 as ])ossible respecting the form and structure of the object ; 
 then, in washing, the chiaroscuro is lowered from the high 
 lights with extreme care down to the middle tones, and the 
 main masses left in full shade. 
 
 A rhyme written to Mont Blanc at Geneva, and another in 
 vituperation of the idle people at Conflans, were, I think, the 
 last serious exertions of ray poetical powers. I perceived 
 finally that I could express nothing I had to say, rightly, in 
 that manner; and the “peace of mind” above referred to, 
 which returns to me as the principal character of this open- 
 ing journey, Avas perhaps, in part, the result of this extremely 
 wholesome conclusion. 
 
 But also, the two full years, since the flash of volcanic 
 lightning at Naples, liad brought me into a deeper and more 
 rational state of religious temper. I can scarcely yet call it 
 religious thought ; but the steadily read chapters, morning 
 and evening, with the continual comparison between the 
 Protestant and Papal services every Sunday abroad, made me 
 
THE GAMPO SANTO. 
 
 277 
 
 feel that all dogmatic teaching was a matter of chance and 
 habit ; and that the life of religion depended on the force of 
 faith, not the terms of it. In the sincerity and brightness of 
 his imagination, I saw that George Herbert represented the 
 theology of the Protestant Church in a perfectly central and 
 deeply spiritual maimer : his “ Church Porch ” I recognized 
 to be blamelessly wise as a lesson to youth ; and the exqui- 
 sitely faithful fancy of the other poems (in the “ Temple ”) 
 drew me into learning most of them by heart, — the Church 
 Porch,” the “ Dialogue,” “ Employment,” “ Submission,” 
 “Gratefulness,” and, chief favorite, “ The Bag,” — deliberately 
 and carefully. The code of feeling and law written in these 
 verses may be always assigned as a standard of the purest un- 
 sectarian Christianity ; and whatever has been v/isest in thought 
 or happiest in the course of my following life was founded at 
 this time on the teaching of Herbert. The reader will per- 
 haps be glad to see the poem that has been most useful to me, 
 “ Submission,” in simpler spelling than in the grand editions : 
 
 But that Thou art my wisdom, Lord, 
 
 And both mine eyes are Thine, 
 
 My mind would be extremely stirred 
 For missing my design. 
 
 Were it not better to bestow 
 ^ Some place and power on me ? 
 
 Then should Thy praises with me grow, 
 
 And share in my degree. 
 
 But when I thus dispute and grieve 
 I do resume my sight, 
 
 And pilfering what I once did give, 
 
 Disseize Thee of Thy right. 
 
 How know I, if Thou shouldst me raise. 
 
 That I should then raise Thee ? 
 
 Perhaps great places and Thy praise 
 Do not so well agree ! 
 
 Wherefore, unto my gift I stand, 
 
 I will no more advise ; 
 
 Only do Thou lend me Thine hand, 
 
 Since Thou hast both mine eyes. 
 
278 
 
 PRj^TERITA. 
 
 In these, and other such favorite verses, George Herbert, 
 as aforesaid, was to me at this time, and has been since, use- 
 ful beyond every other teacher ; not that I ever attained to 
 any likeness of feeling, but at least knew where I was myself 
 wrong, or cold, in comparison. A little more force was also 
 put on Bible study at this time, because I held myself re- 
 sponsible for George’s tenets as well as my own, and wished 
 to set him a discreet example ; he being well-disposed, and 
 given to my guidance, with no harm as yet in any of his 
 wa^'s. So I read my chapter with him morning and evening ; 
 and if there were no English church on Sundays, the Morn- 
 ing Service, Litany and all, very reverently ; after which we 
 enjoyed ourselves, each in our own way, in the afternoons, 
 George being always free, and Couttet, if he chose ; but he 
 had little taste for the Sunday promenades in a town, and 
 was glad if I would take him with me to gather flowers, or 
 carry stones. I never, until this time, had thought of travel- 
 ling, climbing, or sketching on the Sunday : the first infringe- 
 ment of this rule by climbing the isolated peak above Gap, 
 with both Couttet and George, after our morning service, 
 remains a weight on my conscience to this day. But it was 
 thirteen years later before I made a sketch on Sunday. 
 
 By Gap and Sisteron to Frejus, along the Biviera to Sestri, 
 where I gave a day to draw the stone-pines now at Oxford ; 
 and so straight to my first fixed aim, Lucca, where I settled 
 myself for ten days, — as I supposed. It turned out forty 
 years. 
 
 The town is some thousand paces square ; the unbroken 
 rampart walk round may be a short three miles. There are 
 upward of twenty churches in that space, dating between 
 the sixth and twelfth centuries ; a ruined feudal palace and 
 tower, unmatched except at Verona : the streets clean — cheer- 
 fully inhabited, yet quiet ; nor desolate, even now. Two of 
 the churches representing the perfectest phase of round- 
 arched building in Europe, and one of them containing the 
 loveliest Christian tomb in Italy. 
 
 The rampart walk, unbroken except by descents and ascents 
 at the gates, commands every way the loveliest ranges of all 
 
THE CAMPO SANTO. 
 
 279 
 
 the Tuscan Apennine : when I was there in 1845, besides the 
 ruined feudal palace, there was a maintained Ducal Palace, 
 with a living Duke in it, whose military band pla^^ed every 
 evening on the most floral and peaceful space of rampart. 
 After a well-spent day, and a three-course dinner, — military 
 band, — chains, double braided, of ameth}^st Apennine linked 
 by golden clouds, — then the mountain air of April, still soft 
 as the marble towers, grew unsubstantial in the starlight, — • 
 such the monastic discipline of Lucca to my novitiate mind. 
 
 I must stop to think a little how it was that so early as this 
 I could fasten on the tomb of Ilaria di Caretto with certainty 
 of its being a supreme guide to me ever after. If I get tire- 
 some, the reader must skip ; I write, for the moment, to 
 amuse myself, and not him. The said reader, duly sagacious, 
 must have felt, long since, that, though very respectable peo- 
 ple in our way, we were all of us definitely vulgar people ; just 
 as my aunt’s dog Towzer was a vulgar dog, though a very 
 good and dear dog. Said reader should have seen also that 
 we had not set ourselves up to have “ a taste ” in anything. 
 There was never any question about matching colors in furni- 
 ture, or having the correct pattern in china. Everything for 
 service in the house was bought plain, and of the best ; our 
 toys were what we happened to take a fancy to in pleasant 
 places — a cow in stala,ctite from Matlock, a fisher-wife doll 
 from Calais, a Swiss farm from Berne, Bacchus and Ariadne 
 from Carrara. But, among these toys, principal on the 
 drawdng-room chimney-piece, alway put away by my mother 
 at night, and “put out” in the afternoon, were some pieces 
 of Spanish clay, to which, without knowing it, I owed a 
 quantity of strenuous teaching. Native baked clay figures, 
 painted and gilded by untaught persons who had the gift ; 
 manufacture mainly practised along the Xeres coast, I be- 
 lieve, and of late much decayed, but then flourishing, and its 
 work as good as the worker could make it. There was a 
 Don Whiskerandos contrabandista, splendidly handsome and 
 good-natured, on a magnificent horse at the trot, brightly 
 caparisoned : everything finely finished, his gun loose in his 
 hand. There was a lemonade seller, a pomegranate seller, a 
 
280 
 
 PR^TEEITA. 
 
 matador with his bull — animate all, and graceful, the coloring 
 chiefly ruddy brown. Things of constant interest to me, and 
 altogether wholesome ; vestiges of living sculpture come down 
 into the Herne Hill times, from the days of Tanagra. 
 
 For loftier admiration, as before told, Chan trey in Lich- 
 field, Roubilliac in Westminster, were set forth to me, and 
 honestly felt ; a scratched white outline or two from Greek 
 vases on the black Derbyshire marble did not interfere with 
 my first general feeling about sculpture, that it should be 
 living, and emotional ; that the flesh should be like flesh, and 
 the drapery like clothes ; and that, whether trotting contra- 
 bandista, dancing girl, or dying gladiator, the subject should 
 have an interest of its own, and not consist merely of figures 
 with torches or garlands standing alternatel}^ on their right 
 and left legs. Of “ ideal ” form and the like, I fortunately 
 heard and thought nothing. 
 
 The point of connoisseurship I had reached, at sixteen, 
 with these advantages and instincts, is curiously measured by 
 the criticism of the Cathedral of Kheims in my Don Juan 
 journal of 1835 : 
 
 The carving is not rich, — the Gothic heavy, 
 
 The statues miserable ; not a fold 
 Of drapery well-disposed in all the bevy 
 Of Saints and Bishops and Archbishops old 
 That line the porches gray. But in the nave I 
 Stared at the windows purple, blue, and gold 
 And the perspective’s wonderfully fine 
 When you look down the long columnar line. 
 
 By the “carving ” I meant the niche work, which is indeed 
 curiously rude at Kheims ; by the “ Gothic ” the structure 
 and mouldings of arch, which I rightly call “ heavy ” as com- 
 pared with later French types ; while the condemnation of 
 the draperies meant that they were not the least like those 
 either of Rubens or Roubilliac. And ten years had to pass 
 over me before I knew better ; but every day between the 
 standing in Rheims porch and by Ilaria’s tomb had done on 
 me some chiselling to the good ; and the discipline from the 
 Fontainebleau time till now had been severe. The accurate 
 
THE CAMEO SAMTO. 
 
 281 
 
 Btudy of tree branches, growing leaves, and foreground herb- 
 age, had more and more taught me the difference between 
 violent and graceful lines ; the beauty of Clotilde and Cecile, 
 essentially French-Gothic, and the living Egeria of Araceli, 
 had fixed in my mind and heart, not as an art-ideal, but as a 
 sacred realit}^ the purest standards of breathing woman- 
 hood ; and here suddenlj^, in the sleeping Ilaria, was the per- 
 fectness of these, expressed with harmonies of line which I 
 saw in an instant were under the same laws as the river wave, 
 and the aspen branch, and the stars’ rising and setting ; but 
 treated with a modesty and severity which read the laws of 
 nature by the light of virtue. 
 
 Another influence, no less forcible, and more instantly 
 effective, was brought to bear on me by my first quiet walk 
 through Lucca. 
 
 Hitherto, all architecture, except faiiy-finished Milan, had 
 depended with me for its delight on being partly in decay. 
 I revered the sentiment of its age, and I was accustomed to 
 look for the signs of age in the mouldering of its traceries, 
 and in the interstices deepening between the stones of its 
 masonry. This looking for cranny and joint was mixed with 
 the love of rough stones themselves, and of country churches 
 built like Westmoreland cottages. 
 
 Here in Lucca I found myself suddenly in the presence of 
 twelfth century buildings, originally set in such balance of 
 masonry, that they could all stand without mortar ; and in 
 material so incorruptible, that after six hundred years of sun- 
 shine and rain, a lancet could not now be put between their 
 joints. 
 
 Absolutely for the first time I now saw what mediaeval 
 builders were, and what they meant. I took the simplest of 
 all fayades for analysis, that of Santa Maria Foris-Portam, and 
 thereon literally began the study of architecture. 
 
 In the third — and, for the reader’s relief, last — place in 
 these technical records. Fra Bartolomeo’s picture of the Mag- 
 dalene, with St. Catherine of Siena,” gave me a faultless ex- 
 ample of the treatment of pure Catholic tradition by the per- 
 fect schools of painting. 
 
282 
 
 PR^WERITA, 
 
 And I never needed lessoning more in the principles of the 
 three great arts. After those summer days of 1845, I ad- 
 vanced only in knowledge of individual character, provincial 
 feeling, and details of construction or execution. Of what 
 was primarily right and ultimately best, there was never 
 more doubt to me, and my art-teaching, necessarity, in its 
 many local or personal interests partial, has been from that 
 time throughout consistent, and progressing every year to 
 more evident completion. 
 
 The full happiness of that time to me cannot be explained 
 except to consistently hard workers ; and of those, to the few 
 who can keep their peace and health. For the world ap- 
 peared to me now exactly right. Hills as high as they should 
 be, rivers as wide, pictures as pretty, and masters and men as 
 wise — as pretty and wise could be. And I expected to bring 
 everybody to be of my opinion, as soon as I could get out my 
 second volume ; and drove down to Pisa in much hope and 
 pride, though grave in both. 
 
 For now I had read enough of Cary’s “ Dante,” and Sis- 
 mondi’s “ Italian Republics,” and Lord Lindsay, to feel what 
 I had to look for in the Campo Santo. Yet at this moment I 
 pause to think what it was that I found. 
 
 Briefly, the entire doctrine of Christianity, painted so that 
 a child could understand it. And what a child cannot under- 
 stand of Christianity, no one need tiw to. 
 
 In these days of the religion of this and that, — briefly let 
 us say, the religion of Stocks and Posts — in order to say a 
 clear word of the Campo Santo, one must first say a firm word 
 concerning Christianity itself. I find numbers, even of the 
 most intelligent and amiable people, not knowing what the 
 word means ; because they are always asking how much is 
 true, and how much they like, and never ask, first, what was 
 the total meaning of it, whether they like it or not. 
 
 The total meaning was, and is, that the God who made 
 earth and its creatures, took at a certain time upon the earth, 
 the flesh and form of man ; in that flesh sustained the pain 
 and died the death of the creature He had made ; rose again 
 after death into glorious human life, and when the date of the 
 
THE CAMPO SANTO. 
 
 283 
 
 human race is ended, will return in visible human form, and 
 render to every man according to his work. Christianity is 
 the belief in, and love of, God thus manifested. Anything 
 less than this, the mere acceptance of the sayings of Christ, 
 or assertion of any less than divine power in His Being, may 
 be, for aught I know, enough for virtue, peace, and safety ; 
 but they do not make people Christians, or enable them to 
 understand the heart of the simplest believer in the old doc- 
 trine. One verse more of George Herbert will put the height 
 of that doctrine into less debatable, though figurative, pict- 
 ure than any longer talk of mine : — 
 
 Hast tliou not heard that my Lord Jesus died? 
 
 Then let me tell thee a strange story. 
 
 The God of Power, as he did ride 
 In his majestic robes of glory, 
 
 Resolved to light ; and so, one day 
 He did descend, undressing all the way. 
 
 The stars his tire of light, and rings, obtained, 
 
 The cloud his bow, the fire his spear, 
 
 The heavens his azure mantle gained, 
 
 And when they asked what he would wear, 
 
 He smiled, and said as he did go, 
 
 “ He had new clothes a making, here, below.” 
 
 T write from memory ; the lines have been my lesson, ever 
 since 1845, of the noblesse of thought which makes the sim- 
 plest word best. 
 
 And the Campo Santo of Pisa is absolutely the same in 
 painting as these lines in word. Straight to its purpose, in 
 the clearest and most eager way; the purpose, highest that can 
 be ; the expression, the best possible to the workman accord- 
 ing to his knowledge. The several parts of the gospel of the 
 Campo Santo are written by different persons ; but all the 
 original frescoes are by men of honest genius. No matter for 
 their names ; the contents of this wall-scripture are these. 
 
 First, the Triumph of Death, as Homer, Virgil, and Horace 
 thought of death. Having been within sight of it myself, 
 since Oxford days ; and looking back already over a little 
 
284 
 
 PJR^TERITA, 
 
 Campo Santo of my own people, I was ready for tliat part of 
 the lesson. 
 
 Secondly, the stor}" of the Patriarchs, and of their guidance 
 by the ministries of visible angels ; that is to say, the ideal of 
 the life of man in its blessedness, before the coming of Christ. 
 
 Thirdly, the story of Job, in direct converse with God him- 
 self, the God of nature, and without any reference to the 
 work of Christ except in its final surety, “ Yet in my flesh I 
 shall see God.” 
 
 Fourthly, the life of St. Ranier of Pisa, and of the desert 
 saints, showing the ideal of human life in its blessedness 
 after the coming of Christ. 
 
 Lastly, the return of Christ in glory, and the Last Judg- 
 ment. 
 
 Now this code of teaching is absolutely general for the 
 whole Christian world. There is no papal doctrine, nor an- 
 tipapal ; nor any question of sect or schism whatsoever. 
 Kiugs, bishops, knights, hermits, are there, because the paint- 
 ers saw them, and painted them, naturally, as we paint the 
 nineteenth century product of common councilmen and engi- 
 neers. Bat they did not conceive that a man must be entirely 
 happy in this world and the next because he wore a mitre or 
 helmet, as we do because he has made a fortune or a tunnel. 
 
 Not only was I prepared at this time for the teaching of 
 the Campo Santo, but it was precisely what at that time I 
 needed. 
 
 It realized for me the patriarchal life, showed me what the 
 earlier Bible meant to say ; and put into direct and inevitable 
 light the questions I had to deal with, alike in my thoughts 
 and ways, under existing Christian tradition. 
 
 Questions clearly not to be all settled in that fortnight. 
 Some, respecting the Last Judgment, such as would have oc- 
 curred to Professor Huxley, — as for instance, that if Christ 
 came to judgment in St. James’s Street, the people couldn’t 
 see him from Piccadill}^ — had been dealt with by me before 
 now ; but there is one fact, and no question at all, concerning 
 the Judgment, which was only at this time beginning to dawn 
 on me, that men had been curiously judging themselves by 
 
THE CAMPO SANTO. 
 
 285 
 
 always calling the day they expected, “Dies Irse,” instead of 
 “ Dies Amoris.” 
 
 Meantime, my own first business was evidently to read 
 w'hat these Pisans had said of it, and take some record of the 
 sayings ; for at that time the old-fashioned ravages were going- 
 on, honestly and innocently. Nobody cared for the old plas- 
 ter, and nobody pretended to. Wlieii any dignitary of Pisa 
 was to be buried, they peeled off some Benozzo Gozzoli, or 
 whatever else was in the way, and put up a nice new tablet 
 to the new defunct ; but what was left was still all Benozzo, 
 (or repainting of old time, not last year’s restoration). I 
 cajoled the Abbe Bosini into letting me put up a scaffold 
 level with the frescoes ; set steadily to work with what faculty 
 in outline I had ; and being by this time practised in delicate 
 curves, by having drawn trees and grass rightly, got far better 
 results than I had hoped, and had an extremely happy fort- 
 night of it ! For as the Triumph of Death was no new thought 
 to me, the life of hermits was no temptation ; but the stories 
 of Abraham, Job, and St. Banier, well told, were like three 
 new — Scott’s novels, I was going to say, and will say, for I 
 don’t see my way to anything nearer the fact, and the work 
 on them was pure delight. I got an outline of Abraham’s 
 parting with the last of the three angels ; of the sacrifice of 
 Job ; of the three beggars, and a fiend or two, out of the 
 Triumph of Death ; and of the conversion of St. Banier, for 
 wdiich I greatly pitied him. 
 
 For he is playing, evidently with happiest skill, on a kind 
 of zithern-harp, held upright as he stands, to the dance of 
 four sweet Pisan maids, in a round, holding each other only 
 by the bent little fingers of each hand. And one with graver 
 face, and wearing a purple robe, approaches him, saying — I 
 knew- once wFat she said, but forget now ; only it meant that 
 his joyful life in that kind was to be ended. And he obeys 
 her, and follows, into a nobler life. 
 
 I do not know if ever there w^as a real St. Banier ; but the 
 story of him remained for truth in the heart of Pisa as long as 
 Pisa herself lived. 
 
 I got more than outline of this scene : a colored sketch of 
 
286 
 
 PUMTEBITA, 
 
 the whole group, which I destroj^ed afterward, in shame of 
 its faults, all but the purple-robed warning figure ; and that 
 is lost, and the fresco itself now lost also, all mouldering and 
 ruined by what must indeed be a cyclical change in the 
 Italian climate : the frescoes exposed to it of which I made 
 note before 1850, seem to me to have suffered more in the 
 twenty j^ears since, than they had since they were painted : 
 those at Verona alone excepted, where the art of fresco seems 
 to have been practised in the fifteenth century in absolute 
 perfection, and the color to have been injured only by vio- 
 lence, not by time. 
 
 There was another lovely cloister in Pisa, without fresco, 
 but exquisite in its arched perspective and central garden, 
 and noble in its unbuttressed height of belfry tower ; — the 
 cloister of San Francesco : in these, and in the meadow round 
 the baptistery, the routine of my Italian university life was 
 now fixed for a good many years in main material points. 
 
 In summer I have been always at work, or out w'alking, by 
 six o’clock, usually awake by half-past four ; but I keep to 
 Pisa for the present, where my monkish discipline arranged 
 itself thus. Out, any how, by six, quick wmlk to the field, 
 and as much done as I could, and back to breakfast at half- 
 past eight. Study bit of Sismondi over bread and butter, 
 then back to Campo Santo, draw till twelve ; quick walk to 
 look about me and stretch my legs, in shade if it might be, 
 before lunch, on anything I chanced to see nice in a fruit 
 shop, and a bit of bread. Back to lighter w^ork, or merely 
 looking and thinking, for another hour and a half, and to 
 hotel for dinner at four. Three courses and a flask of Alea- 
 tico, (a sweet, yet rather astringent, red, rich for Italian, wine 
 — provincial, and with lovely basketwork round the bottle). 
 Then out for saunter with Couttet ; he having leave to say any- 
 thing he had a mind to, but not generally communicative of 
 his feelings ; he carried my sketch-book, but in the evening 
 there was too much always to be hunted out, of city ; or 
 watched, of hills, or sunset ; and I rarely drew, — to my sor- 
 row, now. I wish I knew less, and had drawn more. 
 
 Homewards, from wherever we had got to, the moment the 
 
THE CAMPO SANTO, 
 
 287 
 
 sun was down, and the last clouds had lost their color. I 
 avoided marshy places, if I could, at all times of the day, 
 because I didn’t like them ; but I feared neither sun nor 
 moon, dawn nor twilight, malaria nor anything else malefic, 
 in the course of work, except only draughts and ugly people. 
 I never would sit in a draught for half a minute, and fled 
 from some sorts of beggars ; but a crowd of the common 
 people round me only made me proud, and try to draw as 
 well as I could ; mere rags or dirt I did not care an atom 
 for. 
 
 As early as 1835, and as late as 1841, I had been accus- 
 tomed, both in France and Italy, to feel that the crov/d be- 
 hind me was interested in my choice of subjects, and pleas- 
 antly applausive of the swift progress under my hand of 
 street perspectives, and richness of surface decoration, sucli 
 as might be symbolized by dextrous zigzags, empkatic dots, 
 or graceful flourishes. I had the better pleasure, now, of 
 feeling that my really watchful delineation, while still rapid 
 enough to interest any stray student of drawing who might 
 stop by me on his way to the Academy, had a quite unusual 
 power of directing the attention of the general crowd to 
 points of beauty, or subjects of sculpture, in the buildings I 
 was at work on, to which they had never before lifted eyes, 
 and which I had the double pride of first discovering for 
 them, and then imitating — not to their dissatisfaction. 
 
 And well might I be proud ; but how much more ought I 
 to have been pitiful, in feeling the swift and perfect sympathy 
 which the “ common people ” — companion-people I should 
 have said, for in Italy there is no commonness — gave me, in 
 Lucca, or Florence, or Venice, for every touch of true work 
 that I laid in their sight.* How much more, I say, should it 
 
 * A letter, received from Miss Alexander as I correct this proof, gives 
 a singular instance of this power in the Italian peasant. She sajs: — 
 “I have just been drawing a magnificent Loml)ard shepherd, who sits 
 to me in a waistcoat made from the skin of a yellow cow with the hairy 
 side out, a shirt of homespun linen as coarse as sailcloth, a scarlet sash, 
 and trousers woven (I should think) from the wool of the black sheep. 
 He astonishes me all the time by the great amount of good advice 
 
288 
 
 PRMTEPaTA. 
 
 have beeD pitiful to me, to recognize their eager intellect, 
 and delicate senses, open to every lesson and every joy of 
 their ancestral art, far more deeply and vividly than in the 
 days when every spring kindled them into battle, and every 
 autumn was red with their blood : yet left now, alike by the 
 laws and lords set over them, less happy in aimless life than 
 of old in sudden death ; never one effort made to teach them, 
 to comfort them, to economize their industries, animate their 
 pleasures, or guard their simplest rights from the continually 
 more fatal oppression of unprincipled avarice, and unmerciful 
 wealth. 
 
 But all this I have felt and learned, like so much else, too 
 late. The extreme seclusion of my early training left me long 
 careless of sympathy for myself; and that which I gave to 
 others never led me into any hope of being useful to them, 
 till my strength of active life was past. Also, my mind was 
 not yet catholic enough to feel that the Campo Santo be- 
 longed to its own people more than to me ; and indeed, I 
 had to read its lessons before I could interpret them. The 
 world has for the most part been of opinion that I entered 
 on the task of philanthropy too soon rather than too late : at 
 all events, my conscience remained at rest during all those 
 first times at Pisa, in mere delight in the glory of the past, 
 and in hope for the future of Italy, without need of my be- 
 coming one of her demagogues. And the days that began in 
 the cloister of the Campo Santo usually ended by my getting 
 upon the roof of Santa Maria della Spina, and sitting in the 
 sunlight that transfused the warm marble of its pinnacles, 
 till the unabated brightness went down beyond the arches of 
 the Ponte-a-Mare, — the few footsteps and voices of the twi- 
 light fell silent in the streets, and the city and her mountains 
 stood mute as a dream, beyond the soft eddying of Arno. 
 
 which he gives me about my work ; and always right ! Whenever he 
 looks at my unfinished picture, he can always tell me exactly what it 
 wants.” 
 
MACUQNAQA, 
 
 289 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MACUGNAGA. 
 
 When first I saw Florence, in 1840, the great street leading 
 into the Baptistery square from the south had not been re- 
 built, but consisted of ii’regular ancient houses, with far pro- 
 jecting bracketed roofs. I mourned over their loss bitterly 
 in 1845 ; but for the rest, Florence was still, then, what no 
 one who sees her now could conceive. 
 
 For one great feature, an avenue of magnificent cypress 
 and laurel ascended, unbroken, from the Porta Romana to 
 Bellosguardo, from whose height one could then wander 
 round through lanes of olive, or through small rural vine- 
 yards, to San Miniato, which stood deserted, but not ruinous, 
 with a narrow lawn of scented herbage before it, and sweet 
 wild weeds about its steps, all shut in by a hedge of roses. 
 The long ascending causeway between smaller cypresses than 
 those of the Porta Romana, gave every conceivably loveliest 
 view of the Duomo, and Cascine forest, and passing away of 
 Arno toward the sunset. 
 
 In the city herself, the monasteries were still inhabited, 
 religiously and usefully ; and in most of them, as well as 
 among the Franciscans at Fesole, I w^as soon permitted to 
 go wherever I liked, and draw w^hatever I chose. But my 
 time was passed chiefly in the sacristy and choir of Santa 
 Maria Novella, the sacristy of Santa Croce, and the upper- 
 passage of San Marco. In the Academia I studied the An- 
 gelicos only, Lippi and Botticelli being still far beyond me ; 
 but the Ghirlandajos in the choir of Santa Maria Novella, in 
 their broad masses of color, complied with the laws I had 
 learned in Venice, while yet they swiftly and strictly taught 
 me the fine personalities of the Florentine race and art. At 
 Venice, one only knows a fisherman by his net, and a saint 
 by his nimbus. But at Florence, angel or prophet, knight 
 or hermit, girl or goddess, prince or peasant, cannot but be 
 what they are, masque them how you will. 
 
 19 
 
290 
 
 PRMTEniTA. 
 
 Nobody ever disturbed me in tlie Gbirlandajo apse. There 
 were no services behind the high altar ; tourists, even the 
 most learned, had never in those days heard Ghirlanda- 
 jo’s name ; the sacristan was paid his daily fee regularly 
 whether he looked after me or not. The lovely chapel, with 
 its painted windows and companies of old Florentines, was 
 left for me to do what I liked in, all the forenoon ; and I wrote 
 a complete critical and historical account of the frescoes from 
 top to bottom of it, seated mostly astride on the desks, till I 
 tumbled off backward one day at the gap where the steps 
 went down, but came to no harm, though the fall was really a 
 more dangerous one than any I ever had in the Alps. The 
 inkbottle was upset over the historical account however, and 
 the closing passages a little shortened, — which saved some 
 useful time. 
 
 When the chief bustle in the small sacristy, (a mere cup- 
 board or ecclesiastical pantry, two steps up out of the transept ) 
 was over, with the chapel masses of the morning, I used to 
 be let in there to draw the Angelico Annunciation, — about 
 eleven inches by fourteen as far as I recollect, then one of 
 the chief gems of Florence, seen in the little shrine it was 
 painted for, now carried away by republican pillage, and lost 
 in the general lumber of the great pillage-reservoir galleries. 
 The monks let me sit close to it and work, as long as I liked, 
 and went on with their cup-rinsings and cope-foldings with- 
 out minding me. If any priest of the higher dignities came 
 in, I was careful always to rise reverently, and get his kind 
 look, or bow, or perhaps a stray crumb of benediction. 
 When I was tired of drawing, I went into the Spezieria, and 
 learned what ineffable sweetnesses and incenses were in the 
 lierbs and leaves that had gathered the sunbeams of Florence 
 into their life ; and bought little bundles of bottles, an inch 
 long, and as thick as a moderately sized quill, with Araby the 
 blest and a spice island or two inside each. Then in the after- 
 noon a bit of street or gallery work, and after dinner, always 
 up either to Fesole or San Miniato. In those days I think it 
 never rained but when one wanted it to, (and not always then) ; 
 wherever you chanced to be, if you got tired, and had no 
 
MACUONAQA, 
 
 291 
 
 friends to be bothered with, you lay down on the next bank 
 and went to sleep, to the song of the cicadas, which, with a 
 great deal of making believe, might at last, somehow, be 
 thought nice. 
 
 I did make one friend in Florence, however, for love of 
 Switzerland, Budolph Durheim, a Bernese student, of solid 
 bearish gifts and kindly strength. I took to him at first 
 because of a clearly true drawing he had made of his lit- 
 tle blue-eyed twelve-years-old simplicity of a goatherd sis- 
 ter ; but found him afterward a most helpful and didactic 
 friend. He objected especially to my losing time in senti- 
 ment or over-hot vaporization, and would have had me draw 
 something every afternoon, whether it suited my fancy or 
 not. “ ^a vaut dejii la peine,” said he, stopping on the way 
 to the Certosa, under a group of hillside cottages ; it was my 
 first serious lesson in Italian backgrounds ; and if we had 
 worked on together, so and so might have happened, as so 
 often aforesaid. But we separated, to our sorrow then, and 
 harm afterward. I went oiT into higher and vainer vaporiza- 
 tion at Venice ; he went back to Berne, and under the patron- 
 age of its aristocracy, made his black bread by dull portrait- 
 painting to the end of a lost life. I saw the arid remnant of 
 him in his Bernese painting, or daubing, room, many a year 
 afterward, and reproached the heartless Alps, for his sake. 
 
 Of other companionship in Florence, except Couttet’s, I 
 had none. I had good letters to Mr. Millingen, and of 
 course a formal one to the British Embassy. I called on Mr. 
 Millingen dutifully, but found he knew nothing after the 
 fourth century b.c., and had as little taste for the “Liber 
 Studiorum ” as the Abbe Bosini, I waited on the Ambassador, 
 and got him to use British influence enough to let me into 
 the convent of the Magdalen, wherein I have always since 
 greatly praised Perugino’s fresco, with a pleasant feeling 
 that nobody else could see it. I never went near the Em- 
 bassy afterward, nor the Embassy near me, till I sent my 
 P. P. C. card by George, when I was going away, before ten in 
 
 the morning, which caused Lord ’s porter to swear 
 
 fearfully at George and his master both. And it was the last 
 
292 
 
 TUMTETilTA. 
 
 time I ever had anything to do with Embassies, except 
 through the mediation of pitying friends. 
 
 There was yet another young draughtsman in Florence, who 
 lessoned me to purpose — a French youth ; — his family name 
 Dieudonne ; I knew him by no other. He had trained him« 
 self to copy Angelico, in pencil tint, wrought with the point, 
 as pure as the down on a butterfly’s wing, and with perfect 
 expression : typical engraving in gray, of inconceivable deli- 
 cacy. I have never seen anything the least approaching it 
 since, but did not then enough know its value. Dieudonne’s 
 prices were necessarily beyond those of the water-color copy- 
 ists, and he would not always work, even when the price was 
 ready for him. He went back to France, and was effaced 
 in the politeness of Paris, as Kudolph in the rudeness of 
 Berne. Hard homes alike, their native cities, to them both. 
 
 My own work in Florence, this time, was chiefly thinking 
 and writing — progressive, but much puzzled, and its Epicu- 
 rean pieties a little too dependent on enamel and gilding. A 
 study in the rose-garden of San Miniato, and in the cypress 
 avenue of the Porta Romana, remain to me, for memorials of 
 perhaps the best days of early life. 
 
 Couttet, however, was ill at ease and out of temper in Flor- 
 ence, little tolerant of Italian manners and customs ; and not 
 satisfied that my studies in sacristies and cloisters were wise, 
 or vials of myrrh and m3U’tle essence as good for me as the 
 breeze over Alpine rose. He solaced himself by making a 
 careful collection of all the Florentine wdld-flowers for me, 
 exquisitely pressed and dried, — now, to my sorrow, lost or 
 burned with all other herbaria ; they fretted me by bulging 
 always in the middle, and crumbling, like parcels of tea, over 
 my sketches. 
 
 At last the Arno dried up ; or, at least, was reduced to the 
 size of the Effra at Dulwich, with muddy shingle to the shore ; 
 and the gray “pietra serena” of Fesole was like hot iron in 
 the sun, sprinkled with sand. Also, I had pretty w’ell tired 
 myself out, and, for the present, spent all my pictorial lan- 
 guage so that we all of us were pleased to trot over the 
 Apennines, and see the gleam of Monte Rosa again from Pia- 
 
MAGUGNAGA. 
 
 293 
 
 cenza and Pavia. Once it was in sight, I went straight for it, 
 and remember nothing more till we were well afoot in the 
 Val Anzasca. 
 
 The afternoon rambles to Fesole and Bellosguardo, besides 
 having often to stand for hours together writing notes in 
 church or gallery, had kept me in fair training ; and I did 
 the twenty miles up hill from Vogogna to Macugnaga without 
 much trouble, but in ever hotter indignation all the way at 
 the extreme dulness of the Val Anzasca, “ the most beautiful 
 valley in the Alps ” — according to modern guide-books. But 
 tourists who pass their time mostly in looking at black rocks 
 through blue spectacles, cannot be expected to know much 
 about a valley : — on the other hand, ever since the days of 
 Glenfarg and Matlock, I have been a stream-tracker and cliff- 
 hunter, and rank mountains more by the beauty of their 
 glens than the height of their summits : also, it chanced that 
 our three first journeys abroad had shown me the unques- 
 tionably grandest defiles of the Alps in succession — first the 
 Via Mala, then the St. Gothard, then the tremendous gran- 
 ites of the Grimsel, then Rosenlaui and Lauterbrunnen, Val 
 d’Aosta and Cormayeur ; then the valley of the Inn and preci- 
 pices of Innsbruck — and at last the Ortlerspitze and descent 
 from the Stelvio to Como ; with the Simplon and defile of 
 Cl use, now as well known as Gipsy Hill at Norwood : and 
 the Val Anzasca has no feature whatever in any kind to be 
 matched with any one of these. It is merely a deep furrow 
 through continuous masses of shaly rock, blistered by the 
 sun and rough with juniper, with scattered chestnut-trees 
 and pastures below. There are no precipices, no defiles, no 
 distinct summits on either fiank ; while the Monte Bosa, oc- 
 casionally seen at the extremity of the valley, is a mere white 
 heap, v/ith no more form in it than a haycock after a thunder- 
 shower. 
 
 Nor was my mind relieved by arrival at Macugnaga itself ; 
 I did not then, nor do I yet, understand Avliy the village 
 should have a name at all, more than any other group of 
 half a dozen chalets in a sheltered dip of moorlands. There 
 was a little inn, of which the upper fioor was just enough 
 
294 
 
 PR^^TEBITA. 
 
 for the landlord, Couttet, George, and me ; — once, during a 
 month’s stay, I remember seeing two British persons with 
 knapsacks at the bottom of the stairs, who must also have 
 slept in the house, I suppose. My own room was about 
 seven feet wide by ten long ; one window, two-feet-six square, 
 at the side, looked straight into the green bank at the bot- 
 tom of the Monte Moro, and another at the end, looked into 
 vacant sky down the valley. A clear dashing stream, not ice- 
 fed, but mere fountain and rainfall from the Moro, ran past 
 the house just under the side window, and was the chief 
 cause of my stay, and consolation of it. The group of 
 chalets round had no inhabitants, that ever I saw : — the little 
 chapel had a belfry, but I never remember hearing its bell, 
 or seeing anybody go in or come out of it. I don’t think 
 even the goats had bells, so quiet the place was. The Monte 
 Kosa glacier, a mile higher up, merely choked the valley ; it 
 seemed to come from nowhere and to be going nowliere ; 
 it had no pinnacles, no waves, no crevasses with action 
 or method of fracture in them ; no icefalls at the top, nor 
 arched source of stream at the bottom ; the sweep of rock 
 above showed neither bedding nor buttressing of the least 
 interest, and gave no impression of having any particular top, 
 while yet the whole circuit of it was, to such poor climbing 
 powers as mine, totally inaccessible, and even unapproachable, 
 but with more trouble than it was worth. 
 
 Thus much I made out the first day after arriving, but 
 thought there must be something to see somewhere, if I 
 looked properly about ; also, I had made solemn vows and 
 complex postal arrangements for a month under Monte Rosa, 
 and I stayed my month accordingly, with variously humiliat- 
 ing and disagreeably surprising results. 
 
 The first, namely, that mountain air at this height, 4,000 
 feet for sleeping level, varying to 6,000 or 7,000 feet in the 
 day’s walks, was really not good for me, but quickened pulse 
 and sickened stomach, and saddened one’s notions alike of 
 clouds, stones, and pastoral life. 
 
 The second, that my Florentine studies had not taught me 
 how to draw clouds or stones any better ; that the stream under 
 
MAGUGNAGA. 
 
 295 
 
 my window was no more imitable than the Rhone itself, and 
 that any single boulder in it would take all the month, or it 
 might be, six weeks, to paint the least to my mind. 
 
 The third, that Alpine geology was in these high centres of 
 it as yet wholly inscrutable to me. 
 
 The fourth, that I was not, as I used to suppose, born for 
 solitude, like Dr. Zimmermann, and that the whole south side 
 of Monte Rosa did not contain as much real and comfortable 
 entertainment for me as the Market Street of Croydon. Nor 
 do I believe I could have stayed out my month at Macugnaga 
 with any consistency, but that I had brought with me a 
 pocket volume of Shakespeare, and set myself for the first 
 time to read, seriously, “ Coriolanus” and “ Julius Caesar.” 
 
 I see that in the earlier passages of this too dimly explicit 
 narrative, no notice is taken of the uses of Shakespeare at 
 Herne Hill, other than that he used to lie upon the table ; 
 nor can I the least trace his influence on my own mind or 
 work, except as a part of the great reality and infinity of the 
 world itself, and its gradually unfolding histoiy and law. To 
 my father, and to Richard Gray, the characters of Shake- 
 spearian comedy were all familiar personal friends ; my 
 mother’s refusal to expose herself to theatric temptation be- 
 gan in her having fallen in love, for some weeks, when she 
 was a girl, wnth Henry the Fifth at the battle of Agincourt ; 
 nor can I remember in my own childhood any time when 
 the plots of the great plays w’ere unknown to me, or — I write 
 the word now with more than surprise — misunderstood ! I 
 thought and felt about all of them then, just as I think and 
 feel now; no character, small or great, has taken a nev'iaspect 
 to me ; and tlie attentive reading which began first at Ma- 
 cugnaga meant only the discovery of a more perfect truth, or 
 a deeper passion, in the w'ords that had before rung in my 
 ears with too little questioned melody. As for the full con- 
 tents of any passage, or any scene, I never expected, nor ex- 
 pect, to know them, any more than every rock of Skiddaw, 
 or flower of Jura. 
 
 But by the light of the little window at Macugnaga, and by 
 the murmur of the stream beneath it, began the course of 
 
296 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 study which led me into fruitful thought, out of the till then 
 passive sensation of merely artistic or naturalist life ; and 
 which have made of me — or at least I fain would believe the 
 friends who tell me so — a useful teacher, instead of a vain 
 laborer. 
 
 From that time forward, nearly all serious reading was 
 done while I was abroad ; the heaviest box in the boot being 
 always full of dictionaries ; and my Denmark Hill life resolved 
 itself into the drudgery of authorship and press correction, 
 with infinite waste of time in saying the same things over 
 and over to the people who came to see our Turners. 
 
 In calling my authorship drudgery, I do not mean that 
 writing ever gave me the kind of pain of which Carlyle so 
 wildly complains, — to my total amazement and boundless 
 puzzlement, be it in passing said; for he talked just as vigor- 
 ously as he wrote, and the book he makes bitterest moan 
 over, “Friedrich,” bears the outer aspect of richly enjoj^ed 
 gossip, and lovingly involuntary eloquence of description or 
 praise. My own literary work, on the contrary, was always 
 done as quietly and methodically as a piece of tapestry. I 
 knew exactly what I had got to say, put the words firmly in 
 their places like so many stitches, hemmed the edges of 
 chapters round with what seemed to me graceful flourishes, 
 touched them finally with my cunningest points of color, and 
 read the work to papa and mamma at breakfast the next 
 morning, as a girl shows her sampler. 
 
 “ Drudgery” may be a hard word for this often complacent, 
 and entirely painless occupation ; still, the best that could be 
 said iv,!’ it, was that it gave me no serious trouble ; and I 
 should think the pleasure of driving, to a good coachman, of 
 ploughing, to a good farmer, much more of dressmaking, to 
 an inventive and benevolent modiste, must be greatly more 
 piquant than the most proudly ardent hours of book-writing 
 have ever been to me, or as far as my memory ranges, to anj^ 
 conscientious author of merely average power. How great 
 work is done, under what burden of sorrow, or with what 
 expense of life, has not been told hitherto, nor is likely to be ; 
 the best of late time has been done recklessly or contemptu- 
 
MAGUGNAQA. 
 
 297 
 
 ously. Byron would burn a canto if a friend disliked it, and 
 Scott spoil a story to please a bookseller. 
 
 As I have come on the extremely minor question of my 
 own work,* I may once for all complete all necessary account 
 of it by confession of my evermore childish delight in be- 
 ginning a drawing ; and usually acute misery in trying to 
 iinish one. People sometimes praise me as industrious, when 
 they count the number of printed volumes which Mr. Allen 
 can now advertise. But the biography of the waste pencilling 
 and passionately forsaken coloring, heaped in the dusty cor- 
 ners of Brantwood, if I could write it, would be far more 
 pathetically exemplary or admonitory. 
 
 And as I transpose myself back through the forty years of 
 desultory, yet careful, reading, which began in my mossy cell 
 of Macugnaga, it becomes a }'et more pertinent question to 
 me how much life has been also wasted in that manner, 
 and what was not wasted, extremely weakened and saddened. 
 Very certainly, “Coriolanus” and “Julius Csesar” did notin 
 the least cheer or strengthen my heart in its Monte-Kosean 
 solitude ; and as I try to follow the clue of Shakespearian 
 power over me since, I cannot feel that it has been anywise 
 wholesome for me to have the world represented as a place 
 where, for the best sort of people, everything always goes 
 wrong ; or to have my conceptions of that best sort of peo- 
 ple so much confused by images of the worst. To have king- 
 hood represented, in the Shakesperian c}’cle, by Richards II. 
 and III. instead of L, byHenrys IV. and VIII. instead of II. ; 
 by King John, finished iuto all truths of baseness and grief, 
 while Henry V. is only a king of fairy tale ; or in the realm 
 of imagination, by the folly of Lear, the cruelty of Leontes, 
 the furious and foul guilt of Macbeth and the Dane. V/hy 
 must the persons of lago and lachimo, of Tybalt and Ld- 
 mmnl, of Isabel’s brother and Helena’s loi'd, pollute, or witli- 
 er with their shadows, every happy scene in the loveliest 
 plays ; and they, the loveliest, be all mixed and encumbered 
 with languid and common work, — to one^s best hope spu- 
 
 * Manner of work. I mean. How I learned tlie things I taught is the 
 major, and properly, only question regarded in this history. 
 
298 
 
 PE^TEBITA. 
 
 rioiis, certainly, so far as original, idle and disgraceful? — and 
 all so inextricably and mysteriously that the writer himself is 
 not only unknowable, but inconceivable ; and his wisdom so 
 useless, that at this time of being and speaking, among active 
 and purposeful Englishmen, I know not one who shows a 
 trace of ever having felt a passion of Shakespeare’s, or learnt 
 a lesson from him. 
 
 Any way, for good or sorrow, my student’s life, instead of 
 mere instinct of rhythmic mimicry, began thus, not till I was 
 six-and- twenty. It is so inconvenient to be always a year be- 
 hind the Christian date, (and I am really so young of my 
 age !) that I am going to suppose the reader’s permission to 
 be only a quarter of a century old at Macugnaga, and to 
 count my years henceforward by the stars instead of the 
 clock. 
 
 The month of Eome and Monte Eosa was at least, compared 
 with the days at Florence, a time of rest ; and when I got 
 down to Domo d’Ossola again, I was fresh for the expedition 
 in search of Turner’s subject at Dazio Grande. 
 
 With Couttet and George, and a baggage mule, I walked 
 up the Val Formazza, and across to Airolo ; Couttet on this 
 walk first formulating the general principle, “ Pour que 
 George aillo bien, il faut lui donner a manger souvent ; et 
 beaucoup a la fois.” I had no objection whatever to this 
 arrangement, and was only sony my Chamouni tutor could 
 not give the same good report of me. But on anything like 
 a hard day’s walk, the miles after lunch alwaj^s seemed to me 
 to become German instead of geographical. And, although, 
 I much enjoyed the Yal Formazza all the way up, Airolo 
 next day was found to be farther off than it appeared on the 
 map, and on the third morning I ordered a post chaise, and 
 gave up my long-cherished idea of making the pedestrian 
 tour of Europe. 
 
 The work done at Faido and Dazio Grande is told and il- 
 lustrated in the fourth volume of “Modern Painters ; ” it was 
 a little shortened by a letter from J. D. Harding, asking if I 
 would like him to join me at any place I might have chosen 
 for autumn sketching. Very gratefully, I sent word that I 
 
MAGUGNAGA. 
 
 299 
 
 would wait for him at Baveno ; where, accordingly, toward the 
 close of August, we made fraternal arrangements for an Ely- 
 sian fortnight’s floating round Isola Bella. There was a 
 spacious half of seat vacant in my little hooded carriage, and 
 good room for Harding’s folios with mine : so we trotted 
 from Baveno to Arona, and from Arona to Como, and from 
 Como to Bergamo, and Bergamo to Brescia, and Brescia to 
 Verona, and took up our abode in the “Two Towers” for as 
 long as we chose. 
 
 I do not remember finding in any artistic biography the 
 history of a happier epoch than it was to us both. I am bold 
 to speak for Harding as for myself. Generally, the restless- 
 ness of ambition, or the strain of effort, or anxiety about 
 money matters, taint or disturb the peace of a painter’s 
 travels : but Harding did not wish, or perhaps think it pos- 
 sible, to do better than, to his own mind, he always did ; 
 while I had no hope of becoming a second Turner, and no 
 thoughts of becoming a thirtieth Academician. Harding was 
 sure of regular sale for his summer’s work, and under no 
 difliculty in dividing the hotel bills with me : we both en- 
 joyed the same scenes, though in difierent ways, which gave 
 us subjects of surprising but not antagonistic talk : the 
 weather was perfect, the roads smooth, and the inns luxuri- 
 ous. 
 
 I must not yet say more of Verona, than that, though truly 
 Bouen, Geneva, and Pisa have been the centres of thought 
 and teaching to me, Verona has given the coloring to all they 
 taught. She has virtually represented the fate and the 
 beauty of Italy to me ; and whatever concerning Ital}'- 1 have 
 felt, or been able with any charm or force to say, has been 
 dealt with more deeply, and said more earnestly, for her 
 sake. 
 
 It was only for Harding’s sake that I went on to Venice, 
 that year ; and, for the first week there, neither of us thought 
 of anything but the market and fishing boats, and efiects of 
 light on the city and the sea ; till, in the spare hour of one 
 sunny but luckless day, the fancy took us to look into the 
 Scuola di San Rocco. Hitherto, in hesitating conjectures of 
 
300 
 
 PB^TEBITA, 
 
 what might have been, I have scarcely ventured to wish, 
 gravely, that it had been. But, very earnestly, I should have 
 bid myself that day keep out of the School of St. Eoch, had I 
 known what was to come of my knocking at its door. But 
 for that porter’s opening, I should (so far as one can ever 
 know what they should) have written, “ The Stones of Cha- 
 mouni,” instead of “ The Stones of Venice ; ” and the “ Laws 
 of Fesole,” in the full code of them, before beginning to teach 
 in Oxford : and I should have brought out in full distinctness 
 and use what faculty I had of drawing the human face and 
 form with true expression of their higher beauty. 
 
 But Tintoret swept me away at once into the “ mare mag- 
 giore ” of the schools of painting which crowned the power 
 and perished in the fall of Venice ; so forcing me into the 
 study of the history of Venice herself ; and through that into 
 what else I have traced or told of the laws of national strength 
 and virtue. I am ha23py in having done this so that the truth 
 of it must stand ; but it was not my own proper work ; and 
 even the sea-born strength of Venetian painting was beyond 
 my granted fields of fruitful exertion. Its continuity and 
 felicity became thenceforward impossible, and the measui’e of 
 my immediate success irrevocably shortened. 
 
 Strangely, at the same moment, another adversity first 
 made itself felt to me, — of which the fatality has been great 
 to many and many besides myself. 
 
 It must have been during my last days at Oxford that Mr. 
 Liddell, the present Dean of Christ Church, told me of the 
 original experiments of Daguerre. My Parisian friends ob- 
 tained for me the best examples of his results ; and the plates 
 sent to me in Oxford were certainly the first examjfies of the 
 sun’s drawing that were ever seen in Oxford, and, I believe, 
 the first sent to England. 
 
 Wholly careless at that time of finished detail, I saw noth- 
 ing ill the Daguerreotype to help or alarm me ; and inquired 
 no more concerning it, until now at Venice I found a French 
 artist producing exquisitely bright small plates, (about four 
 inches square,) which contained, under a lens, the Grand 
 Canal or St. Mark’s Place as if a magician had reduced the 
 
MACUGNAGA. 
 
 301 
 
 reality to be carried away into an enchanted land. The little 
 gems of picture cost a napoleon each ; but with two hundred 
 francs I bought the Grand Canal from the Salute to the liialto ; 
 and packed it away in thoughtless triumph. 
 
 I had no time then to think of the new power, or its mean- 
 ings ; my days were over-weighted alread}^ Every morning, 
 at six by the Piazza clock, we were moored, Harding and I, 
 among the boats in the fruit-market ; then, after eight o’clock 
 breakfast, he went on his own quest of full subjects, and I to 
 the Scuola di San Rocco, or wherever else in Venice there 
 were Tintorets. In the afternoon, we lashed our gondola to 
 the stem of a lishing-boat, sailing, as the wdnd served, with- 
 in or outside the Lido, and sketching the boat and her 
 sails in their varied action, — or Venice, as she shone far away 
 beyond her islands. Back to Danieli’s for six-o’clock table 
 d’hote ; where, after we had got a bit of fish and fillet of any 
 thing, the September days v/ere yet long enough for a sunset 
 walk. 
 
 A much regarded friend, Mr. Boxall, B.A., came on to Ven- 
 ice at this time, after finishing at Milan the beautiful draw- 
 ing from Leonardo’s Christ, which was afterward tenderly, 
 though inadequate!}^, engraved. Mrs. Jameson was staying 
 also at Danieli’s, to complete her notes on Venetian legends : 
 and in the evening walk we were usually together, the four 
 of us ; Boxall, Harding, and I extremely embarrassing Mrs. 
 Jameson by looking at everything from our pertinaciously 
 separate corners of an equilateral triangle. Mrs. Jameson 
 was absolutely without knowledge or instinct of painting ; and 
 had no sharpness of insight for anything else, but she was can- 
 did and industrious, with a pleasant disposition to make the 
 best of all she saw, and to say, compliantly, that a picture was 
 good, if anybody had ever said so before. Her peace of mind 
 was restored in a little while, by observing that the three of 
 us, however separate in our reasons for liking a picture, 
 always fastened on the same pictures to like ; and that she 
 was safe, therefore, in saying that, for whatever other reason 
 might be assigned, other people should like them also. 
 
 I got some most refined and right teaching from Mr. Boxall ; 
 
302 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 of which I remember as chiefly vital, his swift correction of 
 my misgiven Wordsworth’s line — 
 
 “So be it when I shall grow old,” 
 
 as — 
 
 “ So shall it be when I grow old.” 
 
 I read Wordsworth with better care and profit ever after- 
 ward ; but there was this much of reason for that particular 
 mistake, that I was perfectly confident in my own heart’s love 
 of rainbows to the end, and felt no occasion to wish for what 
 I was so sure would be. 
 
 But Mr. Boxall’s time, and Harding’s, were at end before I 
 had counted and described all the Tintorets in Venice, and 
 they left me at that task, besides trying to copy the Adoration 
 of the Magi on four sheets of brown paper. Things had gone 
 fairly well as long as Harding took me out to sea every after- 
 noon ; but now, left to myself, trying to paint the Madonna 
 and Magi in the morning, and peering all the rest of the day 
 into the shadowy corners of chaj^el and sacristy and palace 
 corridor, beside every narrow street that was paved with 
 waves, my strength began to fail fast. Couttet got anxious, 
 and looked more gravely every morning into my eyes. “ ^a 
 ne va pas bien,” said he. “ Vous ne le sentirez pas a present, 
 mais vous le sentirez apres.” I finished my list, however, 
 pasted my brown paper into some rude likeness of the pict- 
 ure, — and packed up colors and note-books finally for a rapid 
 run home ; when, as so often happens in the first cessation of 
 an overstrain, the day after leaving Venice I was stopped at 
 Padua by a sharp fit of nervous fever. 
 
 I call it “ nervous,” not knowing what else to call it, — for 
 there was no malarifin taint or other malignity in it, but only 
 quick pulse, and depressed spirit, and the nameless ailing of 
 overwearied flesh. Couttet put me to bed instantly, and 
 went out to buy some herb medicines, — whicli Paduan physi- 
 cians are wise enough yet to keep, — and made me some ti- 
 sane, and bade me be patient, and all would be well. And, 
 indeed, next day I was up, in armchair ; but not allowed to 
 
MAC UO NAG A, 
 
 303 
 
 stir out of the extremely small back room of the old inn, 
 which commanded view only of a few deep farrowed tiles 
 and a little sky. I sent out George to see if he could find 
 some scrap of picture to hang on the blank wall ; and he 
 brought me a seven-inch-square bit of fifteenth century tem- 
 pera, a nameless saint with a scarlet cloak and an embossed 
 nimbus, who much comforted me. 
 
 I was able to travel in a day or two ; but the mental de- 
 pression, with some weakness of limb, remained, all across 
 Lombardy, as far as Vogogna, where a frosty morning glit- 
 tered on the distant Simplon ; and though I could not walk 
 up the pass of Gondo, there Vv’’as no more sadness in me, 
 afterward, than I suffered always in leaving either Italy or 
 the Alps. 
 
 Which, however, in its own kind, became acute again a day 
 or two afterward, when I stopped on a cloudless afternoon 
 at Nyon, where the road branches away for Paris. I had to 
 say good-by to Mont Blanc — there visible in his full cone, 
 through the last gap given by the Chablais mountains as they 
 rise eastward along the lake shore. 
 
 Six months before, I had rhymed to his snows in such hope 
 and delight, and assurance of doing everything I wanted, this 
 year at last ; and now, I had only discovered wants that any 
 number of years could not satisfy; and weaknesses, which no 
 ardor of effort or patience of practice could overcome. 
 
 Thus, for the first time, measuring some of the outer bas- 
 tions of the unconquerable world, I opened my English let- 
 ters ; which told me that my eldest Croydon cousin, John, in 
 whose prosperity^ and upward rounding of fortune’s wheel all 
 of us had been confident, waas dead in Australia. 
 
 So much stronger than I, and so much more dutiful, work- 
 ing for his people in the little valley of Wandel, out in the 
 great opposite desolate country ; and now the dust of it laid 
 on him, as on his brother the beach-sand on this side the sea. 
 There was no grief, for me, in his loss, so little had I known, 
 and less remembered, him ; but much awe, and wonder, when 
 all the best and kindest of us were thus struck down, what 
 my own selfish life was to come to, or end in. 
 
304 
 
 PEjETEHITA. 
 
 With these thoughts and fears fastening on me, as I lost 
 sight first of Mont Blanc, and then of the lines of Jura, and 
 saw the level road with its aisle of poplars in perspective vista 
 of the five days between Dijon and Calais, the fever returned 
 slightly, with a curious tingling, and yet partly, it seemed to 
 me, deadness of sensation, in the throat, which would not 
 move, for better nor worse, through the long daj's, and 
 •■mostly wakeful nights. I do not know if diphtheria had 
 been, in those epochs, known or talked of ; but I extremely 
 disliked this feeling in the throat, and passed from dislike 
 into sorrowful alarm, (having no Couttet now to give me ti- 
 sane,) and wonder if I should ever get home to Denmark Hill 
 again. 
 
 Although the poetical states of religious feeling taught me 
 by George Herbert’s rhymes, and the reading of formal peti- 
 tion, whether in psalter or litany, at morning and evening 
 and on Sunda}" forenoon, were sincere enough in their fanci- 
 ful or formal ways, no occasion of life had yet put me to any 
 serious trial of direct prayer. I never knew of Jessie’s or my 
 aunt’s sicknesses, or now of my cousin John’s, until too late 
 for prayer ; in our own household there had been no instantly 
 dangerous illness since my own in 1835 ; and during the long 
 threatening of 1841 I was throughout more sullen and rebel- 
 lious than frightened. But now, between the Campo Santo 
 and Santa Maria Novella, I had been brought into some 
 knowledge of the relations that might truly exist between 
 God and His creatures ; and thinking what my father and 
 mother would feel if I did not get home to them through 
 those poplar avenues, I fell gradually into the temper, and 
 more or less tacit oftering, of very real prayer. 
 
 Which lasted patiently through two long days, and wdiat I 
 knew of the nights, on the road home. On the third day, as 
 I was about coming in sight of Paris, what people who are in 
 the habit of praying know as the consciousness of answer, 
 came to me ; and a certainty that the illness, which had all 
 this while increased, if anything, would be taken away. 
 
 Certainty in mind, which remained unshaken, through un- 
 abated discomfort of body, for another night and day, and 
 
THE STATE OF DENMARK. 
 
 305 
 
 then the evil symptoms vanished in an hour or two, on the 
 road beyond Paris ; and I found myself in the inn at Beau- 
 vais entirely well, with a thrill of conscious happiness alto- 
 gether new to me. 
 
 Which, if I had been able to keep! Another '‘had 
 
 been ” this, the gravest of all I lost ; the last with which I 
 shall trouble the reader. 
 
 That happy sense of direct relation with Heaven is known 
 evidently to multitudes of human souls of all faiths, and in all 
 lands ; evidentl}' often a dream, — demonstrably, as I conceive, 
 often a reality ; in all cases, dependent on resolution, patience, 
 self-denial, prudence, obedience ; of which some pure hearts 
 are capable without effort, and some l)y constancy. Whether 
 I was capable of holding it or not, I cannot tell ; but little by 
 little, and for little, yet it seemed invincible, causes, it passed 
 away from me. I had scarcely reached home in safety be- 
 fore I had sunk back into the faintness and darkness of the 
 Under-World. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE STATE OF DENMARK. 
 
 The house on Denmark Hill, where m}^ father and mother, 
 in the shortening days of 1845, thankfully received back their 
 truant, has been associated, by dated note-paper, with a quar- 
 ter of a century of my English life ; and was indeed to my 
 parents a peaceful, yet cheerful, and pleasantly, in its subur- 
 ban manner, dignified, abode of their declining years. For 
 my father had no possibilities of real retirement in him ; his 
 business was the necessary pride and fixed habit of his soul : 
 his ambition, and what instinct of accumulative gain the mer- 
 cantile life inevitably begets, were for me only ; but involved 
 the fixed desire to see me moving in the western light of Lon- 
 don, among its acknovvdedged literary orders of merit ; and 
 were totally inconsistent with the thought, faintly and inter- 
 inittingly haunting my mother and me, that a rose-covered cot- 
 tage in the dells of Matlock, or the vale of Keswick, might be 
 20 
 
30G 
 
 PRJSTERITA. 
 
 nearer the heavenly world, for us, than all the majesty of 
 Denmark Hill, connected though it was, by the Vauxhall 
 Koacl and convenient omnibuses, with St. James’s Street and 
 Cavendish Square. 
 
 Bat the house itself had every good in it, except nearness 
 to a stream, that could with any reason be coveted by modest 
 mortals. It stood in command of seven acres of healthy 
 ground (a patch of local gravel there overlying the London 
 clay) ; half of it in meadow sloping to the sunrise, the rest 
 prudently and pleasantly divided into an upper and lower 
 kitchen garden ; a fruitful bit of orchard, and chance inlets 
 and outlets of woodwalk, opening to the sunny path by the 
 field, which was gladdened on its other side in springtime by 
 flushes of almond and double peach blossom. Scarce all the 
 hyacinths and heath of Brantwood redeem the loss of these to 
 me, and when the summer winds have wrecked the wreaths 
 of our wild roses, I am apt to think sorrowfully of the trail- 
 ings and climbings of deep purple convolvulus which bloomed 
 full every autumn morning round the trunks of the apple- 
 trees in the kitchen garden. 
 
 The house itself had no specialty, either of comfort or in- 
 convenience, to endear it ; the breakfast-room, opening on 
 the lawn and farther field, was extremely pretty when its 
 walls were mostly covered with lakes by Turner and doves 
 by Hunt; the dining and drawing rooms were spacious 
 enough for our grandest receptions, — never more than twelve 
 at dinner, with perhaps Henry Watson and his sisters in the 
 evening, — and had decoration enough in our Northcote por- 
 traits, Turner’s “Slave-ship,” and, in later years, his “ Bial- 
 to,” with our John Lewis, two Copley Fieldings, and every 
 now and then a new Turner drawing. My own work-room, 
 above the breakfast-room, was only distinct, as being such, in 
 
 * Namely. Derventwater ; Lake Lucerne, with the Eighi at sunset ; 
 the Bay of Uri, with the Rothstork, from above Brunnen ; Lucerne it- 
 self. seen from the lake ; the upper reach of the lake, seen from Lu- 
 cerne ; and the opening of the Lake of Constance, from Constance. 
 Goldau, St. Gothard, SchafThausen, Coblentz, and Llauthony, raised the 
 total of matchless Turner drawings in this room to eleven. 
 
THE STATE OF DENMARK. 
 
 307 
 
 its large oblong table, occupying so much of the — say fifteen 
 by five and twenty — feet of available space within bookcases, 
 that the rest of the floor virtually was only a passage round 
 it. I always wrote on the flat of the table, — a bad habit, en- 
 forced partly by the frequent need of laying drawings or 
 books for reference beside me. Two windows, forming the 
 sides of a bow blank in the middle, gave me, though rather 
 awkwardly crossed, all the light I needed : jDartly through 
 laziness and make-shiftiness, partly in respect for external 
 s^mimetry, — for the house had really something of an archi- 
 tectural air at the back, — I never opened the midmost blank 
 wall, though it considerably fretted me : the single window 
 of my bedroom above, looking straight southeast, gave, 
 through the first ten or twelve winters at Denmark Hill, com- 
 mand of the morning clouds, inestimable for its aid in all 
 healthy thought. Papa and mamma took possession of the 
 quiet western rooms, which looked merely into the branches 
 of the cedar on the front lawn. 
 
 Ill such stateliness of civic domicile, the industry of mid- 
 life now began for me, little disturbed by the murmur of 
 London beyond the bridges, and in nowise by any enlarge- 
 ment of neighborly circle on the Hill itself ; one family alone 
 excepted, whose aftectioii has not failed me from then till 
 ow, — having begun in earlier times, out of which I must yet 
 gather a gleam or two of the tremulous memory. 
 
 In speaking of Mr. Dale’s school, I named only my younger 
 companions there ; of whom Willoughby had gone to Cam- 
 bridge, and was by this time beyond my ken ; but Edward 
 Matson sometimes came yet to dine with us at Denmark Hill, 
 and sometimes carried me down to Woolwich, to spend a day 
 amidst its military displays and arts, with his father, and 
 mother, and two sweet younger sisters. Where I saw, in 
 Major Matson, such calm type of truth, gentleness, and sim- 
 plicity, as I have myself found in soldiers or sailors only ; 
 and so admirable to me that I have never been able, since 
 those Woolwich times, to gather myself up against the na- 
 tional guilt of war, seeing that such men were made by the 
 discipline of it. 
 
308 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 But at Mr. Dale’s were also two senior pupils, little known 
 to me except, Henry Dart by his large hazel eyes, and Ed- 
 mund Oldfield by his already almost middle-aged aspect of 
 serene sagacity. When I went to Oxford, I found Dart at 
 Exeter College, where we established poetical friendship, and 
 contended in all honor for the Newdigate, reading our best 
 passages to each other, for improving censure. Dart, very 
 deservedly, won it that year, and gave promise of generous 
 distinction afterward ; but the hazel eyes were too bright, 
 and closed, in a year or two, to this world’s ambition. 
 
 I do not know how it chanced that the art impulse Avhich 
 animated Edmund Oldfield’s grave sagacity did not manifest 
 itself to me till much later. He was the elder brother of a 
 large group of clever lads and lasses, amiable in the extreme, 
 yet in a slightly severe and evangelical manner ; whose father 
 was in some tangible relation to mine as one of the leading 
 men of business on the Hill ; their mother known to us by 
 sight only, as a refined and still beautiful woman, — evangelical 
 rvithout severity ; both of them occupying, with such of their 
 children as were that way minded, the pew before us in Mr. 
 Burnet’s chapel, whereat sometimes in my younger days we 
 went to hear a gloomier divinity than that of my beloved and 
 Anacreontic Doctor Andrews. 
 
 We might never have known more of them, unless, among 
 the sacred enthusiasms of Camberwell parish, the fancy had 
 arisen to put a painted window into the east end of the pretty 
 church, just built for it by Mr. Gilbert Scott. Edmund 
 Oldfield, already advanced far beyond me in Gothic art 
 scholarship, was prime mover in the matter, but such rumor 
 as existed in the village of my interest in architecture justified 
 him in expecting some help from me. I had already quite 
 fixed notions of what the color of glass should be, and in 
 these Edmund concurred. The tracery of the east window 
 seemed to us convertible into no dishonoring likeness of 
 something at Kheims or Chartres. Hitherto unconscious of 
 my inability to compose in color, I offered to design the 
 entire window head ; and did, after some headstrong toil, 
 actually fill the required spaces with a mosaic presenting 
 
THE STATE OF DENMARK, 
 
 309 
 
 an orthodox cycle of subjects in purple and scarlet, round 
 a more luminous centre of figures adapted from Michael 
 Angelo. Partly in politeness, partly in curiosity, the com- 
 mittee on the window did verily authorize Edmund Oldfield 
 and me to execute tliis design ; and I having fortunately the 
 sense to admit Edmund’s representations that the style of 
 Michael Angelo was not exactly adapted to thirteenth cen- 
 tury practice, in construction of a vitrail, the central light 
 was arranged by him on more modest lines ; and the result 
 proved on the whole satisfactory to the congregation, who 
 thereupon desired that the five vertical lights might be 
 filled in the same manner. I had felt, however, through 
 the changes made on my Michael Angelesque cinquefoil, 
 that Mr. Oldfield’s knowledge of Gothic style, and gift in 
 placing color, were altogether beyond mine ; and prayed 
 him to carry out the rest of the window by himself. Which 
 he did with perfect success, attaining a delicate brill- 
 iancy purer than anything I had before seen in modern 
 glass. 
 
 I should have been more crushed by this result, had I not 
 been already in the habit of feeling worsted in everything I 
 tried of original work ; while since 1842, I was more and 
 more sure of my faculty of seeing the beauty and meaning of 
 the work of other minds. At this time, I might assuredly 
 have been led by Edmund Oldfield into a study of all the 
 painted glass in England, if only Edmund had been a little 
 more happy in his own power ; but I suppose his immediate 
 success was too easy to divert him from the courses of study 
 which afterward gave him his high position in the British 
 Museum, not enough recognized by the public, and, I believe, 
 farther obscured by the ill-humor or temper of Mr. Panizzi. 
 If only — I may still sometimes indulge in a “ might have 
 been,” for my friends — he had kept to Gothic foils and their 
 glass, my belief is that Edmund Oldfield could have done for 
 England great part of what Viollet le Due did for France, 
 with the same earnestness, and with thrice the sensibility. 
 But the sensibility taking in him the form of reserve, and the 
 restless French energy being absent, he diffused himself in 
 
310 
 
 PBJETEIUTA. 
 
 serene scholarship till too late, and retired from the collisions 
 and intrigues of the Museum too early. 
 
 Our temporary alliance among the traceries of Camberwell 
 had for immediate consequence to me, an introduction to his 
 family, which broke the monastic laws of Denmark Hill to the 
 extent of tempting me to a Christmas revel or two with his 
 pretty sisters ; Vv^hereat I failed in my part in every game, 
 and whence I retired in a sack-cloth of humiliation, of which 
 the tissue had at once the weight of a wet blanket, and the 
 sting of horsehair. 
 
 I have only once named, among my Christ Church com- 
 panions, Charles Newton. He was considerably my senior, 
 besides being a rightly bred scholar, who knew his grammar 
 and his quantities ; and, while yet an undergraduate, was 
 doing accurately useful work in the Architectural Society. 
 Without rudely depreciating my Proutesque manner of draw- 
 ing, he represented to me that it did not meet all the anti- 
 quarian purposes of that body ; and, always under protest, I 
 drew a Norman door for Newton, (as the granite veins of 
 Trewavas Head for Dr. Buckland,) with distinct endeavor to 
 give the substantial facts in each, apparent to the vulgar 
 mind. And if only — once more pardon, good reader, but this 
 is really an “if” that I cannot resist — if only Newton had 
 learnt Ii*ish instead of Greek, Scotch instead of Egyptian, and 
 preferred, for light reading, the study of the Venerable Bede 
 
 to that of Victor Hugo, well, the British Museum might 
 
 have been still habitable ; the effigy, as the bones, of Mauso- 
 lus would have rested in peace ; and the British public known 
 more than any Idylls of kings have yet told them, of person- 
 ages such as Arthur, Alfred, and Charlemagne. 
 
 There remained yet some possibilities, even after Charles 
 Newton became Attic and diplomatic, of some heroic attach- 
 ment between us, in the manner of Theseus and Pirithous. 
 In fact, for some years after my Camberwell window and 
 Campo Santo entanglements, Theseus retained, I believe, 
 some hope of delivering me from those Lethean chains ; nor 
 until so late as the year 1850, when, as we crossed the great 
 St. Bernard together, Charles spoke heresies against the Vah 
 
THE STATE OF DENMARK. 
 
 311 
 
 ley of Chamouni, remarking, with respect to its glacial mo- 
 raines, that “ he thought more housemaids were wanted in that 
 establisliment,” and on the other hand, I exj^ressed myself re- 
 specting the virtues of diplomatists, and the value of the 
 opinions of the British Peerage on Art and Science, in a man- 
 ner which caused Newton to observe (not without foundation) 
 that “ there was the making of Bobespierre in me,” — not till 
 then, I repeat, did it become clear to either of us that the de- 
 cisions of Minos were irrevocable. 
 
 We yet examined the castle of Verrex together, as once the 
 aisles of Dorchester ; and compared in peace, at Milan, the 
 Corinthian graces of St. Lorenzo with the Lombardic mon- 
 sters of St. Ambrogio. Early the next morning Newton left 
 me, in the Albergo Beale, not without inner tears on both 
 sides, and went eastward, I know not where. Ever since, we 
 have been to each other, he as the Heathen, and I as the Pub- 
 lican, both of us finding it alike ini possible to hear the Church. 
 
 The transition to Denmark Hill had, however, in the first 
 pride of it, an advantage also in giving our family Puritanism, 
 promotion to a distinguished pew in Camden Chapel, quite 
 near the pulpit. Henry Melvill, afterward Principal of 
 Haileybury, was the only preacher I ever knew whose ser- 
 mons were at once sincere, orthodox, and oratorical on Cice- 
 ronian principles. He wrote them from end to end with 
 polished art, and read them admirably, in his own manner ; 
 by which, though the congregation affectionately expected it, 
 they were always deeply impressed. He arranged his sermon 
 under four or five heads, and brought each in its turn to a 
 vigorously pointed climax, delivering the last words of each 
 paragraph with two or three energetic nods of his head, as if 
 he were hammering that much of the subject into the pulpit 
 cushion with a round-headed mallet.^ Then all the congre- 
 
 * The hackneyed couplet of Hudibras respecting clerical use of the 
 fist on the pulpit cushion is scarcely understood by modern readers, be" 
 cause of the burlesqued rhythm leaning falsely on the vowel : — 
 
 “ The pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, 
 
 Is beat with fist instead of a stick.” 
 
312 
 
 PRETERIT A, 
 
 gation wiped tbeir eyes, blew their noses, coughed the coughs 
 they had choked over for the last quarter of an hour, and 
 settled themselves to the more devoted acceptance of the next 
 section. 
 
 It is the habit of many good men — as it was confessedly, 
 for instance, that of the infant, Samuel, Wilberforce, Bishop 
 of Oxford — not to allow themselves to doubt or question any 
 part of Bible teaching. Plenry Melvill, being of the same 
 Episcopal school, and dutifully forbidding himself any dan- 
 gerous fields of inquiry, explained with accuracy all that was 
 explicable in his text, and argued the inexplicable into the 
 plausible with great zeal and feeling ; — always thoroughly 
 convincing himself before he attempted to convince his con- 
 gregation. __ 
 
 (It may be noted in passing that Dean Stanley, on the other 
 hand, used his plausibility to convince his congregation wdtli- 
 out convincing himself, or committing himself to anything in 
 particular ; while Frederic Maurice secured his audiences’ re- 
 ligious comfort, by turning their too thorny convictions the 
 other side up, like railroad cushions.) 
 
 The couplet, like most of the poem, has been kept in memory more by 
 the liumor of its manner than the truth of its wit, I should like my- 
 self to expand it into — 
 
 The pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, 
 
 Keeps time to truth politely plastic, 
 
 And wakes the Dead, and lulls the Quick, 
 
 As with a death’s-head on a stick. 
 
 Or, in the longer rhythm of my old diary — 
 
 Who, despots of the ecclesiastic drum, 
 
 Roll the rogues’ muflled march, to the rogues’ “kingdom come.” — 
 
 For, indeed, since I wrote the paragraph about the pulpit of Torcello, 
 in The Stones of Venice, Vol. II., Chap. II., it has become hourly 
 more manifest to me how far the false eloquence of the pulpit — whether 
 Kettledrummle’s at Drumclog, with whom it is, in Gibbon’s scornful 
 terms, “ tlie safe and sacred organ of sedition,” or the apology of hired 
 preachers for the abuses of their day — has excited the most dangerous 
 passions of the sects, while it qiienched the refiner’s fire and betrayed 
 the reproving power of the gospel. 
 
THE STATE OF DENMARK. 
 
 313 
 
 For the rest, Mr. Melvill was entirely amiable in the Church 
 visitant, though not formidable in the Church militant. 
 There were not many poor in the district to be visited ; but 
 he became at once a kindly and esteemed friend to us, as, 
 for the present, serenely feeding lambs of his flock ; and I 
 shall always remember gratefully the unoffended smile with 
 which one day, when he had called late, and I became rest- 
 less during his conversation because my dinner was read}', 
 lie broke off his talk, and said, “Go to your dinner.” I was 
 greatly ashamed of myself for having been so rude; but went 
 to my dinner, — attended better to Mr. Melvill’s x^reaching 
 ever afterward, — and owe to him all sorts of good help in 
 close analysis, but especially my habit of always looking, in 
 every quotation from the Bible, what goes before it and 
 after.^ 
 
 Bnt to these [Darticulars I must return by and by ; for my 
 business in this cliax^ter is only to give account of the mate- 
 rials and mental resources with which, in my new study at 
 Denmark Hill, looking out on the 'meadow and the two cows, 
 I settled myself, in the winter of 1845, to write, as my father 
 now justly expected me to do wdtliout farther excuse, the 
 second volume of “ Modern Painters.” 
 
 It is extremely difficult to define, much more to exj^lain, 
 the religious temper in which I designed that second volume. 
 Whatever I know or feel, now, of the justice of God, the no- 
 bleness of man, and the beauty of nature, I knew and felt 
 then, nor less strongly ; but these firm faiths were confused 
 by the continual discovery, day by day, of error or limitation 
 in the doctrines I had been taught, and follies or inconsisten- 
 cies in their teachers : while for myself, it seemed to me quite 
 sure, since my downfall of heart on last leaving France, that 
 I had no part nor lot in the service or privileges of the saints ; 
 but, on the contrary, had such share only in the things of 
 God, as well-conducted beasts and serenely-minded birds had ; 
 
 * I have never forgotten his noble sermon, one day, on the folly of 
 reading “ Eye hath not seen the tilings God has prepared for them that 
 love Him,” without going on to the end of the verse, “but He hath re- 
 vealed them unto us by His Spirit.” 
 
314 
 
 PBuETERITA, 
 
 while, even among the beasts, I had no claim to represent 
 myself figuratively as a lion couchant, or eagle volant, but 
 was, at my best and proudest, only of a doggish and piggish 
 temper, content in my dog’s chain, and with my pig’s-wash, 
 in spite of Carlyle ; and having no mind whatever to win 
 Heaven at the price of conversion like St. Ranier s, or morti- 
 fication like St. Bruno’s. 
 
 And that my father much concurred with me in these, 
 partly stubborn, partly modest, sentiments, appeared curi- 
 ously on the occasion of registering his arms at the Heralds’ 
 College for painting, as those of the Bardi, and no more un- 
 der the Long Acre limitation, “ vix ea nostra,” on the panel 
 of his own brougham. It appeared, on inquiry at the Her- 
 alds’ Office, that there was indeed a shield appertaining to a 
 family, of wffiom nothing particular was known, by the name 
 of Rusken : Sable, a chevron, argent, between six lance-heads, 
 argent. This, without any evidence of our relation to the 
 family, we could not, of course, be permitted to use without 
 modification : but the King-at-xirms registered it as ours, 
 with the addition of three crosses crosslets on the chevron, 
 gules, (in case of my still becoming a clergyman !) ; and we 
 carried home, on loan from the college, a book of crests and 
 mottoes ; crests being open to choice in modern heraldry, (if 
 one does not by chance win them,) as laconic expressions of 
 personal character, or achievement. 
 
 Over which book, I remember, though too vaguely, my 
 father’s reasoning within himself, that a merchant could not 
 with any propriety typify himself by Lord Marmion’s falcon, 
 or Lord Dudley’s bear ; that, though we were all extremely 
 fond of dogs, any doggish crest would be taken for an ex- 
 tremely minor dog, or even puppy, by the public ; while vul- 
 pine types, whether of heads or brushes, were wholly out of 
 our way ; and at last, faute de mieux, and with some idea, I 
 fancy, of the beast’s resolution in taking and making its own 
 way through difficulties, my father, with the assent, if not 
 support, of my mother and Mary, fixed, forsooth, upon a 
 boar’s head, as reasonably proud, without claim to be pa- 
 trician ; under- wTitten by the motto ‘L4.ge quod agis/ 
 
TUE STATE OF DENMARK. 
 
 315 
 
 Some ten or twelve years, I suppose, after this, beginning to 
 study heraldry with attention, I apprehended that, whether a 
 kiiigiit’s war-cry, or a j)eaceful yeoman’s saying, the words on 
 the scroll of a crest could not be a piece of advice to other 
 people, but must be always a declaration of the bearer’s own 
 mind. Whereupon I changed, on my own seal, the “ Age 
 quod agis” into “To-day,” tacitly underlined to myself with 
 the warning, “ The niglit corneth, when no man can work.” 
 But as years went on, and the belief in fortune, and fortune- 
 telling, which is finally confessed in “ Fors Clavigera,” asserted 
 itself more distinctly in my private philosophy, I began to be 
 much exercised in mind as to the fortunate, or otherwise, 
 meaning of my father’s choosing a pig for my crest ; and that 
 the more, because I could not decide whether it was lawful 
 for me to adopt the Greek mode of interpretation, according 
 to which I might consider myself an assistant of Hercules in 
 the conquest of the Erymanthian boar, or was restricted to 
 v,he Gothic reading which would compel me to consider my- 
 self a pig in persona, — (as the aforesaid Marmion a falcon, or 
 Albert of Geierstein a vulture, — ) and only take jn-ide in the 
 strength of bristle, and curl of tusk, which occasioned, in my 
 days of serious critical influence, the lament of the Academi- 
 cian in Punch : 
 
 “I paints and paints, 
 
 Hears no complaints, 
 
 And sells before I’m dry, 
 
 Till savage Ruskin 
 Sticks his task in. 
 
 And nobody will buy.” 
 
 . Inclining, as time went on, more and more to this view ol 
 the matter, I rested at last in the conviction that my proto- 
 type and patron saint was indeed, not Hercules, but St. An- 
 thony of Padua, and that it might in a measure be recorded 
 also of little me that “ il se retira d’abord dans une solitude 
 pen eloignee du bourg de Come, puis dans un sepulcre fort 
 eloigne de ce bourg, enfin dans les masures d’un vieux cha- 
 teau au-dessus d’Heraclee, oh il vecut pendant vingt ans. II 
 
316 
 
 PRJETERITA. 
 
 ii’est pas possible de raconter tout ce qu’il eut a souffrir clans 
 ces trois retraites, tant par les rigueurs qu’il exerya sur lui- 
 meine que par la malice du demon, qui mit tout en 03uvre 
 pour le tromper par ses artifices, ou pour I’abattre par ses 
 menaces et ses mauvais traitements, qui allerent quelquefois 
 jusqu’u le laisser pour mort des coups qu’il lui donna. An- 
 toine triompha de tout ; et ce fut pour le recompense!' de 
 tant de combats et de taut de victoires que Dieu le rendit 
 puissant en oeuvres et en paroles pour guerir toutes sortes de 
 maladies spirituelles et corporelles, cbasser les demons aussi 
 bien des corps que des ames, se faire obeir par les betes les 
 plus cruelles, par les elements et les autres creatures les moins 
 sournises a la volonte de I’liomme.”* 
 
 I must not, however, anticipate the course of this eventful 
 history so far as to discuss at present any manner of the re- 
 semblance in my fate, or work, or home companionships, to 
 those of St. Anthony of Padua ; but may record, as imme- 
 diately significant, the delight which both my mother and I 
 took in the possession of a really practical pigsty in our 
 Danish farmyard, (the coach-house and stables being to us of 
 no importance in comparison ;) the success with which my 
 mother directed the nurture, and fattening, of the piglings ; 
 the civil and jovial character of the piglings so nurtured, in- 
 dicated especially by their habit of standing in a row on their 
 hind-legs to look over the fence, whenever my mother came 
 into the yard ; and conclusively by the satisfaction with 
 which even our most refined friends would accept a present 
 of pork— or it might be, alas ! sometimes of sucking pig — 
 from Denmark Hill. 
 
 The following (p. 317) example of such acknowledgments, 
 addressed to my father, is farther interesting in its post (or 
 side) script, referring to the civil war in Switzerland, and fix- 
 ing, therefore, the letter, otherwise without date of year, to 
 1845, when 1 was beginning to prepare for my first adventu- 
 rous journey. 
 
 * Dictionnaire des Sciences Ecclesiastiques. I assumed, of course, in 
 adopting this patron saint, that he would have the same domestic pets 
 as St. Anthony of the Desert. 
 
THE STATE OF DENMARK. 
 
 317 
 
 “ 47, Queen Ann (no street !) West, 
 “ Thursday, 27 Fe>’ 
 
 “ My dear Sir, 
 
 “ Have the goodness to offer my re- 
 spectful thanks to Mrs. Kuskin for the 
 kind present of a part of the little fat 
 
 friends, & its Portugal 
 
 onions for stuffing them included, &c., 
 
 &c. Hoping you are all well, 
 
 “ Believe me, 
 
 “ Most trill}" obliged, 
 
 “ J. M. W. Turner.’’ 
 
 “ J. Buskin, Esq.” 
 
 Neither do I think it irrelevant, in this place, to foretell 
 that, after twenty years’ various study of the piglet character, 
 (see, for instance, the account of the comfort given me by the 
 monastic piglet at Assisi,f) I became so resigned to the adop- 
 tion of my paternally chosen crest as to v/rite my rhymed 
 travelling letters to Joan J most frequently in my heraldic 
 character of “ Little Pig ; ” or, royally plural, “ Little Pigs,” 
 especially when these letters took the tone of confessions, as 
 for instance, from Keswick, in 1857 : — 
 
 When little pigs have muffins hot, 
 
 And take three quarters for their lot, 
 
 Then, little pigs— had better not. 
 
 * Turner always indicates by these long lines the places in his letters 
 where his feelings become inexpressible. 
 
 f “In one of my saddest moods, I got some wholesome peace and re- 
 freshment by mere sympathy with a Bewickiau little pig, in the round- 
 est and couceitedest burst of pig-blossom.'” — Fors, Letter XLVIH. 
 
 I Now Mrs, Arthur Severn. 
 
 CD 
 
 O 
 
 B 
 
 GO 
 
318 
 
 PRJEJTERITA. 
 
 And again, on tlie occasion of over-luncliing myself before as^ 
 cending Ked Pike, in the same year : — 
 
 •As readers, for their minds’ relief, 
 
 Will sometimes double down a leaf. 
 
 Or rather, as good sailors reef 
 Their sails, or jugglers, past belief. 
 
 Will con-involve a handkerchief — 
 
 If little pigs, when time is brief, 
 
 Will^ that way, double up their beef, 
 
 Then — little pigs will come to grief. 
 
 And here is what may, it seems to me, gracefully conclude 
 this present chapter, as a pretty and pathetic Pigwiggian 
 chaunt, from Abbeville, in 1858 : — 
 
 If little pigs — when evening dapples, 
 
 With fading clouds, her autumn sky, — 
 
 Set out in search of Norman Chapels, 
 
 And find, instead, where cliffs are high. 
 
 Half way from Amiens to Etaples, 
 
 A castle, full of pears and apples. 
 
 On donjon floors laid out to dry ; 
 
 — Green jargonelles, and apples tenny, — ■ 
 
 And find their price is five a penny. 
 
 If little pigs, tlien, buy too many, 
 
 Spare to those little pigs a sigh. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE FE-^STS OF THE VANDALS. 
 
 The reader of “ to-day ” who has been accustomed to hear 
 me spoken of by the artists of to-day as a superannuated en- 
 tliLisiast, and by the philosophers of to-day as a delirious vi- 
 sionary, will scarcely believe with what serious interest the ap- 
 pearance of the second volume of “Modern Painters ’’was 
 looked for, by more people than my father and mother, — by 
 people even belonging to the slirewdest literary circles, and 
 highest artistic schools, of the time. 
 
THE FEASTS OF THE VANDALS. 
 
 319 
 
 In the literary world, attention was first directed to the book 
 by Sydney Smith, in the hearing of my severest and chiefly 
 antagonist master, the Rev. Thomas Dale, who with candid 
 kindness sent the following note of the matter to my father : 
 
 “ You will not be uninterested to hear that Mr. Sydney 
 Smith (no mean authoL'ity in such cases) spoke in the highest 
 terms of your son’s work, on a public occasion, and in pres- 
 ence of several distinguished literary characters. He said it 
 was a work of transcendent talent, presented the most orig- 
 inal views, and the most elegant and powerful language, and 
 would work a complete revolution in the world of taste. Ho 
 did not know, when he said this, how much I was interested 
 in the author.” 
 
 My father was greatly set up by this note, though the form 
 of British prudence which never specifies occasion or person, 
 for fear of getting itself into a scrape, is provokingly illus- 
 trated by its imperfect testimony. But it mattered little who 
 the other “literary characters” might have been, for Sydney’s 
 verdict was at this time, justly, final, both in general society 
 and among the reviewers ; and it was especially fortunate for 
 me that he had been trained in his own youth, first by Dugald 
 Stewart, and then b}' the same Dr. Thomas Brown who had 
 formed my father’s mind and directed his subsequent reading. 
 And, indeed, all the main principles of metaphysics asserted 
 in the opening of “Modern Painters” had been, with conclu- 
 sive decision and simplicity, laid down by Sydney himself in 
 lectures he gave on Moral Philosophy at the Royal Institution 
 in the years 1804-5-6, of which he had never enough him- 
 self recognized the importance. He amplified and embodied 
 some portions of them afterward in the Edinburgh Bevieiv ; 
 but “ considering that what remained could be of no farther 
 use, he destrojmd several, and was proceeding to destroy the 
 whole, when, entreaty being made by friends that thejiortions 
 not yet torn up might be spared, their request was granted ; ” * 
 and those despised fragments, published in 1850 under the 
 title of “ Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy,” contain. 
 
 * See note to Introduction, in the edition of 1850. 
 
320 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 in the simplest and securest terms, eveiy final truth which an^? 
 rational mortal needs to learn on that subject. 
 
 Had those lectures been printed five years sooner, and then 
 fallen in my way, the second volume of ‘‘Modern Painters” 
 would either never have been written at all, or written with 
 thankful deference to the exulting wit and gracious eloquence 
 with which Sydney had discerned and adorned all that I 
 wished to establish, twenty years before. 
 
 To the modern student, who has heard of Sydney Smith 
 only as a jester, I commend the two following passages, as ex- 
 amples of the most wise, because most noble, thought, and 
 most impressive, because steel-true, language, to be found in 
 English literature of the living, as distinguished from the 
 classic, schools : — 
 
 “But while I am descanting so minutely upon the conduct 
 of the understanding, and the best modes of acquiring knowl- 
 edge, some men may be disposed to ask, ‘ Why conduct my 
 understanding with such endless care ? and what is the use 
 of so much knowledge ? ’ What is the use of so much knowl- 
 edge ? — what is the use of so much life ! What are we to do 
 with the seventy years of existence allotted to us? and how 
 are we to live them out to the last? I solemnly declare that, 
 but for the love of knowledge, I should consider the life of the 
 meanest hedger and ditcher as preferable to that of the great- 
 est and richest man here present ; for the fire of our minds 
 is like the fire which the Persians burn in the mountains, — 
 it fiames night and day, and is immortal, and not to be 
 quenched ! Upon something it mui<t act and feed, — upon the 
 pure spirit of knowledge, or upon the foul dregs of polluting 
 passions. Therefore, when I say, in conducting your under- 
 standing, love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement 
 love, with a love coeval with life, wliat do I say, but love in- 
 nocence, love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, 
 if you are rich and great, will sanctify the blind fortune 
 which has made you so, and make men call it justice ; love 
 that which, if you are poor, will render your jwverty respect- 
 able, and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the 
 meanness of your fortunes ; love that which will comfort you, 
 
THE FEASTS OF THE VANDALS. 
 
 '191 
 
 JL 
 
 adorn you, and never quit you, — wbicli will open to you the 
 kiugdom of thought, and all the boundless regions of concept 
 tioij, as an asylum against the cruelty, the injustice, and the 
 pain that may be your lot in the outer world, — that which 
 will make your motives habitually great and honorable, and 
 light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very 
 thought of meanness and of fraud ! Therefore, if any young 
 man here have embarked his life in pursuit of knowledge, let 
 him go on without doubting or fearing the event ; let him 
 not be intimidated by the cheerless beginnings of knowledge, 
 by the darkness from which she springs, by the difficulties 
 wLich hover around her, by the v/retched habitations in 
 which she dwells, by the want and sorrow which sometimes 
 journey in her train ; but let him ever follow her as tlie 
 Angel that guards him, and as the Genius of his life. She 
 will bring him out at last into the light of day, and exhibit 
 him to the world comprehensive in acquirements, fertile in 
 I'esources, rich in imagination, strong in reasoning, prudent 
 and powerful above his fellows in all the relations and in all 
 the offices of life.” 
 
 “ The history of the world shows us that men are not to be 
 counted by their numbers, but by the fire and vigor of their 
 passions ; by their deep sense of injury ; by their memory of 
 past glory ; by their eagerness for fresh fame ; by their clear 
 and steady resolution of ceasing to live, or of achieving a 
 particular object, which, when it is once formed, strikes off a 
 load of manacles and chains, and gives free space to all heav- 
 venly and heroic feelings. All great and extraordinary ac- 
 tions come from the heart. There are seasons in human af- 
 fairs when qualities, fit enough to conduct the common busi- 
 ness of life, are feeble and useless, and when men must trust 
 to emotion for that safety which reason at such times can 
 never give. These are the feelings which led the ten thou- 
 sand over the Carduchian mountains ; these are the feelings 
 by which a handful of Greeks broke in pieces the power of 
 Persia: they have, by turns, humbled Austria, reduced 
 Spain ; and in the fens of the Dutch, and in the mountains 
 of the Swiss, defended the happiness, and revenged the op- 
 21 
 
PBJETERITA. 
 
 322 
 
 j:)ressioiis of man ! God calls all the passions out in their 
 keenness and vigor, for the present safety of mankind. An- 
 ger, and revenge, and the heroic mind, and a readiness to 
 suffer ; — all the secret strength, all the invisible array of the 
 feelings ; — all that nature has reserved for the great scenes 
 of the world. For the usual hopes, and the common aids 
 of man, are all gone ! Kings have perished, armies are sub- 
 dued, nations mouldered away ! Nothing remains, under 
 God, but those passions which have often proved the best 
 ministers of His vengeance, and the surest protectors of the 
 world.'’ 
 
 These two passages of Sydney’s express, more than any 
 others I could have chosen out of what I know of modern 
 literature, the roots of everything I had to learn and teach 
 during my own life; the earnestness with which I followed 
 what was possible to me in science, and tfie passion with 
 which I was beginning to recognize the nobleness of the arts 
 and range of the powers of men. 
 
 It was a natural consequence of this passion that the sym- 
 pathy of the art-circles, in praise of whose leading members 
 the first volume of “ Modern Painters ” had been expressly 
 written, was withheld from me much longer than that of the 
 general reader ; while, on the other hand, the old Homan 
 feuds with George Hichmond were revived by it to the utter- 
 most ; and although, with amused interest in my youthful 
 enthusiasm, and real affection for my father, he painted a 
 charming water-color of me sitting at a picturesque desk in 
 the open air, in a crimson waistcoat and wliite trousers, with 
 a magnificent port-crayon in my hand, and Mont Bfanc, 
 conventionalized to Haphaelesque grace, in the distance, 
 the utmost of serious opinion on my essay which my father 
 could get from him was that I should know better in 
 time.” 
 
 But the following letter from Samuel Prout, written just 
 at the moment when my father’s pride in the success of the 
 book was fast beguiling him into admission of its authorship, 
 at least in our own friendly circle, expresses with old-fash- 
 ioned courtesy, but with admirable simplicity and firmness, 
 
THE EEABT8 OE THE VANDALS. 
 
 823 
 
 the first impression made by my impetuous outburst on th© 
 most sensible and sincere members of the true fellowship of 
 English artists, who at that time were doing each the best 
 he could in his own quiet way, without thouglit either of 
 contention with living rivals, or of comparing their modest 
 work to the masterpieces of former time. 
 
 “Hastings, July 2d, 1843. 
 
 “Dear Sir: I beg to apologize for not sooner acknowledg- 
 ing, with my best thanks, }^our kindness in adding another to 
 many obligations. 
 
 “Please to believe that I am ambitious of meriting your 
 many acts of kind consideration, but I am ashamed and 
 vexed to feel a consciousness of apparent rudeness, and a trial 
 of patience which nothing can extenuate. I much fear that 
 my besetting sin of idleness in letter-writing has been dis- 
 jjleasing to you, although your note is politely silent on the 
 subject. 
 
 1 am sorry to say that for months together my spirits 
 have sunk so low, that every duty and every kindness have 
 been sadly neglected. 
 
 “In consequence of this nervous inactivity, the Water 
 Color Exhibition contains almost all I have been able to ac- 
 complish since last year. The drawing of Petrarch’s House, 
 which you wished me to make, was finished some time since, 
 but is so unlike what I am sure you expected, that I deferred 
 saying au^dhing about it till another was made. Alas ! the 
 things I ought to have done have not been done. I intended 
 bringing it to town with me, and asking the favor that it 
 might remain in your |)ossession till I had made something 
 more worthy. My trip to town has been put off month after 
 month, and I expect the resolution vvdll not awake till the 
 last day of seeing sights. Should you not be in town, both 
 drawings shall be left at Foord’s.* 
 
 * The letters quoted in the text of Praeterita will always he given 
 without omissions even of trivial passages. Of tliose arranged in Di- 
 lecta, I give only the portions which seem to me likely to interest 
 
324 : 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 “ Permit me to say that I have been indulged with a hasty 
 perusal of a work on art and artists by ‘ A Graduate of Ox- 
 ford.’ I read the volume with intense interest, the sentiments 
 and language riveting my attention to every page. But I 
 mourn lest such splendid means of doing eminent service to 
 art should be lost. Had the work been witten with the 
 courteousness of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ lectures, it would have 
 been a ‘standard work,’ the author held in high estimation 
 for his learniug, and the volume recommended for instruc- 
 tion and usefulness. Perhaps nothing helps more certainly 
 to an accession of influence, and an accumulating power of 
 doing good, than the language in which w'e dictate. We ap- 
 proach an unassuming courteous manner with respect, con- 
 fldence, and satisfaction, but most persons shrink back from 
 sarcasm. Certainly every author who writes to do good 
 will write with firmness and candor, cleaving to what is right, 
 but cautious of giving j)ain or offence. 
 
 “ I hope some day to give the book a more careful peru- 
 sal ; it made me think, and when I lay hold of it again, I 
 will endeavor to test it by my experience and the judgment 
 of others ; and as I have a little cooled from the rage I felt 
 at first to find my ‘ darlings ’ set at nought, I trust in spite 
 of its biting bitterness I shall feel more ashamed of myself, 
 and more respect for the opinions of the author. 
 
 “ Pardon, dear sir, this presuming to tire your patience 
 with my humble opinions ; and should it be true what I have 
 just heard, that you know the author, I will rely on your 
 goodness to forgive my objection to opinions in which you 
 are so much interested. 
 
 “ If it is so, you are indeed honored, and I trust the 
 powerful ‘ angel-bright talent ’ will be directed to do much 
 good for art and artists. Pray give me credit for sincerity 
 in acknowledging that it is art generally I feel for, and as 
 far as I 'am individually mentioned, I am pleased to find that 
 I have come off beautifully. 
 
 the reader ; and even take leave to drop superfluous sentences without 
 stars or other note of the omission, but so that tlie absolute meaning 
 
 the writer shall be always kept. 
 
THE FEASTS OF TEE VANDALS. 
 
 325 
 
 “ I did not intend to write so much. Kindly pardon quan- 
 tity and quality, 
 
 “ And believe me to remain, dear sir, 
 
 “ With the greatest respect, 
 
 “ Yours truly and obliged, 
 
 “S. Prout. 
 
 “ J, J. Ruskin, Esq., 
 
 &c., &c., &c.” 
 
 I must guard myself, however, very distinctly in giving this 
 letter as an example of the general feeling about the book 
 among the living painters whom it praised, against attrib- 
 uting to them an}' such admiration of my “ angel-bright 
 talent ” as that here expressed by my father’s affectionate, 
 and now intimate, friend. The group of landscapists, head- 
 „ ed by Copley Fielding, David Cox, and P. de \ATnt in the 
 I old Water Color Society, and by David Koberts and Clark- 
 son Stanfield in the Academy (Turner being wholly excep- 
 , tional, and a wild meteoric phenomenon in the midst of 
 them, lawless alike and scholarless) — this group of very char- 
 [i acteristically English landscape painters had been well 
 
 j grounded, every one of them, more or less, in the ortho- 
 
 dox old English faith in Dutch painting ; had studied it so 
 r. as to know the difficulty of doing anything as good in its 
 
 * way ; and whether in painting or literature, had studied 
 
 very little else. Of an}' qualities or talents “ angel-bright,” 
 past or present, except in the rather alarming than dignified 
 explosions round the stable lantern which sometimes take 
 place in a “Eembrandt Nativity,” “ Vision to the Shepherds,” 
 j or the like, none of them had ever felt the infiuence, or at- 
 
 t tempted the conception ; the religious Itahaii schools were 
 
 as little known at that time, to either arlist or connoisseur, 
 as the Japanese, and the highest scholarly criticisni with 
 r which I had first come to handgrips in Blavkicood , reached 
 no higher than a sketching amateur’s acquaintance with the 
 i manner of Salvator and Caspar Poussin. Takeji as a body, 
 
 j the total group of “ Modern Painters ” were, therefore, 
 
 i more startled than flattered by my schismatic praise ; the 
 
326 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 modest ones, such as Fielding, Prout, and Stanfield, felt that 
 it was more than they deserved, — and, moreover, a little be- 
 side the mark and out of their way ; the conceited ones, 
 such as Harding and De Wint, were angry at the position 
 given to Turner ; and I am not sure that any of them were 
 ready even to endorse George Richmond’s consoling assur- 
 ance to my father, that I should know better in time. 
 
 But, with all the kindness of heart, and appreciation of 
 domestic character, partly humorous, partly pathetic, which 
 gave its prevailing tone to the British school of the day, led 
 by Wilkie, Leslie, and Mulread}^ the entire fellowship of 
 artists with whom we were acquainted s^^mpathized with 
 the partly quaint, altogether pure, strong, and always genial, 
 home-life of my father and mother ; nor less with their anx- 
 ious devotion to their son, and the hopes they entertained 
 for him. Nor, I suppose, w^as my own status at Denmark 
 Hill without something honorably notable to men of the 
 world, in that, refusing to enter my father’s business, I yet 
 stayed serenely under his authority, and, in what seemed to 
 me my own proper line of work, did my utmost to please 
 him. And when (I anticipate now the progress of the next 
 four or five years) — Avhen on any, to us, peculiarly festive oc- 
 casion, — the return from a journey, publication of a new vol- 
 ume, anniversary of a birthday, or the like, — we ventured to 
 ask our artist friends to rejoice with us, most of them came, 
 I believe with real pleasure. The early six o’clock dinner 
 allowed them usually a pleasant glance over the meadow and 
 the Norwood Hill in the evening light ; the table was just 
 short enough to let the talk flow round without wandering 
 into eddies, or lingering into confidences ; there was no guest 
 whom the others did not honor ; there was neither effort, 
 afiectation, nor restraint in the talk. If the painters cared to 
 say anything of pictures, they knew they would be under- 
 stood ; if they chose rather to talk of sherry, my father could, 
 and would with delight, tell them more about it than any 
 other person knew in either England or Spain ; and when 
 the candles came, and the good jests, over the nuts and olives, 
 there was “ frolic wine ” in the flask at every right hand. 
 
THE FEA8T8 OF THE VANDAL8. 327 
 
 siicli as that never Prince Hal nor Jack Falstaff tasted cup 
 of brighter or mightier. 
 
 I somewhat admire in myself, at this time, though I per- 
 ceive it to have been greatly owing to want of imagination, 
 the simplicity of affection with which I kept hold on my 
 Cumberland moors, Calais sands, Jind French costumes and 
 streets, — as contrasted with the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, 
 the surges of Trafalgar, and the towers of Seville and 
 Granada ; of all which I continually heard as the most beau- 
 tiful and wonderful scenery and architecture of the European 
 world ; and in the very midst of which — in the lieart of Anda- 
 lusia, and on the very battle-held of Xeres de la Frontera 
 Avhich gave the Arab his dominion in Spain — I might have 
 been adopted by my father’s partner to reign over his golden 
 vineyards, and write the histories of the first Caliphs of 
 Arabia and the Catholic Kings of Spain. 
 
 It chanced, however, — or mischanced, — for better or worse, 
 that in the meantime I knew no more the histories of either 
 Arabia or Spain than Eobinson Crusoe or his boy Xury ; tliat 
 the absolutely careful and faithful work of David Eoberts 
 showed me the inconstructive and merely luxurious character 
 of Spanish and Arab buildings ; and that the painter of 
 greatest power, next to Turner, in the English school, J. F. 
 Lewis, rendered the facts of existing Andalusian life so 
 vividly, as to leave me no hope of delighting or distinguishing 
 myself in any constant relations either with its gayety or its 
 pride. 
 
 Looking back to my notice of these and other contempo- 
 rary artists in tlie paragraphs added to the first volume of 
 “Modern Painters,” when I corrected its sheets at Sestri di 
 Levante, in 1846, I find the display of my new Italian in- 
 formation, and assertion of critical acumen, prevail sorrow- 
 full}^ over the expressions of gratitude with wdiich I ought to 
 have described the help and delight they had given me. 
 Now, too late, I can only record with more than sorrow the 
 passing away from the entire body of men occupied in the 
 arts, of the temper in which these men woiked. It is—- 1 
 cannot count how many years, since, on all our walls of 
 
328 
 
 PB^TEMITA. 
 
 recklessly ambitious displaj^ I have seen one drawing of any 
 place loved for its own sake, or understood with unselfish 
 intelligence. Whether men themselves, or their buildings, 
 or the scenery in which they live, the only object of the 
 draughtsman, be he great or small, is to overpower the 
 public mind wdth his greatness, or catch it with his small- 
 ness. My notions of Rome, says Mr. Alma Tadema ; Mine of 
 Venice, says Miss Clara Montalba ; Ours of Belgravia and 
 Brighton, say the public and its Graphics, with unani- 
 mous egotism ; — and what sensational effects can be 
 wrung out of China or New Zealand, or the miseries and 
 follies of mankind anywhere. Exact knowledge enough — 
 yes, let us have it to fill our pockets or swell our pride ; but 
 the beauty of wild nature or modest life, except for the sake 
 of our own picnics or perquisites, none care to know, or to 
 save. 
 
 And it is wholly vain, in this state of the popular mind, to 
 try to explain the phase of art in which I was brought up, and 
 of which — little thinking how soon it was to pass away — I 
 wrote so ungratefully. 
 
 Absolutely careful and faithful, I said, David Roberts was, 
 though in his own restricted terms ; fastening on the constant 
 aspect of any place, and drawing that in gray shade, and so 
 much of what might pass for light as enough showed magni- 
 tude, distance, and grace of detail. He was like a kind of 
 gray mirror ; he gave the greatness and richness of things, 
 and such height and space, and standing of wall and rock, 
 as one saw to be true ; and with unwearied industry, both in 
 Egypt and Spain, brought home records of which the value 
 is now forgotten in the perfect detail of photography, and 
 sensational realism of the effects of light which Holman Hunt 
 first show^ed to be possible. The minute knowledge and 
 acute sensation throw us back into ourselves ; haunting us to 
 the examination of points and enjoyment of moments ; but 
 one imagined serenely and joyfully, from the old drawings, 
 the splendor of the aisles of Seville or the strength of the 
 towers of Granada, and forgot one’s self, for a time. 
 
 The work of John Lewis was a mirror of men only — of 
 
THE FEASTS OF THE VANDALS. 
 
 329 
 
 I building and scenery as backgrounds for them ; all alike ren- 
 ’ dered with an intensity of truth to the external life, which 
 j nothing has resembled before or since. But it was the ex- 
 j ternal and animal life only. Lewis saw in men and women 
 j only the most beautiful of living creatures, and painted them 
 as he did dogs and deer, but with a perception of their nature 
 : and race which laughs to scorn all the generic study of the 
 
 = scientific schools. Neither Andalusian nor Arab, Turk nor 
 1 Circassian, had been painted before his time, any more than 
 j described before Byron’s ; and the endeavors at representa- 
 1 tion of Oriental character or costume which accompany the 
 i travels of even the best-educated English travellers either dur- 
 i ing or immediately after the Peninsular war, are without ex- 
 > ception the clumsiest, most vulgar, and most ludicrous pieces 
 ) of work that ever disgraced draughtsman, savage or civil. 
 
 No artist that ever I read of was treated with such injustice 
 I by the people of his time as John Lewis. There was some- 
 I tliing un-English about him, which separated him from the 
 j good-humored groups of established fame whose members 
 I abetted or jested with each other ; feeling that every one of 
 I them had something to be forgiven, and that each knew the 
 i other’s trick of trade. His resolute industiy was inimitable ; 
 his color — founded either on the frankness of southern sun- 
 light, or on its subtle reflections and diffusions through lat- 
 ticed tracery and silken tent — resembled nothing that could 
 be composed in a London studio ; while the absence of bra- 
 vado, sentiment, or philosophy in his subjects — the total sub- 
 jection alike of the moral and immoral, the lieroic and the 
 sensual, to the mere facts of animal beauty, and grace of dec- 
 oration left him without any power of appeal eitlier to ilie 
 domestic simplicity or personal pride of the ordinary English 
 mind. In artistic power and feeling he had much in com- 
 mon witii Paul Veronese : but Paolo had the existing i)omi) 
 
 I and the fading religion of Venice to give his work hold on the 
 I national heart, and epic unity in its design ; while poor Lewis 
 did but render more vividly with all liis industry, the toy 
 contrabandista or matador of my mother’s chimney-piece. 
 
 Ho never dined witli us as our other painter friends did ; 
 
330 
 
 PB^TEBITA. 
 
 but liis pictures, as long as he worked in Spain, were an ex- 
 trejnely important element in both my father’s life and mine. 
 
 I have not yet enough explained the real importance of my 
 father’s house, in its command of that Andalusian wine dis- 
 trict. Modern maps of Spain, covered with tracks of rail- 
 road, show no more the courses either of Guadalquiver or 
 Guadiana ; the names of railway stations overwhelm those 
 of the old cities ; and every atlas differs from every other in 
 its placing of the masses of the Sierras, — if even the existence 
 of the mountain ranges be acknowledged at all. 
 
 But if the reader will take ten minutes of pains, and an- 
 other ten of time, to extricate, with even the rudest sketch, 
 the facts of value from the chaos of things inscrutably use- 
 less, in any fairly trustworthy map of Spain, he will perceive 
 that between the Sierra Morena on the north, and Sierra 
 Nevada on the south, the Guadalquiver flows for two hun- 
 dred miles through a valley fift}^ miles wide, in the exact 
 midst of which sits Cordova, and half-way between Cordova 
 and the sea, Seville ; and on the Royal Harbor, Puerto Real, 
 at the sea-shore, — Cadiz ; ten miles above which, toward Se- 
 ville, he will find the “Xeres de la Frontera,” to which, as a 
 golden centre of Bacchic commerce, all the vineyards of that 
 great valley of Andalusia, Vandalusia, or, as Mr. Ford puts it, 
 I believe more probably, land of the west, send down their sun- 
 browned juice ; the ground of Macharnudo on Mr. Domecq’s 
 estate at Xeres itself furnishing the w^hite wine of strongest 
 body in Europe. 
 
 The power which Mr. Domecq had acknowledged in my 
 father, by making him head partner in his firm, instead of 
 merely his English agent, ruled absolutely at Xeres over the 
 preparation of the wines : and, by insisting always on the 
 maintenance of their purity and quality at the highest attain- 
 able standard, gave the house a position which was only in 
 part expressed by its standing, until Mr. Domecq’s death, al- 
 Avays at the head in the list of importers. That list gave only 
 the number of butts of wine imported by each firm, but did 
 not specify their price ; still less could it specify the relation 
 of price to value. Mr. Domecq’s two or three thousand butts 
 
THE FEASTS OF THE VANDALS. 
 
 331 
 
 were, for the most peart, old wiue, of which the supply had 
 been secured for half a century by the consistent prudence of 
 putting the new vintages in at one end of cellars some quar- 
 ter of a mile long, and taking the old vintages out at the 
 other. I do not, of course, mean that such transaction was 
 literally observed ; but that the vulgar impatience to “ turn 
 over” capital was absolutely forsworn, in the steady pur- 
 pose of producing the best wiue that could be given for the 
 highest price to which the British public would go. As a 
 rule, sherry drinkers are soundly-minded persons, who do not 
 choose to spend a guinea a glass on anything ; and the high- 
 est normal price for Mr. Domecq’s “ double-cross ” sherry was 
 eighty pounds a butt ; rising to two hundred for the older 
 'wines, which were only occasionally imported. The highest 
 price ever given was six hundred ; but this was at a loss to 
 the house, which onlj'’ allowed wine to attain the age which 
 such a price represented in order to be able to supply, by 
 the mixture of it with younger vintage, whatever quality the 
 English consumer, in any fit of fashion, might desire. 
 
 On the whole, the sales varied little from }'ear to year, vir- 
 tuall}’’ representing the quantity of wine annually produced 
 by the estate, and a cei’tain quantity of the drier Amontillado, 
 from the hill districts of Moiitilla, and some lighter and 
 cheaper sherries, — though always pure, — which were pur- 
 chased by the house for the supply of the wider London mar- 
 ket. No effort was evei* made to extend that market by low- 
 ering quality ; no competition was possible with the wines 
 grown by Mr. Domecq, and little with those purchased on his 
 judgment. My father used to fret, as I have told, if the 
 orders he expected were not forthcoming, or if there seemed 
 the slightest risk of any other house contesting his position 
 at the head of the list. But he never attempted, or even per- 
 mitted, the enlargement of the firm’s operations beyond the 
 scale at which he was sure that his partner’s personal and 
 equal care, or, at least, that of his head cellarman, could be 
 given to the execution of every order. 
 
 Mr. Domecq’s own habits of life were luxurious, but never 
 extravagant. He had a house in Paris, chiefly for the sake of 
 
332 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 his daughters’ education and establishment ; the profits of the 
 estate, though not to be named in any comparison with those 
 of modern mercantile dynasty, were enough to secure annual 
 income to each of his five girls large enough to secure their 
 marriages in the best French circles : they became, each in 
 her turn, baronne or comtesse ; their father choosing their 
 baron or count for them with as much discretion as he had 
 shown in the choice of his own partner ; and all the marriages 
 turned out well. Elise, Comtesse des Roys, and Caroline, 
 Princess Bethune, once or twice came with their husbands to 
 stay with us ; partly to see London, partly to discuss with my 
 father his management of the English market : and the way 
 in which these lords, virtually, of lands both in France and 
 Spain, though men of sense and honor ; and their wives, 
 though women of gentle and amiable disposition, (Elise, in- 
 deed, one of the kindest I ever have known,) spoke of their 
 Spanish laborers and French tenantry, with no idea whatever 
 respecting them but that, except as producers by their labor 
 of money to be spent in Paris, they Avere cumberers of the 
 ground, gave me the first clew to the real sources of wrong in 
 the social laws of modern Europe ; and led me necessarily 
 into the political work which has been the most earnest of my 
 life. But these visits and warnings were not till seven or 
 eight years after the time at present rendered account of, in 
 which, nevertheless, it was already beginning to be, if not a 
 question, at least a marvel with me, that these graceful and 
 gay Andalusians, who played guitars, danced boleros, and 
 fought bulls, should virtually get no good of their own beau- 
 tiful countiy but the bunch of grapes or stalk of garlic they 
 frugally dined on ; that its precious wine was not for them, 
 slill less the money it was sold for ; but the one came to 
 crown our Vandalic feasts, and the other furnished our Dan- 
 ish walls with pictures, our. Danish gardens with milk and 
 honey, and five noble houses in Paris with the means of beau- 
 tiful dominance in its Elysian fields. 
 
 Still more seriously, I was now beginning to contrast the 
 luxury and continual opportunity of my own exulting days, 
 with the poverty, and captivity, or, as it seemed to chance 
 
THE FEASTS OF THE VANDALS. 
 
 Qoo 
 
 always, fatal issue of any efforts to escape from these, in 
 which my cousins, the only creatures whom I had to care for, 
 beyond my home, were each and all spending, or ending, 
 their laborious youth. 
 
 I must briefly resume their histories, though much apart 
 from mine ; but if my heart was cold to them, my mind was 
 often sad for them. 
 
 By grotesque freak of Fors, both my aunts married a Mr. 
 Richardson — and each left six children, four boys and two 
 girls. 
 
 The Perth children were Mary and Jessie, James, John, 
 William, and Andrew ; the Croydon children, Margaret and 
 Bridget, John, William, George, and Charles. None left now 
 but William of Croydon. 
 
 The Perth boys were all partly weak in constitution, and 
 curiously inconsistent in element of character, having much 
 of their mother’s subtlety and sweetness mixed with a rather 
 larger measure of their father’s tannin. The eldest, James, 
 was unlike the other three, — more delicate in feature, and 
 more tractable in temper. My father brought him up to 
 London when he was one- or two-and-twenty, and put him 
 into the counting-house to see what could be made of him : 
 but, though perfectly well-behaved, he was undiligent and 
 effectless — chiefly solicitous about his trousers and gloves. 
 I remember him in his little room, the smaller of the two 
 looking west at top of Herne Hill house, a pleasant, gentle, 
 tall figure of a youth. He fell into rapid decline and died. 
 
 Nor long after him, the youngest brother, Andrew, who 
 with fewer palpable follies, had less real faculty than the rest. 
 He learnt farming under a good master in Scotland, and 
 went out to Australia to prove his science ; but after a sliort 
 struggle with the earth of the other side of the world, rested 
 beneath it. 
 
 The second brother, John, thus left the head of the family, 
 was a stumpily made, snub- or rather knob-nosed, red-faced, 
 bright-eyed, good-natured simpleton ; with the most curi- 
 ously subtle shrewdnesses, and obstinate faculties, excrescent 
 through his simplicity. I believe he first tried to carry on 
 
334 
 
 PEJETERITA. 
 
 his father’s business ; not prospering in that, after some 
 pause and little-pleased scrutiny of him, he was established 
 by my father as a wine-agent in Glasgow, in which busi- 
 ness and town he remained, in a shambling, hand-to-mouth 
 manner, some thirty years, a torment to my father, of an 
 extremely vexatious kind — all the more that he was some- 
 thing of a possession and vestige of his mother all the same. 
 He was a quite first-rate chess-player and whist-pla^^er : in 
 business, he had a sort of chess and whist instinct for getting 
 the better of people, as if every dozen of sherry were a hand 
 of cards ; and would often, for the mere pleasure of playing 
 a trick, lose a customer without really making a penny by 
 him. Good-natured, as I said, with a rude foundation of 
 honesty at the bottom which made my father put up with 
 him, (indeed, so far as I can find out, no one of all my rela- 
 tions was ever dishonest at heart, and most of them have 
 been only too simple,) he never lied about his sherry or 
 adulterated it, but tried to get little advantages in bargains, 
 and make the customer himself to choose the worst , wine at 
 the money, and so on — trying always to get the most he could 
 out of my father in the same way, yet affectionate in a dumb- 
 doggish sort, and not ungrateful, he went scamble-shambling 
 on, a plague to the end, yet through all, a nephew. 
 
 William, the tliivd of the Perth boys, had all John’s faults 
 of disposition, but greater powers, and, above all, •I'esolution 
 and perseverance, with a rightly foresigh ted pride, not satis- 
 fied in trivial or momentary successes, but knitting itself into 
 steady ambition, with some deep-set notions of duty and 
 principles of conscience farther strengthening it. His char- 
 acter, however, developed slov/ly, nor ever freed itself from 
 the flaws which ran like a geological cleavage through the 
 whole brotherhood : while his simplicities in youth were even 
 more manifest than theirs, and as a schoolboy, he was 
 certainly the awkwardest, and was thought the foolishest, of 
 the four. 
 
 He became, however, a laborious and sagacious medical 
 student, came up to London to walk the hospitals ; and on 
 passing his examination for medical practitioner, was esta- 
 
CROSSMOUNT. 
 
 335 
 
 Wished by my father in a small shop in the Bayswater Hoad, 
 when he began — without purchase of an}" former favor, but 
 camped there like a gipsy by the roadside,— general practice, 
 chielly among the poor, and not enough to live upon for a 
 year or two (without supplemental pork and apple-sauce from 
 Denmark Hill), but conscientious and earnest, pa}dng largely 
 in gathered knowledge and insight, I shall often have oc- 
 casion to speak of him hereafter ; it is enough to say in ad- 
 vance that after a few years of this discipline he took his 
 diploma of M.D. with credit, and became an excellent physi- 
 cian — and the best chess-player I have ever known. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CROSSMOUNT. 
 
 My l3est readers cannot but be alike astonished and dis- 
 appointed tliat I have nothing set down of the (;onversation, 
 cordial always, and if George Richmond were there, better 
 than brilliant, which liowed at these above described Vandalic 
 feasts. But it seemed to me that all the sap and bloom of it 
 were lost in deliberate narrative, and its power sliorn away if 
 one could not record also the expression of the speaker ; 
 while of absolutely useful and tenable resulting sense, there 
 was, to my unsympathetic mind, little to be got hold of. 
 Turner resolutely refused to speak on the subject of art at 
 all, and every one of us felt that we must ask him no ques- 
 tions in that direction ; while of what any other painter said, 
 I was careless, regarding them all as limited to their own 
 fields, and unable to help me in mine. 
 
 I had two distinct instincts to be satisfied, rather than ends 
 in view, as I wrote day by day with higher kindled feeling 
 the second volume of “Modern Painters.” The first, to ex- 
 plain to myself, and then demonstrate to others, the nature 
 of that quality of beauty which I now saw to exist through 
 all the happy conditions of living organism ; and down to the 
 minutest detail and finished material structure naturally pro- 
 
PB^^TEIUTA. 
 
 336 
 
 cluced. The second, to explain and illustrate the power of 
 two schools of art unknown to the British public, that of An- 
 gelico in Florence, and Tintoret in Venice. 
 
 I have no knowledge, and can form no conjecture, of the 
 extent to which the book in either direction accomplished its 
 purpose. It is usually read only for its pretty passages ; its 
 theory of beauty is scarcely ever noticed, — its praise of Tin- 
 toret has never obtained the purchase of any good example 
 of him for the National Gallery. But I permit myself — per- 
 haps with vain complacency — the thought thfit I have had 
 considerable share in the movement which led to the useful 
 work of the Arundel Society in Italy, and to the enlargement 
 of the National collection by its now valuable series of four- 
 teenth-century religious paintings. 
 
 The style of the book was formed on a new model, given 
 me by Osborne Gordon. I was old enough now to feel that 
 neither Johnsonian balance norByronic alliteration were ulti- 
 mate virtues in English prose ; and I had been reading with 
 care, on Gordon’s counsel, both for its arguments and its 
 English, Kichard Hooker’s “Ecclesiastical Polity.” I had 
 always a trick of imitating, more or less, the last book I had 
 read with admiration ; and it farther seemed to me that for 
 the purposes of argument, (and my own theme was, according 
 to my notion, to be argued out invincibly,) Hooker’s English 
 was the perfectest existing model. At all events, I did the 
 best I then knew how, leaving no passage till I had put as 
 much thought into it as it could be made to carry, and chosen 
 the words with the utmost precision and tune I could give 
 them. 
 
 For the first time in my life, when I had finished the last 
 sentence, I was really tired. In too long readings at Oxford 
 I got stupid and sleepy, but not fatigued : now, however, I 
 felt distinctly that my head could do no more ; and with 
 much satisfied thankfulness, after the revise of the last sheet 
 was sent to printer, found mj^self on the bows of the little 
 steamer, watching their magical division of the green waves 
 between Dover and Calais. 
 
 Little steamers they all were, then ; nor in the least well 
 
CR0S8M0UNT. 
 
 337 
 
 appointed, nor aspiring to any pride of shape or press of 
 speed ; their bits of sails worn and patched like those of an 
 old fishing-boat. Here, for modest specimen of my then 
 proper art style, I give my careful drawing of the loose 
 lashed jib of one of them, as late as 1854.^ The immeasur- 
 able delight to me of being able to loiter and swing about 
 just over the bowsprit and watch the plunge of the bows, if 
 there was the least swell or broken sea to lift them, with the 
 hope of Calais at breakfast, and the horses’ heads set straight 
 for Mont Blanc to-morrow, is one of the few pleasures I look 
 back to as quite unmixed. In getting a Turner draAving I al- 
 ways wanted another ; but I didn’t want to be in more boats 
 than one at once. 
 
 As I had done my second volume greatly to my father’s 
 and mother’s delight, (they used both to cry a little, at least 
 my father generally did, over the pretty passages, Avhen I 
 read them after breakfast,) it had been agreed that they 
 sliould both go Avith me tliat summer to see ail the things 
 and pictures spoken of, — Ilaria, and the Campo Santo, and 
 St. Mary’s of the Thorn, and the School of St. Koch. 
 
 Though tired, I Avas in excellent health, and proud hope ; 
 they also at their best and gladdest. And Ave had a happy 
 Avalk up and down the quiet streets of Calais that day, before 
 four o’clock dinner. 
 
 I have dwelt A\ith insistence in last chapter on my pref- 
 erence of the Hotel de Ville at Calais to the Alcazar of Se- 
 ville. Not that I was without love of grandeur in buildings, 
 but in that kind, Rouen front and Beauvais apse were literally 
 the only pieces that came up to my mark ; ordinary minsters 
 
 * In which year we must have started impatiently, without our rubri- 
 cal gooseberry pie, for I find the drawing is dated “ 10th May, niy 
 father’s birthday,” and thus elucidated, “ Opposite,” (^. 6. on leaf ot 
 diary,) “ tlie jib of steamer seen from inside it on the deck. Tlie 
 double curve at the base of it is curious ; in reality the curves were a 
 good deal broken, the sail being warped like a piece of wetted pajicr. 
 The rings by which it holds, being alternately round and edge to the 
 eye, are curious. The lines are of course seams, which go to the bot- 
 tom of the sail ; the brown marks, running short the same way, are 
 stains.” 
 
 23 
 
338 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 and palaces, however they might set themselves up for sub- 
 lime, usually hurt me by some manner of disproportion or 
 pretence ; apd my best joys were in small pieces of provincial 
 building, full of character, and naturally graceful and right in 
 their given manner. In this kind the little wooden belfry 
 of Evreux, of which Front’s drawing is photographed at page 
 42 of my “Memoir,”* is consummate ; but the Calais one, 
 though of far later and commoner style, is also matchless, far 
 or near, in that rude way, and has been a perpetual delight 
 and lesson to me. Front has a little idealized it in the dis- 
 tance of the drawing of Calais Harbor, page 40 in the same 
 book ; I never tried to draw it myself, the good of it being 
 not in any sculpturesque detail, but in the complex placing 
 of its plain, square-cut props and ties, taking some pretence 
 of pinnacle on them, and being really as structurally useful, 
 though by their linked circletting instead of their weight. 
 There was never time in the happy afternoon to do this care- 
 fully enough, though I got a color-note once of the church- 
 spire, loved in a deeper way, (“ Modern Fainters,” Vol. IV., 
 Chap. I.,) but the belfry beat me. After all, the chief charm 
 of it was in being seen from my bedroom at Desseins, and 
 putting me to sleep and waking me with its chimes. 
 
 Calais is properly a Flemish, not French town (of course 
 the present town is all, except belfry and church, built in the 
 seventeenth century, no vestige remaining of Flantagenet 
 Calais) ; it has no wooden houses, which mark the essential 
 French civic style, but only brick or chalk ones, with, origin- 
 ally, most of them, good indented Flemish stone gables and 
 tiled roofs. True French roofs are never tiled, but slated, 
 and have no indented gables, but bold dormer windows ris- 
 ing over the front, never, in any pretty street groups of them, 
 without very definite expression of pride. Foor little Calais 
 had indeed nothing to be proud of, but it had a quaint look 
 of contentment with itself on those easy terms ; some dignity 
 in its strong ramparts and drawbridge gates ; and, better 
 than dignity, real power and service in the half-mile of 
 
 * Printed by the Fine Art Society, 1880. 
 
GR0S8M0UNT. 
 
 339 
 
 pier, reaching* to the low-tide breakers across its field of 
 sand. 
 
 Sunset, then, seen from the pier-head across those whisper- 
 ing fringes ; belfry chime at evening and morning ; and the 
 new life of that year, 1846, was begun. 
 
 After our usual rest at Champagnole, we went on over the 
 Cenis to Turin, Verona, and Venice ; whereat I began show- 
 ing my father all ray new discoveries in architecture and 
 painting. But there began now to assert itself a difference 
 between us I had not calculated on. For the first time I 
 verily perceived that my father was older than I, and not im- 
 mediately nor easily to be put out of his way of thinking 
 in anything. We had been entirely of one mind about the 
 carved porches of Abbeville, and living pictures of Vandyck ; 
 but when my father now found himself required to admire 
 also fiat walls, striped like the striped calico of an American 
 fiag, and oval-eyed saints like the figures on a Chinese tea- 
 cup, he grew restive. Further, all the fine writing and polite 
 eclat of “ Modern Painters ” had never reconciled him to my 
 total resignation of the art of poetry ; and beyond this, he en- 
 tirely, and wdth acute sense of loss to himself, doubted and 
 deplored my now constant habit of making little patches and 
 scratches of the sections and fractions of things in a note- 
 book which used to live in mj^ waistcoat pocket, instead 
 of the former Proutesque or Kobertsian outline of grand 
 buildings and sublime scenes. And I w*as the more vi- 
 ciously stubborn in taking my own w^ay, just because every- 
 bod}'- was with him in these opinions ; and I was more 
 and more persuaded every day, that everybody was always 
 wrong. 
 
 Often in my other books, — and now, once for all, and 
 finally here, — I have to pray my readers to note that this con- 
 tinually increasing arrogance was not founded on vanity in 
 me, but on sorrow. There is a vast difference — there is all 
 the difference — between the vanity of displaying one’s own 
 faculties, and the grief that other people do not use their 
 own. Vanity would have led me to continue writing and draw- 
 ing what every one praised ; and disciplining my own already 
 
340 
 
 PR^TEBITA. 
 
 practised hand into finer dexterities. But I had no thought 
 but of learning more, and teaching what truth I knew, — as- 
 suredly then, and ever since, for the student’s sake, not my 
 own fame’s ; however sensitive I may be to the fame, also, 
 afterward. 
 
 Meantime, my father and I did not get on well in Italy at 
 all, and one of the worst, wasp-barbed, most tingling pangs 
 of my memory is yet of a sunny afternoon at Pisa, when, just 
 as we were driving past my pet La Spina chapel, my father, 
 waking out of a reverie, asked me suddenly, “John, what shall 
 I give the coachman ? ” Whereupon, I, instead of telling him 
 what he asked me, as I ought to have done with much com- 
 placency at being referred to on the matter, took upon me 
 with impatience to reprove, and lament over, my father’s 
 hardness of heart, in thinking at that moment of sublunary 
 affairs. And the spectral Spina of the chapel has stayed in 
 my own heart ever since. 
 
 Nor did things come right that year till we got to Chamouni, 
 where, having seen enough by this time of the upper snow, I 
 was content to enjoy my morning walks in the valley with papa 
 and mamma ; after w^hich, I had more than enough to do 
 among the lower rocks and w’oods till dinner-time, and in 
 w^atching phases of sunset afterward from beneath the slopes 
 of the Breven. 
 
 The last Chamouni entry, with its sequel, is perhaps worth 
 keeping. 
 
 “Aug. 23d. — Kained nearly all day; but I w^alked to the 
 source of the Arveron — now a mighty fall down the rocks of 
 the Mon tan vert ; * note the intense scarlety purple of the 
 shattered larch stems, wet, opposed with yellow from decom- 
 posing turpentine ; the elder stems looking much like birch, 
 covered with the -white branchy moss that looks like a coral. 
 Went out again in the afternoon toward the Cascade des 
 Peleims ; surprised to see the real rain-clouds assume on the 
 Breven, about one-third of its height, the form of cirri, — long, 
 continuous, and delicate ; the same tendency showing in the 
 
 * The rocks over which the Glacier des Bois descends, I meant. 
 
CB088M0UNT. 
 
 341 
 
 clouds all along tlie valley, some inclining to tlie fisli-sliajDe, 
 and others to the cobweb-like wavy film.” 
 
 “ Lucerne, Aug. 31st. — The result of the above phenomena 
 was a little lift of the clouds next morning, which gave me 
 some of the finest passages about Mont Blanc I ever beheld ; 
 and then, weather continually worse till now. We have had 
 two days’ ceaseless rain, this, the third, hardly interrupted, 
 and the lake right into the town.” 
 
 “ There was great joy in hel^^ing my mother from the door 
 of the Cygne along a quarter of a mile of extempore plank 
 bridge in the streets, and in writing a rhymed letter in de- 
 scription of the lifted lake and swirling Eeuss, to little Louise 
 Ellis (Mr. Telford’s niece, at this time one of the happy pres- 
 ences in Widmore), of which a line or two yet remain in my 
 ears, about a market boat moored above the submerged 
 quay 
 
 “ Full of mealy potatoes and marrowfat pease, 
 
 And honey, and butter, and Simmentlial cheese, 
 
 And a poor little calf, not at all at its ease, 
 
 Tied by the neck to a box at its knees. 
 
 Don’t you agree with me, dear Louise, 
 
 It was unjustiliably cruel in 
 
 Them to have brought it in all that squeeze 
 
 Over the lake from Fluelen ? ” 
 
 And so home, that year by Troyes, with my own calf’s 
 mind also little at its ease, under confused squeeze of Alps, 
 clouds, and architecture ; yet finding room still in the waist- 
 coat pocket for notes on the external tracery of St. Urbain, 
 which fixed that church for me as the highest type of Gothic 
 construction, and took me off all Italian models for the next 
 four years. The abstraction, however, though St. Urbain be- 
 gan it, was not altogether that Saint’s fault. 
 
 The press notices of my second volume had been either 
 cautious or complimentary, — none, to the best of my memory, 
 contemptuous. My friends took much pleasure in it, and the 
 estimate formed of it in the old Scott and John Murray circle 
 was shown by Lockhart’s asking me that winter to review 
 Lord Lindsay in the Quarterly. I was shy of doing this, 
 
342 
 
 PRjETERITA, 
 
 being well aware that Lord Lindsay knew mucb more about 
 Italian painting than I did ; but I thought no one else likely 
 to do it better, and had another motive to the business, — of 
 an irresistible nature. 
 
 The little high-foreheaded Charlotte had by this time be- 
 come a Scottish fairy, White Lady, and witch of the fatallest 
 sort, looking as if she had just risen out of the . Stream in 
 Rhymer’s Glen, and could only be seen by favoring glance of 
 moonlight over the Eildons. I used to see her, however, 
 sometimes, by the dim lamplight of this world, at Lady Davy’s, 
 — Sir Humphry’s widow, — whose receptions in Park Street 
 gathered usually, with others, the literary and scientific men 
 who had once known Abbotsford. But I never could con- 
 trive to come to any serious speech with her ; and at last, 
 with my usual wisdom in such matters, went away into 
 Cumberland to recommend myself to her by writing a Quar- 
 terly Review. 
 
 I went in the early spring to the Salutation at Ambleside, 
 then yet a country village, and its inn a country inn. But 
 there, whether it was the grilled salmon for breakfast, or too 
 prolonged reflections on the Celestial Hierarchies, I fell into a 
 state of despondency till then unknown to me, and of which 
 I knew not the like again till fourteen years afterward. The 
 whole morning was painfully spent in balancing phrases ; and 
 from my boat, in the afternoons on Windermere, it appeared 
 to me that the water was leaden, and the hills were low. 
 Lockhart, on the first reception of the labored MS., asked me 
 to cut out all my best bits, (just as Keble had done before 
 with my prize poem.) In both cases I submitted patiently to 
 the loss of my feathers ; but was seriously angry and dis- 
 gusted when Lockhart also intimated to me that a sentence 
 in which I had with perfect justice condemned Mr. Gaily 
 Knight’s representation “out of his own head” of San Michele 
 at Lucca, could not — Mr. Gaily Knight being a protege of Al- 
 bemarle Street — appear in the Quarterly. This first clear 
 insight into the arts of bookselling and reviewing made 
 me permanently distrustful of both trades ; and hearing no 
 word, neither, of Charlotte’s taking the smallest interest in the 
 
CROSSMOUNT. 
 
 343 
 
 celestial hierarchies, I returned to town in a temper and state 
 of health in which my father and mother thought that once 
 more the best place for me would be Leamington. 
 
 I thought so myself, too ; and went penitently again to 
 Jephson, wdio at once stopped the grilled salmon, and ordered 
 salts and promenade, as before. 
 
 It chanced that at this time there was staying at Leaming- 
 ton, also under Jephson’s care, the son of an old friend, per- 
 haps flame, of my father’s, Mrs. Farquharson, — a youth now 
 of some two or three and twenty, but who seemed to me 
 older than myself, being already a man of some position and 
 influence in Perthshire. A few years before he had come into 
 possession, under trustees, of a large Highland estate, on the 
 condition that he should change his name for that of Mac- 
 donald, (properly reduplicate, — Macdonald Macdonald,) con- 
 siderable sums being reserved in the trustees’ hands by the 
 terms of the will, for the purchase of more land. At that 
 time his properties were St. Martin’s near Perth, where his 
 mother lived ; Rossie Castle, above Montrose ; another castle, 
 with much rock and moor around it, name forgotten, just 
 south of Schehallien ; and a shooting-lodge. Crossmount, at 
 the foot of Schehallien, between Lochs Bannoch and Tummel. 
 The young Macdonald had come to see us once or twice with 
 his mother, at Denmark Hill, and, partly I suppose at his 
 mother’s instigation, i^artly, the stars knov/ how, took a true 
 liking to me ; which I could not but answer with surprised 
 thankfulness. He was a thin, dark Highlander, with some 
 expression of gloom on his features when at rest, but with 
 quite the sweetest smile for his friends that I have ever seen, 
 except in one friend of later years, of whom in his place. 
 
 He was zealous in the Scottish Evangelical Faith, and wholly 
 true and upright in ii, so far as any man can be true in any 
 faith, who is bound by the laws, modes, and landed estates 
 of this civilized world. 
 
 The thoughtful reader must have noted with some dis- 
 pleasure that I have scarcely, whether at college or at home, 
 used the word “ friendship ” with respect to any of my compan- 
 ions. The fact is, I am a little puzzled by the specialty and 
 
Pll^ETERITA. 
 
 34J: 
 
 singularity of poetical and classic friendship. I get, dis« 
 tinctively, attached to places, to pictures, to dogs, cats, and 
 girls : but I have had, Heaven be thanked, many and true 
 friends, young and old, who have been of boundless help and 
 good to me, — nor I quite helpless to them ; yet for none of 
 whom have I ever obeyed George Herbert’s mandate, “ Tby 
 friend put in thy bosom ; wear his eyes, still in thy heart, 
 that he may see what’s there ; if cause require, thou art his 
 sacrifice,” etc. Without thinking myself particularly wicked, 
 I found nothing in my heart that seemed to me worth any- 
 body’s seeing ; nor had I any curiosity for insight into those 
 of others ; nor had I any notion of being a sacrifice for them, 
 or the least wish that they should exercise for my good any 
 but their most pleasurable accomplishments, — Dawtrey Hrew- 
 itt, for instance, being further endeared because he could 
 stand on his head and catch vipers by the tail ; Gershom 
 Collingwood because he could sing French songs about the 
 Earthly Paradise ; and Alic Wedderburn because he could 
 swim into tarns and fetch out water-lilies for me, like a water- 
 spaniel. And I never expected that they should care much 
 for me, but only that they should read my books ; and look- 
 ing back, I believe they liked and like me, nearly as well as if 
 I hadn’t written any. 
 
 First, then, of this Love’s Meinie of my own age, or under 
 it, William Macdonald took to me ; and got me to promise, 
 that autumn, to come to him at Crossmount, where it was 
 his evangelical duty to do some shooting in due season. 
 
 I went into Scotland by Dunbar ; saw again Loch Leven, 
 Glen Farg, Kose Terrace, and the Inch of Perth ; and went 
 on, pensive enough, by Killiecrankie, to the clump of pines 
 which sheltered my friend’s lodge from the four winds of the 
 wilderness. 
 
 After once walking up Schehallien with him and his 
 keepers, with such entertainment as I could find in the mew- 
 ing and shrieking of some seventy or eighty gray hares, who 
 were brought down in bags and given to the poorer ten- 
 antry ; and forming final opinion that the poorer tenantry 
 might better have been permitted to find the stock of their 
 
GROSmOUNT. 
 
 345 
 
 hare-soup for themselves, I forswore further fashionable 
 amusement, and set myself, when the days were fine, to the 
 laborious eradication of a crop of thistles, which had been 
 too successfully grown by northern agriculture in one of the 
 best bits of unboggy ground by the Tummel. 
 
 I have carelessly omitted noticing till now, that the ambi- 
 tions in practical gardening, of which the germs, as aforesaid, 
 had been blighted at Herne Hill, nevertheless still prevailed 
 over the contemplative philosophy in me so far as to rekindle 
 the original instinct of liking to dig a hole, whenever I got 
 leave. Sometimes, in the kitchen-garden of Denmark Hill, 
 the hole became a useful furrow ; but when once the pota- 
 toes and beans were set, I got no outlet nor inlet for my ex- 
 cavatory fanc}^ or skill during the rest of the year. The this- 
 tle-field at Crossmount was an inheritance of amethystine 
 treasure to me ; and the working hours in it are among the 
 few in my life which I remember with entire serenity — as 
 being certain I could have spent them no better. For I had 
 wise — though I say it — thoughts in them, too many to set 
 down here (they are scattered afterward up and down in 
 “ Fors ” and “ Munera Pulveris ”), and wholesome sleep after 
 them, in spite of the owls, who were many, in the clumps of 
 pine by Tummel shore. 
 
 Mostly a quiet stream there, tlirongh the bogs, with only 
 a bit of step or tumble a foot or two high on occasion ; above 
 which I was able practically to ascertain for myself the exact 
 power of level water in a current at the top of a fall. I need 
 not say that on the Cumberland and Swiss lakes, and within 
 and without the Lido, I had learned by this time how to 
 manage a boat — an extremely different thing, be it observed, 
 from steering one in a race ; and the little two-foot steps of 
 Tummel were, for scientific purposes, as good as falls twenty 
 or two hundred feet high. I found that I could put the 
 stern of my boat full six inches into the air over the top of 
 one of these little falls, and hold it there, with very short 
 sculls, against the level * stream, with perfect ease for any 
 
 Distinguish carefully between this and a sloping rapid. 
 
346 
 
 PB^TEBITA. 
 
 time I liked ; and any child of ten years old may do the 
 same. The nonsense written about the terror of feeling 
 streams quicken as they approach a mill weir is in a high de- 
 gree dangerous, in making giddy water parties lose their 
 presence of mind if any such chance take them unawares. 
 And (to get this needful bit of brag, and others connected 
 with it, out of the way at once), I have to say that half my 
 power of ascertaining facts of any kind connected with the 
 arts, is in my stern habit of doing the thing with my own 
 hands till I know its difficulty ; and though I have no time nor 
 wish to acquire showy skill in anything, I make myself clear 
 as to what the skill means, and is. Thus, when I had to di- 
 rect road-making at Oxford, I sate, myself, with an iron- 
 masked stone-breaker, on his heap, to break stones beside 
 the London road, just under Iffley Hill, till I knew how to 
 advise my too impetuous pupils to effect their purposes in 
 that matter, instead of breaking the heads of their hammers 
 otf, (a serious item in our daily expenses.) I learned from an 
 Irish street crossing-sweeper what he could teach me of 
 sweeping ; but found myself in that matter nearly his match, 
 from my boy-gardening ; and again and again I swept bits 
 of St. Giles’ foot-pavements, showing my corps of subor- 
 dinates how to finish into depths of gutter. I worked with a 
 carpenter until I could take an even shaving six feet long off 
 a board ; and painted enough with properly and delightfully 
 soppy green paint to feel the master’s superiority in the use 
 of a blunt brush. But among all these and other such stu- 
 dentships, the reader will be surprised, I think, to hear seri- 
 ously, that the instrument I finally decided to be the most 
 difficult to manage was the tro\vel. For accumulated months 
 of my boy’s life I watched bricklaying and paving ; * but 
 when I took the trowel into my own hand, abandoned at once 
 
 * Of our pavior friends, Mr. and Mrs. Duprez {we always spelt and 
 pronounced Depree), of Langley, near Slough, and Gray’s Inn (pro- 
 nounced Grazen) Lane, in London (see the seventh number of Di- 
 lecta). The laying of the proper quantity of sand under the pave- 
 ment stones being a piece of trowel-handling as subtle as spreading 
 the mortar under a brick. 
 
GROSSMOUNT. 
 
 347 
 
 all hope of attaining the least real skill with it, unless I gave 
 up all thoughts of any future literary or political career. 
 But the quite happiest bit of manual work I ever did was for 
 my mother in the old inn at Sixt, where she alleged the stone 
 staircase to have become unpleasantly dirty, since last year. 
 Nobody in the inn appearing to think it possible to wash it, 
 I brought the necessary buckets of v/ater from the yard 
 myself, poured them into beautiful image of Versailles water- 
 works down the fifteen or twenty steps of the great staircase, 
 and with the strongest broom I could find, cleaned every step 
 into its corners. It was quite lovely work to dash the water 
 and drive the mud, from each, with accumulating splash 
 down to the next one. 
 
 I must return for a moment to the clumps of pine at 
 Crossmount, and their company of owls, because — whatever 
 wise people may say of them — I at least myself have found 
 the owl’s cry always prophetic of mischief to me ; and though 
 I got wiser, as aforesaid, in my field of thistles, yet the Scot- 
 tish Athena put on against me at that time her closed visor 
 (not that Greek helmets ever have a visor, but when Athena 
 hides her face, she throws her casque forward and down, and 
 only looks through the oval apertures of it). Her adversity 
 to me at this time was shown by my loss of Miss Lockhart, 
 whom I saw for the last time at one of Lady Davy’s dinners, 
 where Mr. Hoj^e-Scott took the foot of the table. Lady Davy 
 had given me Miss Lockhart to take down, but I found she 
 didn’t care for a word I said ; and Mr. Gladstone was on the 
 other side of her — and the precious moments were all thrown 
 away in quarrelling across her, with him, about Neapolitan 
 prisons. He couldn’t see, as I did, that the real prisoners 
 were the people outside. 
 
 Meantime, restraining the ideals and assuaging the disap- 
 pointments of my outer world life, the home-work went on 
 with entirely useful steadiness. The admiration of tree- 
 branches taught me at Fontainebleau, led me now into care- 
 ful discernment of their species ; and while my father, as 
 was his custom, read to my mother and me for half-an-hour 
 after breakfast, I always had a fresh-gathered outer spray of a 
 
34S 
 
 PB^TEBITA. 
 
 tree before me, of which the mode of growth, with a single 
 leaf full size, had to be done at that sitting in fine pen out- 
 line, filled with the simple color of the leaf at one wash. On 
 fine days, when the grass was dry, I used to lie down on it 
 and draw the blades as they grew, with the ground herbage 
 of buttercup or hawkweed mixed among them, until every 
 square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became an infinite 
 picture and possession to me, and the grace and adjustment 
 to each other of growing leaves, a subject of more curious 
 interest to me than the composition of any painter’s master- 
 piece. The love of complexity and quantity before noticed 
 as influencing my preference of flamboyant to pure architect- 
 ure, was here satisfied, without qualifying sense of wasted 
 labor, by what I felt to be the constant working of Omnipo- 
 tent kindness in the fabric of the food-giving tissues of the 
 earth ; nor less, morning after morning, did I rejoice in the 
 traceries and the painted glass of the sky at sunrise. 
 
 This physical study had, I find, since 1842, when it began, 
 advanced in skill until now in 1847, at Leamington, it had 
 proceeded into botanical detail ; and the collection of material 
 for “ Proserpina ” began then, singularly, with the analysis of 
 a thistle-top, as the foundation of all my political economy 
 was dug down to, through the thistle-field of Crossmount. 
 
 “Analysis” of thistle-top, I say; not “dissection,” nor 
 microscopic poring into. 
 
 Flowers, like everything else that is lovely in the visible 
 world, are only to be seen rightly with the eyes which the God 
 who made them gave us ; and neither with microscopes nor 
 spectacles. These have their uses for the curious and the aged ; 
 as stilts and crutches have for people who want to walk in mud, 
 or cannot safely walk but on three legs anywhere. But in 
 health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, 
 hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on 
 wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine- 
 beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before 
 you can see them. The use of the great mechanical powers 
 may indeed sometimes be compatible with the due exercise of 
 our own ; but the use of instruments for exaggerating the 
 
CROSSMOUNT. 
 
 340 
 
 powers of sight necessarily deprives us of the best pleasures 
 of sight. A flower is to be watched as it grows, in its associa- 
 tion with the earth, the air, and the dew ; its leaves are to be 
 seen as they expand in sunshine ; its colors, as they embroider 
 the field, or illumine the forest. Dissect or magnify them, and 
 all you discover or learn at last will be that oaks, roses, and 
 daisies, are all made of fibres and bubbles ; and these, again, 
 of charcoal and water ; but, for all their peeping and probing, 
 nobody knows how. 
 
 And far more difficult Avork than this was on foot in other 
 directions. Too sorroAvfully it had now become plain to me 
 that neither George Herbert, nor Richard Hooker, nor Henr^ 
 Melvill, nor Thomas Dale, nor the Dean of Christ Church, nor 
 the Bishop of Oxford, could in anywise explain to me whai 
 Turner me<ant by the contest of Apollo with the Python, or by 
 the repose of the great dragon above the Garden of the 
 Hesperides. 
 
 For such nearer Python as might wreathe itself against my 
 own now' gathering strength, — for such serjAent of Eternity as 
 might reveal its awe to me amidst the sands even of Forest 
 Hill or Addington Heath, I Avas yet Avholly unprepared. 
 
 All that I had been taught had to be questioned ; all that I 
 had trusted, proved. I cannot enter yet into any account of 
 this trial ; but the following fragment of 1847 diary Avill in- 
 form the reader enough of the courses of thought Avhich I AA^as 
 being led into beside the lilies of Aa^ou, and under the mounds, 
 that Avere once the Avails, of Kenilworth. 
 
 “It Avas cold and dark and gusty and raining by fits, at tAA'O 
 o’clock to-day, and until four ; but I Avent out, determined to 
 have my Avalk, get Avet or no. 
 
 “I took the road to the village Avhere I had been the first 
 day Avith Macdonald, and about a mile and a half out, I Avas 
 driven by the rain into a little cottage, remarkable outside for 
 tAvo of the most noble groups of hollyhocks I e\'er saAv — one 
 rose-color passing into purple, and the other rich purple and 
 opposed by a beautiful sulphur jmllow one. It was about a 
 quarter to five, and they (the Avoman and her mother) Avere 
 taking their tea (pretty strong, and without milk) and AAhite 
 
350 
 
 PBJETEUITA. 
 
 bread. Bound the room were hung several prints of the 
 Crucifixion, and some Old Testament subjects, and two bits of 
 tolerable miniature ; one in what I thought at first was an uni- 
 form, but it was the footman’s dress of the woman’s second 
 son, who is with a master in Leamington ; the other a portrait 
 of a more distingue looking personage, who, I found on in= 
 quiry, was the eldest son, cook in the Bush inn at Carlisle. 
 Inquiring about the clergyman of the village, the woman — 
 whose name, I found, was Sabina — said they had lost their 
 best earthly friend, the late clergyman, a Mr. Waller, I think, 
 who had been with them upward of eleven years, and had’got 
 them into that cottage ; her husband having been in his ser- 
 vice, and he fretted himself, she said, too much, about getting 
 them into it, and never lived to see them in it after all, dying 
 of decline in London. She spoke of him with tears in her 
 eyes. I looked at the books lying on the table, well used all 
 of them, and found three Bibles, three Prayer Books, a treatise 
 on practical Christianity, another on seriousness in religion, 
 and Baxter’s “ Saint’s Best. ” I asked her if they read no books 
 but religious ones. “ No, sir ; I should be very sorry if there 
 were any others in my house,” said she. As I took up the 
 largest Bible, she said “ it was a nice print, but sadly tattered ; 
 she wished she could get it bound.” This I promised to get 
 clone for her, and left her much pleased. 
 
 “ It had rained hard while I stayed in the cottage, but had 
 ceased when I \vent on, and presently appeared such a bright 
 bar of streaky sky in the west, seen over the glittering hedges, 
 as made my heart leap again, it put so much of old feel- 
 ings into me of far-away hills and fountains of morning light ; 
 and the sun came out presently, and every shake of the trees 
 shook down more light upon the grass. And so I came to 
 the village and stood leaning on the churchyard gate, looking 
 at the sheep nibbling and resting among the graves (newdy 
 watered they lay, and fresh, like a field of precious seed). 
 One narrow stream of light ran in ups and downs across them, 
 but the shadow of the church fell over most — the pretty little 
 gray church, now one dark mass against the intense golden 
 glittering sky ; and to make it sweeter still, the churchyard 
 
V HOTEL DU MONT BLANC, 
 
 351 
 
 itself rose steeply, so that its own grand line came against this 
 same light at last.” 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 l’hOTEL DU MONT BLANa 
 
 The little inn at Samoens, where I washed the stairs down 
 for my mother, was just behind the group of houses of which 
 I gave a carefully colored sketch to Mrs. John Simon, who, in 
 my mother’s old age, was her most deeply trusted friend. 
 She, with her husband, love Savoy even more than I ; were 
 kinder to Joseph Couttet to the last, and are so still to his 
 daughter Judith. 
 
 The Samoens inn was, however, a too unfavorable type of 
 tlje things which — in my good old times — one had sometimes 
 to put up with, and rather liked having to put up with, in 
 Savo}'. The central example of the sort of house one went 
 there to live in, was the Hotel du Mont Blanc at St. Martin’s ; 
 to me, certainly, of all my inn homes, the most eventful, pa- 
 thetic, and sacred. How to begin speaking of it, I do not 
 know ; still less how to end ; but here are three entries, con- 
 secutive, in my diary of 1849, which may lead me a little on 
 my way. 
 
 “ St. Martin’s, evening, July 11th. What a strange con- 
 trast there is between these lower valleys, with their over- 
 wrought richness mixed with signs of waste and disease, 
 their wild noon-winds shaking their leaves into palsy, and the 
 dark storms folding themselves about their steep mural preci- 
 pices, — between these and the pastoral green, pure aiguilles, 
 and fleec}^ rain-clouds of Chamouni ; yet nothing could be 
 more divine than (to-day) the great valley of level cornfield ; 
 half, smooth close to the ground, }^et yellow and warm witli 
 stubble ; half, laden with sheaves ; the vines in mass}' green 
 above, with Indian corn, and the rich brown and white cot- 
 tages (in midst of them). 
 
 “July 13th. I w.alked with my father last night up to the 
 vine-covered cottages under the Aiguille de Varens. 
 
352 
 
 PRMTERITA. 
 
 “July 15thj Samoens. We had a stony road to traverse in 
 chars from St. Martin’s yesterday, and a hot walk this morn- 
 ing over the ground between this (Samoens) and Sixt. As I 
 passed through the cornfields, I found they gave me a pleas- 
 ant feeling by reminding me of Leamington.” 
 
 “ We ” in this entry means only my father and mother and 
 I ; poor Mary was with us no more. She had got married, as 
 girls always will, — the foolish creatures ! — however happy 
 they might be at home, or abroad, with their own people. 
 
 Mary heartily loved her aunt and uncle, by this time, and 
 was sorry to leave them : yet she must needs marry *her 
 brother-in-law, a good, quiet London solicitor, and was now 
 deep in household cares in a dull street, Pimlico wa}% when 
 she might have been gayly helping me to sweep the stairs 
 at Samoens, and gather bluets* in those Leamington-like 
 cornfields. 
 
 The sentence about “ noon-wind ” refers to a character of 
 the great valleys on the north of the main Alpine chain, 
 which curiously separates them from those of the Italian side. 
 These great northern valleys are, in the main four, — those of 
 the Rhine (the Grisons), of the Reuss (Canton Uri), of the 
 Rhone (Canton Valais), and the Arve (Faucigny), — all of them 
 ill ordinary fine summer weather oppressed by quiet heat in 
 the early pjirt of the day, then burst in upon by wild wind 
 blowing up the valley about noon, or later ; a diurnal storm 
 which raises the dust in whirlwinds, and wholly prevents the 
 growth of trees in any beautiful forms, their branches being 
 daily tormented into every irregular and fretful curve they 
 can be strained to, and their leaves wrung round on the stalks, 
 so that half their vitality is torn out of them. 
 
 Strangely, and, so far as I know, without notice by scien- 
 tific men of the difference, the Italian valleys are, in the great- 
 er number of them, redeemed from this calamitous law. I 
 have not lately been in either Val d’Aosta, or the Valtelline, 
 
 * The blue centaury-like five gentians in a level cluster. Among the 
 corn, it teaches, like the poppy, that everything isn’t meant to be 
 eaten. 
 
UHOTEL DU MONT BLANC. 
 
 o ^ o 
 OO >j 
 
 nor ever stayed in the upper valley of the Adige ; but neither 
 in tlie Val Anzasea, the Val Formazza, the Val d’Isella, or the 
 southern St. Gothard, is there any trace of the action of ma- 
 lignant wind like this northern one, wdiich I suppose to be, in 
 the essence of it, the summer form of the bise. It arises, too 
 fatally, punctual to the noon, in the brightest days of spring 
 all over western Savoy, 
 
 Be that as it may, in the fields neighboring the two villages 
 wliich mark the eastern and western extremities of the chain 
 of Mont Blanc, — Sallenches, namely, and Martigny, wdiere I 
 have passed many of the most serviceable days of my life, — 
 this noon wind, associated with inundation, is one of the 
 chief agents in producing the character of the whole scene, 
 and in forming the tempers of the inhabitants. Very early 
 my mind became fixed on this their physical distress, issuing 
 finall}^ not in the distortion of growing trees only, but in 
 abortion of human form and mind, while yet the roots of 
 beauty and virtue remained always of the same strength in 
 the race ; so that, howmver decimated by cretinism, the Savo- 
 yard and Valaisan retain to this day their vigorous personal 
 character, wherever the conditions of ordinary health are 
 observed for them. 
 
 So earnestl}^ was my heart set on discovering and contend- 
 ing with the neglect and error which W'ere the causes of so 
 great evil to so noble a people, that — I must here anticipate 
 the progress of many years— I waas in treaty again and again 
 for pieces of land near the chain of Mont Blanc on which I 
 thought to establish m3" life, and round wdiich to direct its 
 best energies. I first actually bought the piece of meadow in 
 Chamouni above the chalets of Blaitiere ; but sold it on per- 
 ceiving wdiat ruin was inevitable in the valley after it became 
 a tourist rendezvous. Next, I entered into treaty with the 
 Commune of Bonneville for the purchase of the whole top of 
 the Brezon ; but this negotiation came to nothing, because 
 the Commune, unable to see why anybody should want to 
 buy a w^aste of barren rock, with pasturage only for a few 
 goats in the summer, concluded that I had found a gold mine 
 or a coal-bed in it, and raised their price on me till I left the 
 23 
 
354 
 
 PBJBTERITA. 
 
 Brezon on their hands : (Osborne Gordon having also walked 
 up with me to my proposed hermitage, and, with his usual 
 sagacitj^ calculated the daily expense of getting anything to 
 eat, up those 4,000 feet from the plain.) 
 
 Next, I was tempted by a grand, fourteenth century, square- 
 set castle, with walls six feet thick, and four round towers, 
 cone-roofed, at the angles, on the west bank of the Arve, be- 
 low La Boehe : but this baronial residence having been for 
 many years used by the farmer to whom it belonged for his 
 fruit store, and the three floors of it only accessible by lad- 
 ders through trap-doors in them, and soaked through with 
 the juice of rotten apples and plums ; — so that the most fea- 
 sible way of making the place habitable would have been to 
 set fire to the whole, and refit the old masonry with an inner 
 lodging of new wood, — (which might as well have been built 
 inside a mountain cave at once as within those six-feet thick 
 of cemented rock,) — I abandoned also the idea of this gloomy 
 magnificence, and remained fanc}^-free till 1870, when I again 
 was about to enter into treaty for a farm two thousand feet 
 above Martigny, on the ridge separating the Forclaz from the 
 glen of the Trient, and commanding view of the whole valley 
 of the Bhone, westward to Sierre, and northward to Bex. De- 
 sign ended by my illness at Matlock, and following sorrow ; 
 of which ill their due time. 
 
 Up to the year with which I am now concerned, however, 
 1849, when I was just thirty, no jAans of this sort had dawned 
 on me : but the journeying of the year, mostly alone, by the 
 Alice Blanche and Col de Ferret round Mont Blanc and then 
 to Zermatt, for the work chiefly necessary to the fourth vol- 
 ume of “Modern Painters,” gave me the melancholy knowl- 
 edge of the agricultural condition of the great Alpine chain 
 which was the origin of the design of St. George’s Guild ; and 
 that walk with my father at St. Martin’s virtually closed the 
 days of youthful happiness, and began my true work in the 
 world — for what it is \vorth. 
 
 An entry or two from the beginning of the year may be 
 permitted, connecting old times with new. 
 
 “ April 15th, Wednesday. Left home, stayed at Folkestone, 
 
L' HOTEL DU MONT BLANC. 
 
 S55 
 
 liappy, but with bad cough, aud slight feverish feeling, till 
 Monday, Crossed to Boulogne, with desperate cold coming 
 on. Wrote half letter to Miss Wedderburn,” (afterward Mrs. 
 Blackburn,) “in carriage, going over:” the carriages, of 
 course, in old times being lashed on the deck, one sat inside, 
 either for dignity or shelter. 
 
 “April 24th, Tiiesda}^ To Paris on rail. Next morning, 
 very tliankfully changing horses, by as lovely sunshine as 
 ever I saw, at Charenton. Slept at Sens. Thursday, Mont- 
 bard ; Friday, Dijon. All these evenings I was working hard 
 at my last plate of Giotto.” (G.’s tower, I meant ; frontis- 
 piece to “ Seven Lamps,” first edition.) “Stopped behind in 
 the lovely morning at Sens, and went after my father and 
 mother an hour later.* It was very cold, and I was driven 
 out by the fires going out, it being in the large room at the 
 back of the yard, with oil pictures only to be got at through 
 my father’s bedroom, f 
 
 “ April 29th, Sunday, was a threatening day at Champag- 
 nole. We just walked to the entrance of the wood and back, 
 — I colded and coughing, and generally headachy. In the 
 evening the landlady, who noticed my illness, made me some 
 sirup of violets. Whether by fanc}', or chance, or by virtue 
 of violet tea, I got better thenceforward, and have, thank 
 God, had no cold since ! ” (Diary very slovenly hereabouts ; 
 I am obliged to mend a phrase or Lvo.) 
 
 “Monday, 30th April. To Geneva, through a good deal of 
 snow, by St. Cergues ; which frightened my mother, they 
 having a restive horse in their carriage. She got out on a bank 
 near where I saw the first gentians, and got into mine, as far 
 as St. Cergues. It is deserving of record that at this time, 
 just on the point of coming in sight of the Alps — and that 
 for the first time for three years, a moment which I had 
 looked forward to thinking I should be almost fainting with 
 
 *They liad given me a little brougham to myself, like the hunting 
 doctor’s in “ Puncli,” so that I could stop behind, and catch them up 
 when I chose. 
 
 f The inn is fully and exquisitely described by Dickens in “Mrs. 
 Lirriper’s Lodgings.” 
 
35G 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 joy, and want to lie down on the earth and take it in my 
 arms ; — at this time, I say, I was irrecoverably sulky be- 
 cause George had not got me butter to my bread at Les 
 Rousses. 
 
 “Tuesday, 1st May. Walked about Geneva, went to 
 Bauttes’, and drew wood anemones. 
 
 “Thursday, 3d May, Chambery. Up the hill that looks 
 toward Aix, with my father and mother ; had a chat with an 
 old man, a proprietor of some land on the hillside, who com- 
 l)lained bitterly that the priests and the revenue officers seized 
 everything, and that nothing but black bread was left for the 
 peasant.'^' 
 
 “Friday, 4th May. Half breakfasted at Chambery ; started 
 about seven for St. Laurent du Pont, thence up to the 
 Chartreuse, and walked down (all of us) ; which, however, 
 being done in a hurry, I little enjoyed. But a walk after 
 dinner up to a small chapel, placed on a waving group of 
 mounds, covered with the most smooth and soft sward, over 
 whose sunny gold came the dark piny precipices of the 
 Chartreuse hills, gave me infinite pleasure. I had seen also 
 for the third time, by the Chartreuse torrent, the most 
 wonderful of all Alpine birds — a gray, fiuttering stealthy 
 creature, about the size of a sparrow, but of colder gray, and 
 more graceful, which haunts the sides of the fiercest torrents. 
 Tliere is something more strange in it than in the sea-gull — 
 that seems a powerful creature ; and the power of the sea, 
 not of a kind so adverse, so hopelessly destructive ; but this 
 small creature, silent, tender and light, almost like a moth in 
 its low and irregular flight, — almost touching with its wings 
 the crests of waves that would overthrow a granite wall, and 
 haunting the hollows of the black, cold, herbless rocks that 
 are continually shaken by their spray, has perhaps the near- 
 est approach to the look of a spiritual existence I know in 
 animal life. 
 
 “ Saturday, May 5th. Back to Chambery, and up by 
 
 * Complaints of this kind always mean that you are near a luxurious 
 capital or town. In this case, Aix les Bains. 
 
L'HOtEL DU MONT BLANC. 
 
 357 
 
 Rousseau’s house to the point ''vhere the thunder-shower 
 came down on us three years ago.” 
 
 I think it was extremely pretty and free-hearted of my 
 mother to make these reverent pilgrimages to Rousseau’s 
 house. ^ 
 
 With whom I must here thankfully name, among my own 
 masters, also St. Pierre : I have shamefully forgotten hitherto 
 the immense influence of “ Paul and Virginia ” amid my 
 early readings. Rousseau’s effective political power I did not 
 know till much later. 
 
 Richard Fall arrived that Saturday at Chambery ; and by 
 j way of amends for our lost Welsh tour, (above, p. 241, vol. 
 ii.,) I took him to Vevay and Chamouni, where, on May 14th, 
 the snow was still down to the valley ; crisp frost everywhere ; 
 the Montanvert path entirely hidden, and clear slopes down 
 all the couloirs perfectly even and smooth — ten to twenty feet 
 j deep of good, compact snow ; no treacherous surface beds 
 that could slip one over the other, 
 i Couttet and I took Richard up to the cabane of the Mon- 
 ' tan vert, memory of the long snow walks at Herne Hill now 
 mingling tenderly with the cloudless brightness of the Mer 
 de Glace, in its robe of winter ermine. No venturing on 
 that, however, of course, with every crevasse hidden ; and 
 nobody at the cabane yet, so we took Richard back to the 
 first couloir, showed him how to use foot and pole, to check 
 himself if he \vent too fast, or got head-foremost ; and we slid 
 down the two thousand feet to the source of the Arveron, in 
 some seven or eight minutes ; f Richard vouchsafing his en- 
 
 * “ Les Charmettes.” So also “ un detachement de la troupe ” (of 
 ! his schoolboys) “ sous la conduite de Mr. Topfler, qui ne sait pas le 
 cheinin, eiitreprend de gravir le coteau des Charmettes, pour atteiiidre 
 a riiabitation de Jean- Jacques Rousseau ” — in the year 1833 ; and an 
 admirably faithful and vivid drawing of the place, as it then stood 
 (unchanged till 1849, when papa and mamma and their little St. Preu s 
 saw it), is given by Mr. Topffer's own hand on p, 17 of his work here 
 I quoted, “Voyage a la Grande Chartreuse,” (1833). 
 
 f Including ecstatic or contemplative rests : of coarse one goes much 
 1 faster than 200 feet a minute, on good snow, at an angle of 30'’. 
 
 I 
 
858 
 
 PRMTEEITA. 
 
 tire approval of that manner of progression by the single 
 significant ej)ithet, “ Pernicious ! ” 
 
 It was the last of our winter walks together. Eichard did 
 not die, like Charles, but he went on the Stock Exchange 
 married a wife, very nice and pretty ; then grew rich ; held a 
 rich man’s faiths in political economy ; and bought bad prints 
 of clipper packets in green sea ; and so we gradually gave 
 each other up — with all good wishes on both sides. But 
 Eichard, having no more winter walks, became too fat and 
 well liking when he was past fifty — and did die, then ; to his 
 sister’s great surprise and mine. The loss of him broke her 
 heart, and she soon followed him. During her forty-five or 
 fift}" years of life, Eliza Fall (had she but been named Eliza- 
 beth instead, I should have liked her ever so much better) re- 
 mained an entirely worthy and unworldly girl and woman, of 
 true service and counsel always to her brother and me ; car- 
 ing for us both much more than she was cared for ; — to my 
 mother an affectionate and always acceptable, calling and 
 chatting, friend : capable and intelligent from her earliest 
 youth, nor without graceful fancy and rational poetic power. 
 She wrote far better verses than ever I did, and might have 
 drawn well, but had always what my mother called “ perjin- 
 ketty ” ways, which made her typically an old maid in later 
 years. I imagine that, without the least unkind severity, she 
 was yet much of a Puritan at heart, and one rarely heard, if 
 ever, of her going to a theatre, or a rout, or a cricket-match ; 
 yet she was brilliant at a Christmas party, acted any part— 
 that depended on whalebone — admirably, and was extremely 
 witty in a charade. She felt herself sorrowfully turned out of 
 her own house and place when her brother married, and spent 
 most of her summers in travel, with another wise old maid 
 for companion. Then Eichard and his wife went to live in 
 Clapham Park; and Eliza stayed, wistfully alone, in her 
 child’s home, for a while. The lease expired, I suppose, and 
 she did not care to renew it. The last time I saw her, she 
 w”as enjoying some sort of town life in New Bond Street. 
 
 Little I thought, in clasping Eichard’s hand on the ridge of 
 the Jaman that spring, — he going down into the Simmenthal, 
 
L'HOTEL DU MONT BLANG. 
 
 359 
 
 I back to Vevay, — that our companying together was ended : 
 but I never have known anything of what was most seriously 
 happening to me till afterward ; this — unastrological readers 
 will please to note — being one of the leaden influences on me 
 of the planet Saturn. 
 
 My father and mother were waiting for me at Geneva, and 
 we set out, with short delay, for St. Martin’s. 
 
 The road from Geneva to Chamouni, passing the extremity 
 of the Saleve about five miles south of the city, reaches at 
 that point the sandy plateau of Annemasse, where forms of 
 passport had (anciently) to be transacted, which gave a quar- 
 ter of an hour for contemplation of what the day had to do. 
 
 From the street of the straggling village one saw over the 
 undulations of the nearer, and blue level of the distant, plain, 
 a mass of rocky mountains, presenting for the most part their 
 cliffs to the approaching traveller, and tossing their crests 
 back in careless pride, above the district of well inhabited, 
 but seldom traversed, ravines which wind between the lake of 
 Annecy and vale of Sallenches. 
 
 Of these the nearest—yet about twelve miles distant — is 
 the before-named Brezon, a majestic, but unterrific, fortalice of 
 cliff, forest, and meadow, wfith unseen nests of village, and 
 unexpected balm and honey of garden and orchard nursed 
 in its recesses. The horses have to rest at Bonneville before 
 we reach the foot of it ; and the line, of its foundation first, 
 and then of the loftier Mont Vergy, must be followed for 
 seven or eight miles, without hope apparently of gaining 
 access to the inner mountain world, except by footpath. 
 
 A way is opened at last by the Arve, which, rushing furi- 
 ously through a cleft affording room only for road and river, 
 grants entrance, when the strait is passed, to a valley without 
 the like of it among the Alps. In all other avenues of ap- 
 proach to their central crests the torrents fall steeply, and in 
 places appear to be still cutting tiieir channels deeper, while 
 their lateral cliffs have evidently been in earlier time, at in- 
 tervals, connected, and rent or worn asunder by traceable 
 violence or decay. But the valley of Cluse is in reality a 
 narrow plain between two chains of mountains which have 
 
360 
 
 PB^TEBITA. 
 
 never been united, but each independently'* raised, shati 
 tered, and softened into their present forms ; while the river, 
 instead of deepening the ravine it descends, has filled it to 
 an unknown depth with beds of glacial sand, increased an- 
 nually, though insensibly, by its wandering floods ; but now 
 practically level, and for the most part tenable, with a little 
 logwork to fence off the stream at its angles, in large spaces 
 of cultivable land. 
 
 In several turns of the valley the lateral cliffs go plumb 
 down into these fields as if into a green lake ; but usually, 
 slopes of shale, now forest-hidden, ascend to heights of six or 
 seven hundred feet before the cliffs begin ; then the moun- 
 tain above becomes partly a fortress wall, partly banks of 
 turf ascending around its bastions or between, but always 
 guarded from avalanche by higher woods or rocks ; the 
 snows melting in early spring, and falling in countless cas- 
 cades, mostly over the cliffs, and then in broken threads 
 down the banks. Beautiful always, and innocent, the higher 
 summits by midsummer are snowless, and no glacial moraine 
 or torrent defaces or disturbs the solitude of their pastoral 
 kingdom. 
 
 Leaving the carriage at Cluse, I always used to walk, 
 through this valley, the ten miles to St. Martin’s, resting 
 awdiile at the springs of Maglan, w^here, close under the cliff, 
 the water thrills imperceptibly through the crannies of its 
 fallen stones, deeper and deeper every instant ; till, within 
 three fathoms of its first trickling thread, it is a deep stream 
 of dazzling brightness, dividing into swift branches eager for 
 tbeir work at the mill, or their ministry to the meadows. 
 
 Contrary again to the customs of less enchanted vales, this 
 one opens gradually as it nears the greater mountain, its own 
 lateral cliffs rising also in proportion to its width — those on 
 tlje left, as one approaches St. Martin’s, into the vast towers 
 and promontories of the Aiguille de Varens ; those on the 
 right into a mountain scarcely marked in any Alpine chart. 
 
 In the .same epoch of time, however. See Mr. Collingwood’s “ Lime 
 stone .Alps of Savoj.” 
 
L' HOTEL DU MONT BLANC. 
 
 361 
 
 yet from which, if one could climb its dangerous turf and 
 mural diadem, there must be commanded precisely the most 
 noble view of Mont Blanc granted by any summit of his sen- 
 tinel chains. 
 
 In the only map of Switzerland which has ever been exe» 
 cuted with common sense and intelligence (“ Original von 
 Keller’s Zweiter Reisekarte der Schweitz,” 1844), this peak is, 
 nevertheless, left without distinction from that called the 
 “ Croix de Fer,” of which it is only a satellite. But there are 
 any quantity of iron crosses on the Western Alps, and the 
 proper name of this dominant peak is that given in M. 
 Dajoz’s lithographed “Carte des rives du Lac de Geneve,” — 
 “ Mont Fleury ; ” though the more usual one witli the old 
 Chamouni guides w^as “ Montagne des Fours ; ” but I never 
 heard any name given to its castellated outwork. In Studer’s 
 geological map. it is w^ell drawn, but nameless; in the Al- 
 pine Club’s map of South-Western Alps, it is only a long 
 ridge descending from the Mont Fleury, which, there called 
 “ Pointe Percee,” bears a star, indicating a view of Mont 
 Blanc, as probably of Geneva also, from that summit. But 
 the vision from the lower promontory, which commands the 
 Chamouni aiguilles wdth less foreshortening, and looks steep 
 down into the valley of Cluse from end to end, must be infi- 
 nitely more beautiful. 
 
 Its highest ridge is just opposite the Nant d’Arpenaz, and 
 might in future descriptions of the Sallenche mountains be 
 conveniently called the “ Tower of Arpenaz.” After pass- 
 ing the curved rock from wdiich the w^aterfail leaps into its 
 calm festoons, the cliffs become changed in material, first 
 into thin-bedded blue limestone, and then into dark slates 
 and shales, which partly sadden, partly enrich, with their 
 cultivable ruin, all the low^er hillsides henceforward to the 
 veiy gate of Chamouni. A mile or two beyond the Nant 
 
 * Chez Briquet et Fils, editeurs, an has de la Cite a Geneve, 1860 ; 
 extremely careful in its delineation of the lower mountain masses, and 
 on the whole the hest existing map for the ordinary traveller. The 
 Alpine Club maps give nothing clearly but the taverns and foot paths. 
 
3G2 
 
 Pn.ETERITA, 
 
 d’Arpenaz the road ascends over a bank of their crumbling 
 flakes, which the little stream, pendent like a white thread 
 over the mid-clitf of the Aiguille de Varens, drifts down be- 
 fore it in summer rain, lightly as dead leaves. The old peo- 
 ple’s carriage dips into the trough of the dry bed, descends 
 the gentle embankment on the other side, and turns into the 
 courtyard of the inn under one of the thin arches, raised a 
 foot or two above the gap in the wall, which give honorable 
 distinction either to the greater vineyards or open courts, 
 like this one, of hospitable houses. Stableyard, I should 
 have said, not courtyard ; no palatial pride of seclusion, like 
 M. Dessein’s, but a mere square of irregular stable, — not 
 even coach-house, though with room for a carriage or two : 
 but built only for shelter of the now unknown char-a-banc, a 
 seat for three between two pairs of wheels, with a plank for 
 footing, at a convenient step from the ground. The fourth 
 side of the yard was formed by the front of the inn, which 
 stood with its side to the road, its back to the neglected gar- 
 den and incorrigible streamlet : a two-storied building of 
 solid gray stone, with gabled roof and garrets ; a central 
 passage on the second floor giving access to the three or four 
 bedrooms looking to back and front, and at the end to an 
 open gallery over the road. The last room on the left, larger 
 than the rest, and with a window opening on the gallery, 
 used to be my father’s and mother’s ; that next it, with one 
 square window in the solid wall, looking into the yard, mine. 
 Floors and partitions all of rough-sawn larch ; the planks of 
 the passage floor uncomfortably thin and bending, as if one 
 might easily fall through ; some pretence of papering, I 
 think, in the old people’s state-room. A public room, about 
 the size of my present study, say twelve paces by six within 
 its cupboards, and usually full of flies, gave us the end of its 
 table for meals, and was undisturbed through the day, except 
 during the hour when the diligence dined. 
 
 I should have said that my square window looked ouer, 
 rather than into the yard, for one could scarcely see anything 
 going on there, but by putting one’s head out ; the real and 
 prevalent prospect was first into the leaves of the walnut-tree 
 
L' HOTEL DU MONT BLANC. 
 
 363 
 
 in the corner ; then of the mossy stable roofs behind them ; 
 then of the delicately tin-mailed and glittering spire of the 
 village church; and beyond these, the creamy, curdling, 
 overflowing seas of snow on the Mont Blanc de St. Gervais. 
 The Aiguille de Bionnassay, the most graceful buttress ridge 
 in all the Alps, and Mont Blanc himself, above the full fronts 
 of the Aiguille and Dome du Goute, followed further to the 
 left. So much came into the field of that little four-feet- 
 square casement. 
 
 If one had a mind for a stroll, in half a minute’s turn to the 
 left from the yard gate one came to the aforesaid village 
 church, the size of a couple of cottages, and one could lean, 
 stooping, to look at it, on the deeply lichened stones of its 
 low churchyard wall, which enclosed the cluster of iron cros- 
 ses, — floretted with everlastings, or garlands of fresh flowers 
 if it was just after Sunday, — on two sides ; the cart-path to 
 the upper village branching off round it from the road to 
 Chamouni. Fifty yards further, one came to the single- arched 
 bridge by which the road to Sallenche, again dividing from 
 that of Chamouni, crosses the Arve, clearing some sixty feet 
 of strongly-rushing water with a leap of lovely elliptic curve ; 
 lovely, because here traced with the lightest possible sub- 
 stance of masonry, rising to its ridge without a pebble’s 
 weight to spare,* and then signed for sacred pontifical work 
 by a cross high above the parapet, seen from as far as one 
 can see the bridge itself. 
 
 Neither line, nor word, nor color, has ever yet given ren- 
 dering of the rich confusions of garden and cottage through 
 which the winding paths ascend above the church ; walled, 
 not with any notion of guarding the ground, except from 
 passing herds of cattle and goats, but chiefly to get the stones 
 off the surface into narrowest compass, and, with the easy 
 principle of horticulture, — plant everything, and let wdiat can, 
 
 * Of course, in modern levelled bridges, with any quantity of over- 
 charged masonry, the opening for the stream is not essentially an arch, 
 but a tunnel, and might for that matter be blown through the solid 
 wall, instead of built to bear it. 
 
36i 
 
 PRMTERITA. 
 
 grow ; — the under-crops of unkempt pease, potatoes, cabbage, 
 hemp, and maize, content with what sun can get down to 
 tliem through luxuriantly-branched apple and plum trees, 
 and towering shade of walnuts, with trunks eight or ten feet 
 in girth ; a little space left to light the fronts of the cot- 
 tages themselves, whose roof and balconies, the vines seem 
 to think, have been constructed for their pleasure only, and 
 climb, wreathe, and swing themselves about accordingly 
 wherever they choose, tossing their young tendrils far up into 
 the blue sky of spring, and festooning the balconies in au- 
 tumn with Correggian fresco of purple, relieved against the 
 pendent gold of the harvested maize. 
 
 The absolute seclusion and independence of this manner 
 of rural life, totally without thought or forethought of any 
 foreign help or parsimonious store, drinking its wine out of 
 the cluster, and saving of the last year’s harvest only seed 
 for the next, — the serene laissez faire given to God and 
 nature, with thanks for the good, and submission to the tem- 
 porary evil of blight or flood, as due to sinful mortality ; and 
 the persistence, through better or 'worse, in their fathers’ 
 ways, and use of their fathers’ tools, and holding to their 
 fathers’ names and fields, faithfully as the trees to their roots, 
 or the rocks to their wild flowers, — all this beside us for our 
 Sunday -vN^alk, with the gray, inaccessible walls of the Tower of 
 Arpenaz above, dim in their distant height, and all the morn- 
 ing air twice brighter for the glow of the cloudless glaciers, 
 gave me deeper and more wonderful joy than all the careful 
 beauty and disciplined rightness of the Bernese Oberland, or 
 even the stately streets of my dearest cities of Italy. 
 
 Here is a little bit of diary, five years later, giving a detail 
 or two of the opposite hillside above Sallenche. 
 
 “ St. Martin’s, 26th July, 1854. I was up by the millstream 
 this evening, and climbed to the right of it, up among the 
 sloping waves of grass. I never was so struck by their intense 
 beauty, — the masses of walnut shading them with their 
 broad, cool, clearly-formed leafage ; the glossy gray stems of 
 the cherry trees, as if bound round tight with satin, twining 
 and writhing against the shadows ; the tall pollards of oak set 
 
VHOTEL DU MONT BLANC. 
 
 SG5 
 
 here and there in the soft banks, as if to show their smooth- 
 ness by contrast, yet themselves beautiful, rugged, and covered 
 with deep brown and bright silver moss. Here and there a 
 chestnut— sharp, and soft, and starry;* and always the steep 
 banks, one above another, melting f into terraces of pure vel- 
 vet, gilded with corn ; here and there a black — jet-black — 
 crag of slate breaking into a frown above them, and moulder- 
 ing away down into the gloomy torrent, fringed on its oppo- 
 site edge, a grisly cliff, with delicate birch and pine, rising 
 against the snow light of Mont Blanc. And opposite always 
 the mighty Varens lost in the cloud its ineffable walls of 
 crag.” 
 
 The next following entry is worth keeping, as a sketch of 
 the undisturbed Catholicism among these hills since the days 
 of St. Bernard of Annecy, and Mont Velan. 
 
 “ Sallenches, Sunda}% 10th June (1849). The waitress here, 
 a daughter of the landlord, asked me to-day whether Prot- 
 estants all said grace before meat, observing me to do so. On 
 this we got into conversation, out of which I have elicited 
 some points worth remembering ; to wit, that some of the men 
 only go to confession once a year, and that some of them, to 
 spare their memories, write their sins, — which, however, they 
 cannot deliver on paper to the confessor, but must read them 
 aloud. Louise appeared much horror-struck at the idea which 
 such a procedure admits, of ‘ losing one’s sins ; ’ and of their 
 being found by some one who was not a confessor. She spoke 
 with great pleasure of the Capucihs wdio come sometimes ; 
 said they were such delightful confessors, and made ‘ des 
 morales superbes,’ and that they j)reached so well that every- 
 body listened with all their might, so that you might tap them 
 on the back and they would never turn round. Of the Jesuits 
 she spoke with less affection, saying that in their great general 
 confessions, which took several daj-s, two or three command- 
 
 * I meant — the leaves themselves, sharp, the clustered nuts, soft, the 
 arrangement of leaves, starry. 
 
 f “ Meltiiig ’’—seeming to flow into the levels like lava ; not cut sharp 
 down to them. 
 
366 
 
 PR.'ETERITA. 
 
 ments at a time, they would not allow a single sin to be com- 
 mitted by the persons coming to them in the meantime, or else 
 they refused them absolution — refusal which takes place some- 
 times for less cause. They had a poor old servant, who could 
 only speak patois ; the priest couldn’t understand her, nor she 
 him, so that he could not find out whether she knew her 
 catechism. He refused absolution, and the poor old creature 
 wept and raved about it, and was in a passion with all the 
 world. She was afterward burned in the great fire here ! I 
 went to mass, to hear how they preached : the people orderly, 
 and church perfectly full. The sermon, by a fat stuttering 
 cure, was. from the ‘Receive not the grace of God in vain,’ on 
 the Sacraments. ‘ Two of these called Sacrernens des Morts, 
 because they are received by persons in a state of spiritual 
 death ; the five others called Sacramens des Vivants, because 
 thej^ presume, in those who receive them, a state of spiritual 
 life. The three sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and 
 Orders, can only be received once ; because they impress an 
 indelible seal, and make men what they were not ; and what, 
 after they are once, they cannot unmake themselves. Baptism 
 makes people children or subjects of God ; Confirmation makes 
 them soldiers of God, or soldiers of His Kingdom ; and Orders 
 make them magistrates of the Kingdom. If you have re- 
 ceived baptism, you are therefore an “enfan de Dieu.’” 
 What being an ‘ enfan de Dieu ’ meant was not very clear ; 
 for the inefface ability of baptism was illustrated by the in- 
 stance of Julian the Apostate, who did all he could to efface 
 it — ‘Maisla mort, ’ said the preacher, growing eloquent, ‘le 
 poursuivit jusqu’a’ — (he stopped, for he did not know exactly 
 where to) — ‘ la tombe ; et il est descendu aux enters, portant 
 cette marque, qui fera eternellement sa honte et sa confusion.’ ” 
 I wonder at the lightness of these entries, now ; but I was 
 too activel}% happily, and selfishly busy, to be thoughtful, ex- 
 cept only in scholarly wa}^ ; but I got one of the sharpest 
 warnings of my life only a day after leaving papa and mamma 
 at St. Martin’s — (cruel animal that I was ! — to do geology in 
 the Allee Blanche, and at Zermatt.) I got a chill by stopping, 
 when I was hot, in the breeze of one of the ice streams, in as- 
 
VlldTEL DU MOKT BLANC. 
 
 SG7 
 
 cending to the Col de Bon Homme ; woke next morning in the 
 clialet of Chapih with acute sore throat ; crossed the Col de 
 la Seigne scarcely able to sit my mule, and was put to bed by 
 CoLittet in a little room under the tiles at Courmayeur, where 
 he nursed me as he did at Padua ; gave me hot herb-tea, and 
 got me on muleback again, and over the Col de Ferret, in a 
 day or two ; but there were some hours of those feverish nights 
 which ought to have made my diaries more earnest afterward. 
 They go off, however, into mere geology and school divinity 
 for a while, of which this bit, written the evening after cross- 
 ing the Col de Ferret, is important as evidence of ray begin- 
 ning to recognize what James Forbes had proved of glacier 
 flow : — 
 
 “ The most magnificent piece of ruin I have yet seen in the 
 Alps is that opposite the embouchure of the lower glacier of 
 the Val de Ferret, near Courmayeur ; the pines are small in- 
 deed, but they are hurled hither and thither, twisted and 
 mingled in all conditions of form, and all phases of expiring 
 life, with the chaos of massy rocks, which the glacier has 
 gnashed down, or the opposite mountain hurled. And yet, 
 farther on, at the head of the valley, there is another, in its 
 way as wonderful ; less picturesque, but wilder still, — the re- 
 mains of the eboulement of the Glacier de Triolet caused by 
 the fall of an aiguille near the Petits Jorasses — the most 
 phrenzied accumulation of moraines I have ever seen ; not 
 dropped one by one into a heap, and pushed forward by the 
 ice ploughshare, but evidently borne down by some mingled 
 torrent of ice and rock and flood, with the swiftness of water 
 and the weight of stone, and thrown along the mountain-side 
 like pebbles from a stormy sea ; — but the ruins of an Alp in- 
 stead of the powder of a flint bed. The glacier torrent of Triolet 
 is almost lost among them, but that below, coming just from 
 the base of the Jorasses, is exquisite beyond description in the 
 play of its currents, narrow eddies of white neve round islands 
 of rock — falling in upon each other in deep and eddying pools ; 
 flowing forth again in massy sheets of ice, feeding, not one 
 glacier stream, but cascade above cascade, far into the moun- 
 tain gulph." 
 
368 
 
 PRJETERITA, 
 
 And so on, of divers matters, through four hundred and 
 fifty pages ; not all as good as that, hut the core of what I 
 had to learn and teach about gneiss and ice and clouds ; — 
 George indefatigably carrying his little daguerreotype box 
 up everywhere, and taking the first image of the Matterhorn, 
 as also of the aiguilles of Chamouni, ever drawn by the sun. 
 A thing to be proud of still, though he is now a justice of 
 peace, somewhere in Australia. 
 
 The following entries, in June, of which the two last come 
 in the midst of busy and otherwise happy days, are all with 
 which I permit myself to trouble the reader for this time. 
 
 “ Chamouni, Sunday, June 17th. Quiet south rain till 
 twelve o’clock. I have been abstracting the book of Revela- 
 tion (they say the French are beaten again at Rome, and 
 another revolution in Paris) ; many signs seem to multiply 
 around us, and yet my unbelief yields no more than when 
 all the horizon was clear. I was especially stmck with the 
 general appellation of the system of the world as the ‘ Mys- 
 tery of God,’ Chap. x. 7, compared with Hebrews xi. 6, which 
 I read this morning in our usual course.* Theme enough 
 for the day’s thought. 
 
 “ Half-past five. Pouring still, but I got out before dinner 
 during a fine blink, which lasted just long enough to let me, 
 by almost running, and leaping all the streams, reach the end 
 of the pine wood next the source of the Arveron. There I 
 had to turn to the left to the wooden bridge, when behold a 
 sight new to me ; an avalanche had evidently taken place 
 fi-om the (upper) glacier into the very bed of the great cata- 
 
 * Read the 5th, 6th, and 7th verses in succession : — “ And the angel 
 
 WHICH I SAW STAND UPON THE SEA AND UPON THE EARTH LIFTED UP 
 HIS HAND TO HEAVEN, AND SWARE HY HIM THAT LIVETH FOR EVER 
 AND EVER, WHO CREATED HEAVEN, AND THE THINGS THAT THERIN 
 ARE, AND THE EARTH, AND THE THINGS THAT THERIN ARE, AND THE 
 SEA, AND THE THINGS WHICH ARE THERIN, THAT THERE SHOULD BE 
 TIME NO LONGER : BUT IN THE DAYS OF THE VOICE OF THE SEVENTH 
 ANGEL, WHEN HE SHALL BEGIN TO SOUND, THE MYSTERY OF Goil 
 SHOULD BE FINISHED, AS HE HATH DECLARED TO HIS SERVANTS THE 
 PROPHETS. ” 
 
VHOTEL DU MONT BLANC. 
 
 369 
 
 ract, and the stream was as nearly choked as could be with 
 balls and ellipsoids of ice, from the size of its common stones 
 to that of a portmanteau, which were rolling down with it 
 wildly, generally swinging out and in of the water as it 
 \vaved ; but when they came to the shallow parts, tumbled 
 and tossed over one another, and then plunging back into the 
 deep water like so many stranded porpoises, spinning as 
 they went down, and showing their dark backs with wilder 
 swings after their plunge, — white, as they eni^erged, black, 
 owing to their clearness as seen in the water ; the stream itself 
 of a pale clay-color, opaque, larger by one-half than ever I 
 saw it, and running, as I suppose, not less than ten miles an 
 hour ; the whole mass, water and ice, looking like some thick 
 paste full of plums, or ill-made pineapple ice, with quantities 
 of fruit in it, and the v/hole looking like a solid body ; for the 
 nodules of ice hardly changed their relative position during 
 the quarter of a minute they were severally in sight, going 
 down in a mass thundering and rumbling against the piles of 
 the bridge. It made me giddy to look at it ; and the more, 
 because, on raising the eye, there was always the great 
 cataract itself startling one, as if it had just begun and seem- 
 ing to increase every instant, bounding and hurling itself 
 hither and thither, as if it was striving to dash itself to 
 pieces, not falling because it could not help it ; and behind 
 there was a fearful storm coming up by the Breven, its grisly 
 clouds warping up, as it seemed, against the river and cata- 
 ract, with pillars of hail behind. I stayed till it began, and 
 then crept back through the wood, running from one tree to 
 another — there is really now a bit of blue sky over the 
 Pavilion,^ 
 
 “ June 18th. Evening, nine o’clock. I must not write much, 
 it is past bed-time ; went to source of Arveron with my father 
 and mother and Miss Dowie ; f newer saw it so lovely ; drew 
 afterward near the source, piny sketch, well begun. After 
 tea walked up nearly to my beloved old place on the Breven, 
 
 * The green mountain at tlie base of the Aiguille du Gontc. 
 f Sybilla. See “Fors,” Letter 9Uth, “Lest Jewels,” p. lOo. 
 
370 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 and saw a solemn sanset^ yet not very bright ; the granulated 
 rosy crags of La Cote especially. Thank God for permitting 
 me to sit on that slope once more thus strong in health and 
 limb, 
 
 Chamoimi, day 13th, Monday, June 25th, Up rather late 
 ibis morning, and lost time before breakfast over camera- 
 iucida ; drove to Argentiere with my mother, who enjoyed 
 her drive exceedingly ; back at one o’clock to iny usual place 
 (Les Tines, tilifour) ; out after dinner, rambling about Breven 
 with sketch-book in search of a view of Aiguille du Plan ; 
 didn’t find one, but found some wild strawbeiTies, which were 
 a consolation. The day has been fine, with scattered clouds ; 
 in the evening a most curious case of floating cap cloud, 
 hooding the Mont Blanc summit without touching it, like 
 gossamer blown upward from a field ; an awning of slender 
 threads waving like weeds in the blue sky, (as weeds in a 
 brook current, I meant,) and drawn out like floss silk as fine 
 as snow. This cloud, that does not touch tlie snow, but 
 hovel's over it at a certain height following the convexity of 
 the mountain, has always seemed most unaccountable to 
 me. 
 
 “ Chamouni, day 14th, Tuesday, June 26th. Heavy, round- 
 ed, somewhat dirty clouds on the Pavilion (half-past six) ; but 
 summit brtght and clear, and all very promising. 
 
 “ Get following books if possible — 
 
 “ ‘Memoires de la Societe de Physique et d’Histoire Natu- 
 relie de Geneve ’ (i iv., p. 209), on the valley of Val Orsine, 
 by M. Necker ; ‘ Actes de la Societe Helvetique des Sc. Nat.* 
 1837, p. 28, 1839, p. 47, on Nagelflue pebbles. 
 
 “ Evening. After one of the most heavenly walks I ever took 
 in Chamouni among the w'oods of the Pelenns, I come in to 
 hear of my poor cousin Maiy’s death. How well I recollect 
 sitting with her on the slopes of the Breven, and reasoning 
 about the height of La Cote : she knows it now, better than I 
 and thinks it less. 
 
 “ Chamouni, day 15th, Wednesday, June 27th. One of the 
 lieavenly Alpine mornings, all alight : I have been tiying to 
 get some of the effect of sunrise on the Mon tan vert, and 
 
OTTERBURN. 
 
 371 
 
 aerial quality of aiguilles, — in vain. Slanting rays now touch 
 the turf by the chalet of Blaitiere, as perhaps they touch poor 
 Mary’s grave.” 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OTTERBURN. 
 
 In blaming myself, as often I have done, and may have 
 occasion to do again, for my want of aJBfection to other peo- 
 ple, I must also express continually, as I think back about it, 
 more and more wonder that ever anybody had any affection 
 for me. I thought they might as well have got fond of a 
 camera lucida, or an ivory foot-rule : all my faculty was 
 merely in showing that such and such things were so ; I was 
 no orator, no actor, no painter but in a minute and generally 
 invisible manner ; and I couldn’t bear being interrupted in 
 anything I was about. 
 
 Nevertheless, some sensible grown up people did get to 
 like me ! — the best of them with a protective feeling that I 
 wanted guidance no less than sympathy ; and the higher 
 religious souls, hoping to lead me to the golden gates. 
 
 I have no memory, and no notion, v/hen I first mw Pauline, 
 Lady Trevelyan ; but she became at once a monitress-friend 
 in whom I wholly trusted,— (not that I ever took her advice ! ) 
 — and the happiness of her own life was certainly increased 
 by my books and me. Sir Walter, being a thorough botan- 
 ist, and interested in pure science generally, did not hunt, 
 but was benevolently useful, as a landlord should be, in his 
 county. I had no interests in county business at that time ; 
 but used to have happy agricultural or floral chats with Sir 
 Walter, and entirely admired his unambitious, yet dignified 
 stability of rural, and celestial, life, there amidst the North- 
 umbrian winds. 
 
 Wallington is in the old Percy country, the broad descent 
 of main valley leading down by Otterburn from the Cheviots. 
 An ugly house enough it was ; square set, and somewhat bai’e 
 
372 
 
 PRu^TERITA. 
 
 walled, looking down a slope of rough wide field to a burn, 
 the Wansbeck, neither bright nor rapid, but with a ledge or 
 two of sandstone to drip over, or lean against in pools ; bits 
 of crag in the distance, worth driving to, for sight of the 
 sweeps of moor round them, and breaths of breeze from 
 Carter Fell. 
 
 There were no children of its own in Wallington, but Lady 
 Trevel}'an’s little niece, Constance Hilliard, nine years old 
 when I first saw her there, glittered about the place in an ex- 
 tremely quaint and witty way ; and took to me a little, like 
 her aunt. Afterward her mother and she, in their little rec- 
 tory home at Cowley (near Hillingdon), became important 
 among my feminine friendships, and gave me, of such petting 
 and teasing as women are good for, sometimes more than 
 enough. 
 
 But the dearness of Wallington was founded, as years 
 went on, more deeply in its having made known to me the 
 best and truest friend of all my life ; he^it for me, because he 
 was of my father’s race, and native town ; truest, because he 
 knew always how to help us both, and never made any mis- 
 takes in doing so — Dr. John Brown. He was staying at 
 Wallington when I stopped there on my way to give my Edin- 
 burgh lectures ; and we walked together, with little Connie, 
 on the moors : it dawned on me, so, gradually, what manner 
 of man he was. 
 
 This, the reader capable of learning at all — (there are few 
 now who can understand a good Scotchman of the old classic 
 breed) — had better learn, straightway, from the record ha 
 gave of his own father’s life,* of which I must give here this 
 one passage of his childhood. His father was a young pastor, 
 crowned in perfectness of faithful service, together with his 
 “ modest, calm, thrift}^, reasonable, happy-hearted ” wife, his 
 student-love ; this their son, five years old, — just at the age 
 w'hen I look back to the creation of the world, for me, in 
 Friar’s Crag, of Derwentwater ; my mother, thrifty and rea- 
 sonable also, meantime taking care that not more than two 
 
 * Letter to Rev. John Cairns. Edmonston and Douglas, 1861. 
 
OTTERBURN. 
 
 373 
 
 plums should be in my pie for dinner ; my father, also thrifty 
 and reasonable, triumphing in his travel at Whitehaven, a 
 “ wanderer,” like the pedler in the “Excursion,” selling sher- 
 ry instead of bobbins ; — all of us as happy as cicadas (and a 
 little more). Now hear Dr. John Brown : 
 
 “ On the morning of the 28th May, 1816, my eldest sister 
 Janet and I were sleeping in the kitchen-bed with Tibbie 
 Meek, our only servant. We were all three awakened by 
 a cry of pain — sharp, insufferable, as if one were stung. 
 Years after w^e two confided to each other, sitting by the 
 burnside, that we thought that ‘ great cry ’ which arose at 
 midnight in Egypt must have been like it. We all knew 
 whose voice it was, and, in our night-clothes, we ran into the 
 passage, and into the little parlor to the left hand, in which 
 was a closet-bed. We found my father standing before us, 
 erect, his hands clenched in his black hair, his eyes full of 
 misery and amazement, his face w^hite as that of the dead. 
 He frightened us. He saw this, or else his intense will had 
 mastered his agony, for, taking his hands from his head, he 
 said, slowly and gently, ‘ Let us give thanks,’ and turned to 
 a little sofa * in the room ; there lay our mother, dead. 
 She had long been ailing. I remember her sitting in a 
 shawl, — an Indian one with little dark green spots on alight 
 ground, — and watching her growing pale with what I 
 afterward knew must have been strong pain. She had, be- 
 ing feverish, slipped out of bed, and ‘ grandmother,’ her 
 mother, seeing her ‘ change come,’ had called my father, and 
 they two saw her open her blue, kind, and true eyes, ‘ com- 
 fortable ’ to us all ‘as the day’-— I remember them better 
 than those of any one I saw yesterday — and, with one faint 
 look of recognition to him, close them till the time of the 
 restitution of all things.” 
 
 He had a precious sister left to him ; but his life, as the 
 noblest Scottish lives are always, was thenceforward gener- 
 ously sad, — and endlessly pitiful. 
 
 * “This sofa, which was henceforward sacred in the house, he had 
 always beside him. He used to tell us he set her down upon it when 
 he brought her home to the manse.” 
 
374 
 
 Pli^TERITA, 
 
 No one has yet separated, in analyzing the mind of Seott, 
 the pity from the pride ; no one, in the mind of Carlyle, the 
 pity from the anger. 
 
 Lest I should not be spared to write another “ Prseterita,” 
 I will give, in this place, a few words of Carlyle’s, which 
 throw more lovely light on his character than any he has 
 written, — as, indeed, his instantly vivid words always did ; 
 and it is a bitter blame and shame to me that I have not re- 
 corded those spoken to myself, often with trust and affection, 
 always with kindness. But I find, this piece, nearly word for 
 word, in my diary of 25th October, 1874. He had been 
 quoting the last words of Goethe, “ Open the window, let us 
 have more light ” (this about an hour before painless death, 
 his eyes failing him). 
 
 I referred to the “ It grows dark, boys, you may go,” of 
 the great master of the High School of Edinburgh.* On 
 which Carlyle instantly opened into beautiful account of 
 Adam’s early life, his intense zeal and industry as a poor boy 
 in a Highland cottage, lying flat on the hearth to learn his 
 Latin grammar by the light of a peat fire. Carlyle’s own 
 memory is only of Adam’s funeral, when he, Carlyle, was a 
 boy of fourteen, making one of a crowd waiting near the gate 
 of the High School, of which part of the old black build- 
 ing of the time of James I. was still standing — its motto, 
 “Nisi Dominus, frustra,” everyw^here. A half -holiday had 
 been given, that the boys might see the coffin carried by, — 
 only about five-and-twenty people in all, Carlyle thought — 
 “ big-bellied persons, sympathetic bailies, relieving each 
 other in carrying the pall.” The boys collected in a group, 
 as it passed within the railings, uttered a low “ Ah me ! Ah 
 dear ! ” or the like, half sigh or wail — “ and he is gone from 
 us then ! ” 
 
 “The sound of the boys’ wail is in my ears yet,” said 
 Carlyle. 
 
 His own first teacher in Latin, an old clergyman. He had 
 
 * It was Ids Latin grammar, the best ever composed, which my Cam- 
 berwell tutor threw aside, as above told, for a “ Scotch thing.” 
 
OTTERBUMN. 
 
 375 
 
 indeed been sent first to a schoolmaster in bis own village, 
 “ the joyfullest little mortal, he believed, on earth,” learning 
 his declensions out of an eighteen-penny book ! giving his 
 whole might and heart to understand. And the master could 
 teach him nothing, merely involved him day by day in misery 
 of non-understanding, the boy getting crushed and sick, till 
 (bis mother ?) saw it, and then he was sent to this clergyman, 
 “a perfect sage, on the humblest scale.” Seventy pounds a 
 year, his income at first entering into life ; never more than a 
 hundred. Six daughters and two sons ; the eldest sister, 
 Margaret, “ a little bit lassie,” — then in a lower voice, “ the 
 flower of all the flock to me.'’ Returning from her little visit- 
 ations to the poor, dressed in her sober prettiest, “ the most 
 amiable of possible objects.” Not beautiful in any notable 
 way afterward, but comely in the highest degree.” With 
 dutiful sweetness, “ the right hand of her father.” Lived to 
 be seven-and-twenty. “ The last time that I wept aloud in 
 the world, I think was at her death.” 
 
 Riding down from Craigenputtoch to Dumfries, — “ a mon- 
 strous precipice of rocks on one hand of you, a merry brook 
 on the other side. ... In the night just before sunrise.” 
 
 He was riding down, he and his brother, to fetch away her 
 body, — they having just heard of her death. 
 
 A surveyor (?), or some scientific and evidently superior 
 kind of person, had been doing work which involved staying- 
 near, or in, her father’s house, and they got engaged, and 
 then he broke it off. “ They said that was the beginning of 
 it.” The death had been so sudden, and so unexpected, that 
 Mary’s mother, then a girl of twelve or thirteen, rushed out of 
 the house and up to the cart, shrieking, rather than crying, 
 “ Where’s Peggy ? ” 
 
 I could not make out, quite, how the two parts of the family 
 were separated, so that his sister expected them to bring her 
 back living, (or even well ?). Carlyle was so much affected, and 
 spoke so low, that I could not venture to press him on detail. 
 
 * “Rushed at the cart,” his words. Ending with his deep “Heigh 
 dear,” sigh. “Sunt lachrymse rerum.” 
 
376 
 
 PR^TElilTA. 
 
 This master of his then, the father of Margaret, was en- 
 tirely kind and wise in teaching him — a Scotch gentleman of 
 old race and feeling, an Andrea Ferrara and some silver- 
 mounted canes hanging in his study, last remnants of the old 
 times. 
 
 We fell away upon Mill’s essay on the substitution of 
 patriotism for religion. 
 
 “ Actually the most paltry rag of ” — a chain of vituperative 
 contempt too fast to note — “ it has fallen to my lot to come in 
 with. Among my acquaintance I have not seen a person talk- 
 ing of a thing he so little understood.” The point of his in- 
 dignation was Mill’s supposing that, if God did not make 
 everybody “ happy,” it was because He had no suJ3icient 
 power, “was not enough supplied with the article.” Nothing 
 makes Carlyle more contemptuous than this coveting of 
 “ happiness.” 
 
 Perhaps we had better hear what Polissena and the nun of 
 Florence (“Christ’s Folk,” IV.) have to say about happiness, 
 of their sort ; and consider what every strong heart feels in 
 the doing of any noble thing, and every good craftsman in 
 making any beautiful one, before we despise any innocent 
 person who looks for happiness in this world, as well as here- 
 after. But assuredly the strength of Scottish character has 
 always been perfected by suffering ; and the types of it given 
 by Scott in Flora Macivor, Edith Bellenden, Mary of Avenel, 
 and Jeanie Deans, — to name only those which the reader will 
 remember without effort, — are chiefly notable in the way 
 they bear sorrow ; as the whole tone of Scottish temper, 
 ballad poetry, and music, which no other school has ever 
 been able to imitate, has arisen out of the sad associations 
 which, one by one, have gathered round every loveliest scene 
 in the border land. Nor is there anything among other 
 beautiful nations to approach the dignity of a true Scots- 
 woman’s face, in the tried perfectness of her old age. 
 
 I have seen them beautiful in the same way earlier, when 
 they had passed through trial ; my own Joanie’s face owes 
 the calm of its radiance to days of no ordinary sorrow — even 
 before she came, when my father had been laid to his rest 
 
OTTEliBURN. 
 
 377 
 
 under Croydon hills, to keep her faithful watch by my 
 mother’s side, while I was seeking selfish happiness far away 
 in work which to-day has come to nought. What I have my- 
 self since owed to her, — life certainly, and more than life, for 
 many and many a year, — was meant to have been told long 
 since, had I been able to finish this book in the time I de- 
 signed it. What Dr. John Brown became to me, is partly 
 shown in the continual references to his sympathy in the 
 letters of “ Hortus Inclnsus ; ” but nothing could tell the loss 
 to me in his death, nor the grief to how many greater souls 
 than mine, that had been possessed in patience through his 
 love. 
 
 I must give one piece more of his own letter, with the fol- 
 lowing fragment, written in the earlier part of this year, and 
 meant to have been carried on into some detail of the impres- 
 sions received in my father’s native Edinburgh, and on the 
 northern coast, from Queen’s Ferry round by Prestonpans to 
 Dunbar and Berwick. 
 
 Dr. Brown goes on : — ‘‘ A year ago, I found an elderly 
 countrywoman, a widow, waiting for me. Kising up, she 
 said, ‘ D’ye mind me ? ’ I looked at her, but could get 
 nothing from her face ; but the voice remained in my ear, as 
 if coming from the ‘ fields of sleep,’ and I said by a sort of 
 instinct, ‘ Tibbie Meek ! ’ I had not seen her or heard her 
 voice for more than forty years.” 
 
 The reader will please note the pure Scotch phrase “ D’ye 
 mind me ? ” and compare Meg Merrilies’ use of it. “ At 
 length she guided them through the mazes of the wood to a 
 little open glade of about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by 
 trees and bushes, which made a wild and irregular * boun- 
 dary. Even in winter, it was a sheltered and snugly seques- 
 tered spot ; but when arrayed in the verdure of spring, the 
 earth sending forth all its wild flowers ; the shrubs spreading 
 
 * It might have been “ irregular,” in ground just cut up for building 
 leases, in South Lambeth ; wild, yet as regular as a disciplined army, 
 had it been the pines of Uri. It was a waste of blossom, a shade of 
 weeping birches. 
 
378 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 their waste of blossom around it, and the weeping birches, 
 which towered over the underwood, drooping their long and 
 leafy fibres to intercept the sun, it must have seemed a place 
 for a youthful poet to study his earliest sonnet, or a pair of 
 lovers to exchange their first mutual avowal of affection. 
 Apparently it now awakened very different recollections. 
 Bertram’s brow, when he had looked round the spot, became 
 gloomy and embarrassed. Meg, after muttering to herself, 
 ‘ This is the very spot,’ looked at him with a ghastly side 
 glance, — ‘D’ye mind it?’ 
 
 “ ‘ Yes,’ answered Bertram, ‘ imperfectly I do.’ 
 
 * Ay,’ pursued his guide, ‘ on this very spot the man fell 
 from his horse — I was behind that bourtree *-bush at the very 
 moment. Now will I show you the further track — the last 
 time ye tramlled it, was in these arms' ” 
 
 That was twenty years before, for Bertram’s nurse ; (com- 
 pare Waverley’s and Morton’s ; ) Dr. Brown’s Tibbie ; my 
 own father’s Mause ; my Anne ; all women of the same 
 stamp ; my Saxon mother not altogether comprehending 
 them ; but when Dr. John Brown first saw my account of my 
 mother and Anne in “ Fors,” he understood both of them, 
 and wrote back to me of “ those two blessed women,” as he 
 would have spoken of their angels, had he then been beside 
 them, looking on another Face. 
 
 But my reason for quoting this piece of “Guy Mannering* ” 
 here is to explain to the reader who cares to know it, the 
 difference between the Scotch “ mind ” for “ remember,” and 
 any other phrase of any other tongue, applied to the act of 
 memory. 
 
 In order that you may, in the Scottish sense, “ mind ” any- 
 thing, first there must be something to “ mind ’’—and then, 
 the “ mind ” to mind it. In a thousand miles of iron railway, 
 or railway train, there is nothing in one rod or bar to dis- 
 tinguish it from another. You can’t “ mind ” which sleeper 
 is which. Nor, on the other hand, if you drive from Chillon 
 
 * Elder, in modern Scotch ; but in the Douglas glossary, Bower^ 
 bush. 
 
OTTKUBURN. 
 
 379 
 
 to Vevay, asleep, can you “ mind ” the characteristics of the 
 lake of Geneva. Meg could not have expected Bertram to 
 “ mind ” at what corner of a street in Manchester — or in what 
 ditch of the Isle of Dogs — anything had passed directly 
 bearing on his ov/n fate. She expected him to “ mind ” only a 
 beautiful scene, of perfect individual character, and slie would 
 not have expected him to “ mind ” even that, had she not 
 known he had persevering sense and memorial powers of very 
 high order. 
 
 Now it is the peculiar character of Scottish as distinct from 
 all other scenery on a small scale in north Europe, to have 
 these distinctively “ mindable ” features. One range of co- 
 teau by a French river is exactly like another ; one turn of 
 glen in the Black Forest is only the last turn re-turned ; one 
 sweep of Jura pasture and crag, the mere echo of the fields 
 and crags of ten miles away. But in the whole course of 
 Tweed, Teviot, Gala, Tay, Forth, and Clyde, there is perhaps 
 scarcely a bend of ravine, or nook of valley, which would not 
 be recognizable by its inhabitants from every other. And 
 there is no other country in which the roots of memory are so 
 entwined with the beauty of nature, instead of the pride of 
 men ; no other in which the song of “ Auld lang syne ” could 
 have been written, — or Lady Nairn’s ballad of “ The Auld 
 House.” 
 
 I did not in last ‘‘Prseterita ” enough explain the reason for 
 my seeking homes on the crests of Alps, in my own special 
 study of cloud and sky ; but I have only known too late, 
 within this last month, the absolutely literal truth of Turner’s 
 saying that the most beautiful skies in the world known to 
 him were those of the Isle of Thanet. 
 
 In a former number of “ Prseterita ” I have told how my 
 mother kept me quiet in a boy’s illness by telling me to think 
 of Dash, and Dover ; and among the early drawings left for 
 gift to Joanie are all those made — the first ever made from 
 nature — at Sevenoaks, Tunbridge, Canterbury, and Dover. 
 One of the poorest-nothings of these, a mere scrawl in pen 
 
380 
 
 Pll^TERITA. 
 
 and ink, of cumulus cloud crossed by delicate horizontal bars 
 on the horizon, is the first attempt I ever made to draw a 
 sky, — fifty-five years ago. That same sky I saw again over 
 the same sea horizon at sunset only five weeks ago. And three 
 or four days of sunshine following, I saw, to my amazement, 
 that the skies of Turner were still bright above the foulness 
 of smoke-cloud or the flight of plague-cloud ; and that the 
 forms which, in the pure air of Kent and Picardy, the upper 
 cirri were capable of assuming, undisturbed by tornado, un- 
 mingled with volcanic exhalation and lifted out of the white 
 crests of ever-renewed tidal waves, were infinite, lovely and 
 marvellous beyond any that I had ever seen from moor or 
 alp ; while yet on the horizon, if left for as much as an hour 
 undefiled by fuel of fire, there was the azure air I had known 
 of old, alike in the lowland distance and on the Highland 
 hills. What might the coasts of France and England have 
 been now, if from the days of Bertha in Canterbury, and of 
 Godefroy in Boulogne, the Christian faith had been held by 
 both nations in peace, in this pure air of heaven ? What 
 might the hills of Cheviot and the vale of Tweed have been 
 now, if from the days of Cuthbert in Holy Isle, and of Edwin 
 in Edinburgh, the Crosses of St. George and St. Andrew had 
 been borne by brethren ; and the fiery Percy and true Doug- 
 las laid down their lives only for their people ? 
 
 Folkestone, \Wi October, 1887. 
 
 KND OF VOL. n. 
 
PRiETERTTA. 
 
 VOLUME III. 
 

 
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PR^TERITA, 
 
 VOLUME III, 
 
 CH.iPTER I. 
 
 THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE, 
 
 MONT BLANC REVISITED. 
 
 ( Written at Nyon in 1845.) 
 
 O Mount beloved mine eyes again 
 Behold the twilight’s sanguine stain 
 Along thy peaks expire. 
 
 0 Mount beloved, thy frontier waste 
 
 1 seek with a religious haste 
 
 And reverent desire. 
 
 Tiiey meet me, ’midst thy shadows cold, — 
 Such thoughts as holy men of old 
 Amid the desert found ; — 
 
 Such gladness, as in Him they felt 
 Who with them through the darkness dwelt, 
 And compassed all around. 
 
 Ah, happy, if His will were so, 
 
 To give me manna here for snow, 
 
 And by the torrent side 
 To lead me as He leads His flocks 
 Of wild deer through the lonely rocks 
 In peace, unterrified ; 
 
 Since, from the things that trustful rest, 
 
 The partridge on her purple nest, 
 
 The marmot in his den, 
 
384 
 
 PRjETEBITA. 
 
 God wins a worship more resigned, 
 A purer praise than He can find 
 Upon the lips of men. 
 
 Alas for man ! who hath no sense 
 Of gratefulness nor confidence, 
 
 But still regrets and raves, 
 
 Till all God’s love can scarcely win 
 One soul from taking pride in sin, 
 And pleasure over graves. 
 
 Yet teach me, God, a milder thought, 
 
 Lest I, of all Thy blood has bought, 
 
 Least honorable be ; 
 
 And this, that leads me to condemn, 
 
 Be rather want of love for them 
 Than jealousy for Thee. 
 
 These verses, above noticed (ii., 276), with one following 
 sonnet, as the last rhymes I attempted in any seriousness, 
 were nevertheless themselves extremely earnest, and express, 
 with more boldness and simplicity than I feel able to use 
 now with my readers, the real temper in which I began the 
 best work of my life. mother at once found fault with 
 the words “sanguine stain,” as painful, and untrue of the 
 rose-color on snow at sunset ; but the}" had their meaning 
 to myself — the too common Evangelical phrase, “ washed in 
 the blood of Christ,” being, it seemed to me, if true at all, 
 true of the earth and her purest snow, as well as of her pur- 
 est creatures ; and the claim of being able to find among the 
 rock-shadows thoughts such as hermits of old found in the 
 desert, whether it seem immodest or not, was wdiolly true. 
 Whatever might be my common faults or weaknesses, they 
 w"ere rebuked among the hills ; and the only days I can look 
 back to as, according to the powers given me, rightly or 
 wdsely in entireness spent, have been in sight of Mont Blanc, 
 Monte Kosa, or the Jungfrau. 
 
 When I was most strongly under this influence, I tried to 
 trace — and I think have traced rightly, so far as I was then 
 able — in the last chapter of “ Modern Painters,” the power of 
 
THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 
 
 S85 
 
 mountains in solemnizing tlie tbonghts and purifying the 
 hearts of the greatest nations of antiquity, and the greatest 
 teachers of Christian faith. But I did not then dwell on 
 what I had only felt, but not ascertained — the destruction of 
 all sensibility of this high order in the populations of modern 
 Europe, first by the fine luxury of the fifteenth century, and 
 then by the coarse lusts of the eighteenth and early nine- 
 teenth : destruction so total that religious men themselves 
 became incapable of education by any natural beauty or 
 nobleness ; and though still useful to others by their minis- 
 trations and charities, in the corruption of cities, were them- 
 selves lost — or even degraded, if they ever went up into the 
 mountain to preach, or into the wilderness to pray. 
 
 There is no word, in the fragment of diary recording, in 
 last “ Prseterita,” our brief visit to the Grande Chartreuse, of 
 anything we saw or heard there that made impression upon 
 any of us. Yet a word was said, of significance enough to 
 alter the course of religious thought in me, afterward for- 
 ever, 
 
 I had been totally disappointed with the Monastery itself, 
 with the pass of approach to it, with the mountains round it, 
 and with the monk who showed us through it. The building 
 was meanly designed and confusedly grouped; the road up 
 to it nothing like so terrific as most roads in the Alps up 
 to anywhere ; the mountains round were simplest common- 
 place of Savoy cliff, with no peaks, no glaciers, no cascades, 
 nor even any slopes of pine in extent of majesty. And the 
 monk who showed us through the corridors had no cowl 
 worth the wearing, no beard worth the wagging, no expres- 
 sion but of superciliousness without sagacit}^ and an ungraci- 
 ously dull manner, showing that he was much tired of the 
 place, more of himself, and altogether of my father and me. 
 
 Having followed him for a time about the passages of the 
 scattered building, in which there was nothing to show, — not 
 a picture, not a statue, not a bit of old glass, or well-wrought 
 vestment or jewellery ; nor any architectural feature in the 
 least ingenious or lovely, we came to a pause at last in what 
 
 I suppose was a type of a modern Carthusian’s cell, wherein, 
 35 
 
380 
 
 PR.^TEPJTA, 
 
 leaning on tlie window-sill, I said something in the style of 
 “Modern Painters,” about the effect of the scene outside 
 upon religious minds. Whereupon, with a curl of his lip, 
 “We do not come here,” said the monk, “to look at the 
 jnountains.” Under which rebuke I bent my head silently, 
 thinking however all the same, “ What then, by all that’s 
 stupid, do you come here for at all ? ” 
 
 Which, from that hour to this, I have not conceived ; nor, 
 after giving my best attention to the last elaborate account of 
 Carthusian faith, “La Grande Chartreuse, par un Chartreux, 
 Grenoble, 5, Rue Brocherie, 1884,” am I the least wiser. I 
 am informed by that author that his fraternity are Eremite 
 beyond all other manner of men — that they delight in soli- 
 tude, and in that amiable disposition pass lives of an angelic 
 tenor, meditating on the charms of the next world, and the 
 vanities of this one. 
 
 I sympathize with them in their love of quiet — to the utter- 
 most ; but do not hold that liking to be the least pious or ami- 
 able in myself, nor understand why it seems so to them ; or 
 why their founder, St. Bruno — a man of the Brightest facul- 
 ties in teaching, and exhorting, and directing ; also, by favor 
 of fortune, made a teacher and governor in the exact centre 
 of European thought and order, the royal city of Rheims, — 
 should think it right to leave all that charge, throw down his 
 rod of rule, his crozier of protection, and come away to enjoy 
 meditation on the next world by himself. 
 
 And Avhy meditation among the Alps ? He and his disciples 
 might as easily have avoided the rest of mankind by shutting 
 themselves into a penitentiary on a plain, or in whatever kind 
 country they chanced to be born in, without danger to them- 
 selves of being buried by avalanches, or trouble to their vene- 
 rating visitors in coming so far up hill. 
 
 Least of all I understand how they could pass their days of 
 meditation without getting interested in plants and stones, 
 whether they would or no ; nor how they could go on writing 
 books in scarlet and gold — (for they were great scribes, and 
 had a beautiful library) — persisting for centuries in the same 
 patterns, and never trying to draw a bird or a leaf rightly — 
 
THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 
 
 OQ^ 
 OO i 
 
 until the days when books were illuminated no more for re- 
 ligion, but for luxury, and tlie amusement of sickly fancy. 
 
 Without endeavoring- to explain any of these matters, I will 
 try to set down in this chapter, merely wliat I have found 
 monks or nuns like, when by chance I was thrown into their 
 company, and of what use they have been to me. 
 
 And first let me thank my dear Miss Edgeworth for the 
 ideal character of Sister Frances, in her story of Madame de 
 Eleury, wliicli, read over and over again through all my child- 
 hood, fixed in me the knowledge of what a good sister of 
 charity can be, and for the most part is, in France ; and, of 
 late, I suppose in German}^ and England. 
 
 But the first impression from life of the secluded Sister- 
 lioods * was given me at the Convent of St. Michael, on the 
 summit of the isolated peak of lava at Le Puy, in Auvergne, 
 in 1840. The hostess-sister who showed my father and me 
 what it was permitted to see of chapel or interior buiklings, 
 was a cheerful, simple creature, pleased with us at once for 
 our courtesy to her, and admiration of her mountain home, 
 and belief in her sacred life. Protestant visitors being then 
 rare in Auvergne, and still more, reverent and gentle ones, 
 she gave her pretty curiosity free sway ; and inquired eai'n- 
 estly of us, what sort of creatures we were, — how far we be- 
 lieved in God, or tried to be good, or hoped to go to heaven ? 
 And our responses under this catecliism being in their sum 
 more pleasing to her than she had expected, and manifesting, 
 to her extreme joy and wonder, a Christian spirit, so far as 
 she could judge, in harmony with all she had been herself 
 taught, she proceeded to cross-examine us on closer points 
 of Divinity, to find out, if she could, why we were, or unneces- 
 sarily called ourselves, anything else than Catholic ? The 
 one flaw in our faith which at last her charity fastened on, 
 
 * Of the Brotherhoods, of course the first I knew were those of St. 
 Bernard ; hut tliese were not secluded for their own spiritual welfare, 
 any more than our coastguardsmen by the Goodwin sands ; and are to 
 he spoken of elsewhere, and in quite other relations to the modern 
 world. 
 
388 
 
 PR^iJTEJUTA. 
 
 was that we were not sure of our salvation in Christ, but only 
 hoped to get into heaven, — and were not at all, by that dim 
 hope, relieved from terror of death, when at any time it 
 should come. Whereupon she launched involuntarily into an 
 eager and beautiful little sermon, to every word of which her 
 own perfectly happy and innocent face gave vivid power, and 
 assurance of sincerity, — how “ we needed to be sure of our 
 safety in Christ, and that everyone might be so who came to 
 Him and pra3md to Him ; and that all good Catholics were 
 as sure of heaven as if they w'ere already there and so dis- 
 missed us at the gate with true pity, and beseeching that we 
 would prove the goodness of God, and be in peace. Which 
 exhortation of hers I have never forgotten ; only it has always 
 seemed to me that there was no entering into that rest of 
 hers but by living on the top of some St. Michael’s rock too, 
 which it did not seem to me I was meant to do, by any 
 means. 
 
 But in here recording the impression made on my father 
 and me, I must refer to what I said above of our common 
 feeling of being, both of us, as compared with my mother, 
 reprobate and worldly characters, despising our birthright 
 like Esau, or cast out, for our mocking ways, like Ishmael. 
 For my father never ventured to give me a religious lesson ; 
 and though he went to church with a resigned countenance, 
 I knew very well that he liked going just as little as I 
 did. 
 
 The second and fourth summers after that, 1842 and 1844, 
 were spent happily and quietlj" in the Prieure * of Chamouni, 
 and there of course we all of us became acquainted with the 
 cure, and saw the entire manner of life in a purely Catholic 
 village and valley, — recognizing- it, I hope, all of us, in our 
 hearts, to be quite as Christian as anything we knew of, and 
 much pleasanter and prettier than the Sundaj^ services in 
 England, which exhaust the little faith we have left. 
 
 Wordsworth, in his continental notices of peasant Catholi- 
 
 * Not in the Priory itself, hut the Hotel de I’Unioii. The whole vil- 
 lage is called “The Priory.” 
 
THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 
 
 3S9 
 
 cism, recognizes, also at Cliamouni, very gracefully this ex- 
 ternal prettiness — 
 
 “ They, too, who send so far a holy gleam, 
 
 As they the Church engird with motion slow, 
 
 A product of that awf nl mountain seem 
 Poured from its vaults of everlasting snow. 
 
 Not virgin lilies marshalled in bright row, 
 
 Not swans descending witli the stealthy tide, 
 
 A livelier sisterly resemblance show 
 
 Than the fair forms that in long order glide 
 Bear to the glacier band, those shapes aloft descried.” 
 
 But on me, the deeper impression was of a continuous and 
 serene hold of their happy faith on the life alike of Sunday 
 and Monday, and through every hour and circumstance of 
 youth and age ; which yet abides in all the mountain Catho- 
 lic districts of Savoy, the Waldstetten, and the Tyrol, to their 
 perpetual honor and peace ; and this without controversy or 
 malice toward the holders of other beliefs. 
 
 Next, in 1845, I saw in Florence, as above told, the inte- 
 rior economy of the monasteries at Santa Maria Novella, — in 
 the Franciscan cloisters of Fesole, and in Fra Angelico’s, both 
 at San Domenico and San Marco. Which, in whatever they 
 retained of their old thoughts and ways, were wholly beauti- 
 ful ; and the monks with whom I had any casual intercourse^ 
 always kind, innocently eager in sympathy with my own 
 work, and totally above men of the “ world ” in general un- 
 derstanding, courtesy, and moral sense. 
 
 Men of the outer world, I mean, of course, — official and 
 commercial. Afterward at Venice I had a very dear, and not 
 at all monastic, friend, Rawdon Brown ; but hh society were 
 the Venetians of the fifteenth century. The Counts Minis- 
 chalchi, at Verona, and Borromeo, at Milan, would have 
 been endlessly kind and helpful to me ; but I never could 
 learn Italian enough to speak to them. Whereas, with my 
 monkish friends, at the Armenian isle of Venice, and in any 
 churches or cloisters through North Ital}’’, where I wanted a 
 niche to be quiet in, and chiefiy at last in Assisi, I got on 
 
390 
 
 PRMTERITA, 
 
 with any broken French or Italian I could stutter, without 
 minding ; and was always happy. 
 
 But the more I loved or envied the monks, and the more I 
 despised the modern commercial and fashionable barbaric 
 tribes, the more acutely also I felt that the Catholic political 
 hierarchies, and isolated remnants of celestial enthusiasm, 
 were hopelessly at fault in their dealing with these adver- 
 saries ; having also elements of corruption in themselves, 
 which justly brought on them the fierce hostility of men like 
 Garibaldi in Italy, and of the honest and open-hearted liberal 
 leaders in other countries. Thus, irrespectively of all imme- 
 diate contest or progress, I saw in the steady course of the 
 historical reading by which I prepared mj-self to write tlis 
 “Stones of Venice,” that, alike in the world and the Church, 
 the hearts of men were led astray by the same dreams and 
 desires ; and whether in seeking for Divine perfection, or 
 earthl}^ pleasure, were alike disobeying the laws of God when 
 the}^ withdrew from their direct and familiar duties, and 
 ceased, whether in ascetic or self-indulgent lives, to honor 
 and love their neighbor as themselves. 
 
 AVhile these convictions prevented me from being ever led 
 into acceptance of Catholic teaching by my reverence for the 
 Catholic art of the great ages, — and the less, because the 
 Catholic art of these small ages can say but little for itself, — 
 I grew also daily more sure that the peace of God rested on 
 all the dutiful and kindly hearts of the laborious poor ; and 
 that the only constant form of pure religion was in useful 
 work, faithful love, and stintless charity. 
 
 In wdiich pure religion neither St. Bruno himself nor any 
 of his true disciples failed : and I perceive it finally notable 
 of them, that, poor by a resolute choice of a life of hardship, 
 without any sentimental or fallacious glorifying of “Holy 
 poverty,” as if God had never promised full garners for a 
 blessing ; and always choosing men of high intellectual power 
 for the heads of their community, they have had more di- 
 rectly wholesome influence on the outer world than any other 
 order of monks so narrow in number, and restricted in habi- 
 tation. For while the Franciscan and Cistercian monks be- 
 
THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 
 
 391 
 
 came everywhere a constant element in European society, the 
 Carthusians, in their active sincerity, remained, in groups of 
 not more than from twelve to twenty monks in any single 
 monastery, the tenants of a few wild valleys of the north- 
 western Alps ; the subsequent overflowing of their brother- 
 hood into the Certosas of the Lombard plains being mere 
 waste and wreck of them ; and the great Certosa of Pavia 
 one of the worst shames of Italy, associated with the accursed 
 reign of Galeazzo Visconti. But in their strength, from the 
 foundation of the order, at the close of the eleventh century, 
 to the beginning of the fourteenth, they reared in their moun- 
 tain fastnesses, and sent out to minister to the world, a suc- 
 cession of men of immense mental grasp, and serenely author- 
 itative innocence ; among whom our own Hugo of Lincoln, 
 in his relations with Henry I. and Goeur de Lion, is to my 
 mind the most beautiful sacerdotal figure known to me in 
 history. The great Pontiffs have a power which in its strength 
 can scarce!}^ be used without cruelty, nor in its scope without 
 error ; the great Saints are always in some degree incredible 
 or unintelligible ; but Hugo’s power is in his own personal 
 courage and justice only ; and his sanctity as clear, frank, and 
 playful as the waves of his own Chartreuse well.'^ 
 
 I must not let myself be led aside from my own memories 
 into any attempt to trace the effect on Turner’s mind of his 
 visit to the Chartreuse, rendered as it is in the three subjects 
 of the “Liber Studiorum,” — from the Chartreuse itself, from 
 Holy Island, and Dumblane Abbey. The strength of it was 
 cliecked by his love and awe of the sea, and sailor heroism, 
 and confused by his classical thought and passion ; but in my 
 own life, the fading away of the nobler feelings in which I 
 had worked in the Campo Santo of Pisa, however much my 
 own fault, was yet complicated with the inevitable discovery 
 of the falseness of the religious doctrines in which I had been 
 educated. 
 
 The events of the ten years 1850-1860, for the most part 
 
 * The original building was grouped round a spring in the rock, 
 from which a runlet was directed through every cell. 
 
392 
 
 FRjETERITA, 
 
 wasted in useless work, must be arranged first in their main- 
 order, before I can give clear account of anything that hap- 
 pened in them. But this breaking down of my Puritan faith, 
 being the matter probably most important to many readers 
 of ni}^ later books, shall be traced in this chapter to the sor- 
 rowful end. Note first the main facts of the successive years 
 of the decade. 
 
 1851. Turner dies, while I am at first main work in Ven- 
 ice, for “ The Stones of Venice.” 
 
 1852. Final work in Venice for “ Stones of Venice.” 
 Book finished that winter. Six hundred quarto pages of 
 notes for it, fairly and closely written, now useless. Draw- 
 ings as many — of a sort ; useless too. 
 
 1853. Henry Acland in Glenfinlas with me. Drawing of 
 gneiss rock made ; now in the school at Oxford. Two 
 months’ work in what fair weather could be gleaned out of 
 that time. 
 
 1854. With my father and mother at Vevay and Thun. 
 I take up the history of Switzerland, and propose to engrave 
 a series of drawings of the following Swiss towns : Geneva, 
 Fribourg, Basle, Thun, Baden, and Schaffhausen. I proceed 
 to make drawdugs for this work, of w’hich the first attempted 
 (of Thun) takes up the whole of the summer, and is only half 
 done then. Definition of Poetry, for “ Modern Painters,” 
 written at Vevay, looking across lake to Cbillon. It lepes 
 out rhythm, which I now' consider a defect in said definition ; 
 otherwise good, — “ The arrangement, by imagination, of noble 
 motive for noble emotion.” I forget the exact words, but 
 these others will do as well, perhaps better. 
 
 1855. Notes on Koyal Academy begun. The spring is so 
 cold that the hawthorns are only in bud on 5th of June. I get 
 cough, which lasts for two months, till I go down to Tun- 
 bridge Wells to my doctor cousin, William Richardson, wdio 
 puts me to bed, gives me some syrup, cures me in three days, 
 and calls me a fool for not coming to him before, with some 
 rather angry warnings that I had better not keep a cough for 
 two months again. Third volume of “Modern Painters” got 
 done with, somehow, but didn’t know w'hat to call it, so called 
 
THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 
 
 393 
 
 it “Of Many Things.” But none of these were done with,” 
 as I found afterward, to my cost. 
 
 1856. With rny father and mother to Geneva and Fri- 
 bourg. Two drawings at Fribourg took up the working 
 summer. My father begins to tire of the proposed work on 
 Swiss towns, and to inquire whether the rest of “ Modern 
 Painters ” will ever be done. 
 
 1857. My mother w'ants me to see the Bay of Cromarty 
 and the Falls of Kilmorock. I consent sulkily to be taken to 
 Scotland with that object. Papa and mamma, wistfully 
 watching the effect on my mind, show their Scotland to me. 
 I see, on my own quest, Craig-Ellachie, and the Lachin-y- 
 Gair forests, and finally reach the Bay of Cromarty and Falls 
 of Kilmorock, doubtless now the extreme point of my north- 
 ern discoveries on the round earth.^, I admit, generously, the 
 Bay of Cromarty and the Falls to be worth coming all that 
 way to see ; but beg papa and mamma to observe that it is 
 twenty miles’ walk, in bogs, to the top of Ben Wevis, that the 
 town of Dingwall is not like Milan or Venice, — and that I 
 think we have seen enough of Scotland. 
 
 1858. Accordingly, after arranging, mounting, framing, 
 and cabinetting, with good help from Kichard Williams, of 
 Messrs. Foord’s, the Turner drawings now in the catacombs 
 of the National Gallery, I determine to add two more Swiss 
 towns to my list, namely, Rheinfelden and Bellinzona, in il- 
 lustration of Turner’s sketches at those places ; and get re- 
 luctant leave from my father to take Couttet again, and have 
 all my own way. I spent the spring at Rheinfelden, and the 
 summer at Bellinzona. But Couttet being of opinion that 
 these town views will come to no good, and that the time I 
 spend on the roof of “ cette baraque ” at Bellinzona is wholly 
 wasted, I give the town views all up, and take to Vandyke 
 and Paul Veronese again in the gallery of Turin. But, on 
 returning home, my father is not satisfied with my studies 
 from those masters, and piteously asks for the end of “ Mod- 
 ern Painters,” saying “ he will be dead before it is done.” 
 Much ashamed of myself, I promise him to do mj^ best on it 
 without farther subterfuge. 
 
394 
 
 PRMTERITA. 
 
 1859. Hard writing and drawing to that end. Fourtli vol- 
 ume got done. My father thinks, himself, I ought to see Ber- 
 lin, Dresden, Munich, and Nuremberg, before the book is 
 finished. He and my mother take their last continental jour- 
 ney with me to those places. I have my last happy walk with 
 my father at Konigstein. 
 
 1860. I work hard all the winter and early spring — finish 
 the book, in a sort ; my father well pleased with the last chap- 
 ter, and the engraved drawings from Nuremberg and Rhein- 
 felden. On the strength of this piece of filial duty, I am 
 cruel enough to go away to St. Martin’s again, b^^ myself, to 
 meditate on what is to be done next. Thence I go up to 
 Chamouni — where a new epoch of life and death begins. 
 
 And here I must trace, as simply and rapidly as may be, 
 the story of my relations with the Working Men’s College. 
 
 I knew of its masters only the Principal, F. D. Maurice, 
 and my own friend Rossetti. It is to be remembered of 
 Rossetti, with loving honor, that he was the only one of our 
 modern painters who taught disciples for love of them. He 
 was really not an Englishman, but a great Italian tormented 
 in the Inferno of London ; doing the best he could, and teach- 
 ing the best he could ; but the “ could ” shortened by the 
 strength of his animal passions, without any trained control, 
 or guiding faith. Of him, more hereafter. 
 
 I loved Frederick Maurice, as everyone did who came near 
 him ; and have no doubt he did all that was in him to do of 
 good in his day. Which could by no means be said either 
 of Rossetti or of me : but Maurice was by nature puzzle- 
 headed, and, though in a beautiful manner, ?/?ron^-headed ; 
 while his clear conscience and keen affections made him ego- 
 tistic, and in his Bible-reading, as insolent as any infidel of 
 them all. I onl^^’ went once to a Bible-lesson of his ; and the 
 meeting was significant, and conclusive. 
 
 The subject of lesson, Jael’s slaying of Sisera. Concerning 
 which, Maurice, taking an enlightened modern view of what 
 Avas fit and not, discoursed in passionate indignation ; and 
 warned his class, in the most positive and solemn manner, 
 that such dreadful deeds could only have been done in cold 
 
THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 
 
 395 
 
 blood in the Dark Biblical ages ; and that no religious and 
 patriotic Englishwoman ought ever to think of imitating Jael 
 by nailing a Russian’s or Prussian’s skull to the ground, — es- 
 j^ecially after giving him butter in a lordly dish. At the close 
 of the instruction, through which I srite silent, I ventured to 
 inquire, why then had Deborah the prophetess declared of 
 Jael, “ Blessed above women shall the wife of Heber the 
 Kenite be ? ” On which Maurice, w'itii startled and flashing 
 eyes, burst into partly scornful, partly alarmed, denunciation 
 of Deborah the prophetess, as a mere blazing Amazon ; and 
 of her Song as a merely rhythmic storm of battle-rage, no 
 more to be listened to with edification or faith than the Nor- 
 man’s sword-song at the battle of Hastings. 
 
 Whereupon there remained nothing for me , — to whom the 
 Song of Deborah was as sacred as the Magnificat — but total 
 collapse in sorrow and astonishment ; the eyes of all the class 
 being also bent on me in amazed reprobation of my be- 
 nighted views, and unchristian sentiments. And I got away 
 how^ I could, and never went back. 
 
 That being the first time in my life that I had fairly met 
 the lifted head of Earnest and Religious Infidelity — in a man 
 neither vain nor ambitious, but instinctively and innocently 
 trusting his own amiable feelings as the final interpreters of 
 all the possible feelings of men and angels, all the songs of 
 the prophets, and all the ways of God. 
 
 It foliow'ed, of course, logically and necessarity, that every 
 one of Maurice’s disciples also took what views he chose of 
 the songs of the prophets, — or wrote songs of his owm, more 
 adapted to the princqfies of the College, and the ethics of 
 London. Maurice, in all his addresses to us, dwelt mainly 
 on the simple function of a college as a collection or collation 
 of friendly persons, — not in the least as a place in which such 
 and such things were to be taught, and others denied ; such 
 and such conduct vowed, and other such and such abjured. 
 So the College went on, — collecting, carpentering, sketching, 
 Bible criticising, etc., virtually with no head ; but only a clasp 
 to the strap of its waist, and as many heads as it had stu- 
 dents. The leaven of its affectionate temper has gone far ; 
 
396 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 but how far also the leaven of its pride, and defiance of 
 everything above it, nobody quite laiows. I took two special 
 pupils out of its ranks, to carry them forward all I could. 
 One I chose ; the other chose me — or rather, chose my 
 mother's maid Hannah ; for love of whom he came to the Col- 
 lege, learned drawing there under Eossetti and me, — and be- 
 came eventually Mr. George Allen, of Sunnyside ; who, I 
 hope, still looks back to his having been an entirely honest 
 and perfect working joiner as the foundation of his prosper- 
 ity in life. The other student I chose myself, a carpenter of 
 equal skill and great fineness of faculty ; but his pride, wil- 
 fulness, and certain angular narrownesses of nature, kept him 
 down, — together with the deadly influence of London itself, 
 and of working-men’s clubs, as well as colleges. And finally, 
 in this case, and many more, I have very clearly ascertained 
 that the only proper school for workmen is of the work their 
 fathers bred them to, under masters able to do better than 
 any of their men, and with common principles of honesty and 
 the fear of God, to guide the firm. 
 
 Somewhat before the date of my farewell to Maurician free- 
 thinking, I had come into still more definite collision with 
 the Puritan dogmata which forbid thinking at all, in a seance 
 to which I was invited, shyly, by my friend, Macdonald, — 
 fashionable seance of evangelical doctrine, at the Earl of Du- 
 cie’s ; presided over by Mr. Molyneux, then a divine of celeb- 
 rity in that sect ; who sate with one leg over his other knee in 
 the attitude always given to Herod at the massacre of the In- 
 nocents in mediaeval sculpture ; and discoursed in tones of 
 consummate assurance and satisfaction, and to the entire 
 comfort and consent of his Belgravian audience, on the beau- 
 tiful parable of the Prodigal Son. Which, or how many, of 
 his hearers he meant to describe as having personally lived 
 on husks, and devoured their fathers’ property, did not, of 
 course, appear ; but that something of the sort was necessary 
 to the completeness of the joy in heaven over them, now in 
 Belgrave Square, at the feet — or one foot — of Mr. Molyneux, 
 could not be questioned. 
 
 Waiting my time, till the raptures of the converted com- 
 
THE QRANDE CHART REUSE. 
 
 397 
 
 pany had begun to flag* a little, I ventured, from a back seat, 
 to enquire of Mr. Molyneux what we were to learn from the 
 example of the other son, not prodigal, who was, his father 
 said of him, “ ever with me, and all that I have, thine ? ” A 
 sudden horror, and unanimous feeling of the serpent having, 
 somehow, got over the wall into their Garden of Eden, fell on 
 the whole company ; and some of them, I thought, looked at 
 the candles, as if they expected them to burn blue. After a 
 pause of a minute, gathering himself into an expression of 
 pity and indulgence, withholding latent thunder, Mr. Moly- 
 neux explained to me that the home-staying son was merel}^ a 
 picturesque figure introduced to fill the background of the 
 parable agreeably, and contained no instruction or example 
 for the well-disposed scriptural student, but on the contraiy, 
 rather a snare for the unwary, and a temptation to self-right- 
 eousness, — which was, of all sins, the most offensive to God. 
 
 Under the fulmination of which answer I retired, as from 
 Maurice’s, from the seance in silence ; nor ever attended an- 
 other of the kind from that day to this. 
 
 But neither the Puritanism of Belgravia, nor Liberalism of 
 Red Lion Square, interested, or offended, me, otherwise than 
 as the grotesque conditions of variously typhoid or smoke- 
 dried London life. To mj^ old Scotch shepherd Puritanism, 
 and the correspondent forms of noble French Protestantism, 
 I never for an instant failed in dutiful affection and honoi*. 
 From John Bunyan and Isaac Ambrose, I had received the re- 
 ligion by which I still myself lived, as far as I had spiritual 
 life at all ; and I had again and again proof enough of its 
 truth, v/ithiu limits, to have served me for all my own need, 
 either in this world or the next. But my ordained business, 
 and mental gifts, were outside of those limits. I saw, as 
 clearly as I saw tlie sky and its stars, that music in Scotland 
 was not to be studied under a Free Church precentor, nor in- 
 deed under any disciples of John Knox, but of Signior David ; 
 that, similarl3% painting in England was not to be admired in 
 the illuminations of Watts’ hymns ; nor architecture in the 
 design of Mr. Irons’ chapel in the Grove. And here I must 
 take up a thread of my mental history, as yet unfastened. 
 
398 
 
 Pn^ETERITA. 
 
 I have spoken several times of the effect given cheaply to 
 my drawings of architecture by dexterous dots and fiourishes, 
 doing duty for ornament. Already, in 1845, I had begun to 
 distinguish Corinthian from Norman capitals, and in 1848, 
 drew the niches and sculpture of French Gothic with preci- 
 sion and patience. But I had never cared for ornamental de- 
 sign until in 1850 or ’51 I chanced, at a bookseller’s in a back 
 alley, on a little fourteenth century “Hours of the Virgin,” 
 not of refined work, but extremely rich, grotesque, and full 
 of pure color. 
 
 The new worlds which every leaf of this book opened to 
 me, and the joy I had, counting their letters and unravelling 
 their arabesques as if they had all been of beaten gold, — as 
 many of them indeed were, — cannot be told, any more than — 
 everything else, of good, that I wanted to tell. Not that the 
 worlds thus opening were themselves new, but only the pos- 
 session of any part in them ; for long and long ago I had gazed 
 at the illuminated missals in noblemen's houses (see above, p. 
 16, vol. i.), with a wonder and sympathy deeper than I can give 
 now ; my love of toil, and of treasure, alike getting their thirst 
 gratified in them. For again and again I must repeat it, my 
 nature is a worker’s and a miser’s ; and I rejoiced, and rejoice 
 still, in the mere quantity of chiselling in marble, and stitches 
 in embroidery ; and \vas never tired of numbering sacks of gold 
 and caskets of jewels in the “ Arabian Nights ; ” and though 
 I am generous too, and love giving, j^et my notion of charity 
 is not at all dividing my last crust with a beggar, but riding 
 through a town like a Commander of the Faithful, having anj'' 
 quantity of sequins and ducats in saddle-bags (where cavalr}^ 
 officers have holsters for their pistols), and throwing them 
 round in radiant showers and hailing handfuls ; with more 
 bags to brace on 'when those 'v^"ere empty. 
 
 But now that I had a missal of my owm, and could touch its 
 leaves and turn, and even here and there understand the 
 Latin of it, no girl of seven years old with a new doll is 
 prouder or happier ; but the feeling was something between 
 the girl’s with her doll, and Aladdin’s in a new Spirit-slave to 
 build palaces for him with jewel windows. For truly a well- 
 
THE GRANDE CHARTREUGE. 
 
 399 
 
 illuminated missal is a fairy cathedral full of painted windows, 
 bound together to carry in one’s pocket, with the music and 
 the blessing of all its prayers besides. 
 
 xlnd tlien followed, of course, the discovery that all beauti- 
 ful prayers were Catholic, — all wise interpretations of the Bible 
 Catholic ; — and every manner of Protestant written services 
 whatsoever either insolently altered corruptions, or washed- 
 out and ground-down rags and debris of the great Catholic 
 collects, litanies, and songs of praise. 
 
 “But why did not you become a Catholic at once, then?” 
 
 It might as well be asked. Why did not I become a fire- 
 worshipper ? I could become nothing but wdiat I was, or was 
 growing into. I no more believed in the living Pope than I 
 did in the living Khan of Tartary. I saw indeed that twelfth 
 century psalters were lovely and right, and that presbyterian 
 prayers against time, by people who never expected to be any 
 the better for them, were unlovely and wrong. But I had 
 never read the Koran, nor Confucius, nor Plato, nor Hesiod, 
 and was only just beginning to understand my Virgil and 
 Horace. How I ever came to understand them is a new story, 
 which must be for next chapter ; meantime let me finish the 
 confessions of this one in the tale of my final apostasy from 
 Puritan doctrine. 
 
 The most stern practical precept of that doctrine still hold- 
 iuo* me, — it is curiouslv inbound with all the rest, — was the 
 Sabbath keeping ; the idea that one w^as not to seek one’s own 
 pleasure on Sunda3% nor to do anything useful. Gradually, in 
 honest Bible reading, I saw that Christ’s first article of teach- 
 ing was to unbind the }mke of the Sabbath, while, us a Jew, 
 He yet obeyed the Mosaic law concerning it ; but that St. 
 Paul had carefully abolished it altogether, and that the rejoic- 
 ing, in memory of the Besurrection, on the Day of the Sun, 
 the first day of the week, was only by misunderstanding, and 
 much wilful obstinacy, confused with the Sabbath of the 
 Jew^ 
 
 Nevertheless, the great passages in the Old Testament re- 
 garding its observance held their power over me, nor have 
 ceased to do so ; but the inveterate habit of being unhappy 
 
400 
 
 PRJETERITA, 
 
 all Sunday did not in any way fulfil the order to call tlie Sab- 
 bath a delight. 
 
 I have registered the year 1858 as the next, after 1845, in 
 which I had complete guidance of myself. Couttet met me 
 at Basle, and I went on to Rheinfelden with great joy, and 
 stayed to draw town and bridges completely (two of the 
 studies are engraved in “ Modern Painters ”). 
 
 I think it was the second Sunday there, and no English 
 church. I had read the service with George, and gone out 
 afterward alone for a walk up a lovely dingle on the Black 
 Forest side of the Khine, where every pretty cottage was in- 
 scribed, in fair old German characters, with the date of its 
 building, the names of the married pair who had built it, and 
 a prayer that, with God’s blessing, their habitation of it, and 
 its possession by their children, might be in righteousness 
 and peace. Not in these set terms, of course, on every house, 
 but in variously quaint verses or mottoes, meaning always as 
 much as this. 
 
 Very happy in my Sunday walk, I gathered what wild flow- 
 ers were in their first springing, and came home with a many- 
 colored cluster, in which the dark-purple orchis was chief. 
 I had never examined its structure before, and by this after- 
 noon sunlight did so with care ; also it seemed to me wholly 
 right to describe it as I examined ; and to draw the outlines 
 as I described, though with a dimly alarmed consciousness of 
 its being a new fact in existence for me, that I should draw 
 on Sunday. 
 
 Which thenceforward I continued to do, if it seemed to me 
 there was due occasion. Nevertheless, come to pass how it 
 might, the real new fact in existence for me was that my 
 drawings did not prosper that year, and, in deepest sense, 
 never prospered again. They might not have prospered in 
 the course of things, — and indeed, could not without better 
 guidance than my own ; nevertheless, the crisis of change is 
 marked at Rheinfelden by my having made there two really 
 pretty color-vignettes, which, had I only gone on doing the 
 like of, the journey would have been visibly successful in 
 everybody’s sight. Whereas, what actually followed those 
 
THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE, 
 
 401 
 
 vignettes at Rbeiufeldeu was a too ambitious attempt at the 
 cliifs of the Bay of Uri, which crushed the strength down in 
 me ; and next, a persistently furious one to draw the entire 
 town, three fortresses, and surrounding mountains of Bellin- 
 zona, graduall 3 ^ taming and contracting itself into a meekly 
 obstinate resolve that at least I would draw every stone of the 
 roof right in one tower of the vineyards,— cette baraqu’e, as 
 Couttet called it. 
 
 I did draw every stone, nearly right, at last in that single 
 roof ; and meantime read the “Plutus” of Aristophanes, three 
 or four times over in two months, with long walks every after- 
 noon, besides. Total result on 1st of August — general desola- 
 tion, and disgust with Bellinzona, — cette baraque, — and most 
 of all with myself, for not yet knowing Greek enough to 
 translate the “Plutus.” In this state of mind, a fit took me of 
 hunger for city life again, military bands, nicely- -dressed peo- 
 ple, and shops with something inside. And I emphasized 
 Couttet’s disapproval of the whole tour, by announcing to 
 him suddenly that I V7as going, of all places in the world, to 
 Turin ! 
 
 I had still some purpose, even in this libertinage, namely, 
 to outline the Alpine chain from Monte Viso to Monte Rosa. 
 Its base was within a drive ; and there were Veroneses in the 
 Ro^^al galleiy, for wet days. The luxury of the Hotel de 
 I’Europe was extremely pleasant after brick floors and bad 
 dinners at Bellinzona ; — there was a quiet little opera-house, 
 where it was alwaj^s a kindness to the singers to attend to the 
 stage business ; finally, any quantity of marching and ma- 
 noeuvring by the best troops in Italy, with perfect military 
 bands, beautifully tossing plumes, and pretty ladies looking 
 on. So I settled at Turin for the autumn. 
 
 There, one Sunday morning, I made my way in the south 
 suburb to a little chapel which, bj" a dusty roadside, gathered 
 to its unobserved door the few sheep of the old Waldensian 
 faith who had wandered from their own pastures under Monte 
 Viso into the worldly capital of Piedmont. 
 
 The assembled congregation numbered in all some three 
 or four and twenty, of whom fifteen or sixteen were gray- 
 26 
 
402 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 haired women. Their solitary and clerkless preacher, a 
 somewhat stunted figure in a ifiain black coat, with a cracked 
 voice, after leading* them through the languid forms of prayer 
 which are all that in truth are possible to people whose pres- 
 ent life is dull and its terrestrial future unchangeable, put 
 his utmost zeal into a consolatory discourse on the wicked- 
 ness of the wide world, more especially of the plain of Pied-, 
 mont and city of Turin, and on the exclusive favor with God, 
 enjo}^ed by the between nineteen and twenty-four elect mem- 
 bers of his congregation, in the streets of Admah and Ze- 
 boim. 
 
 Mj'self neither cheered nor greatly alarmed by this doc- 
 trine, I walked back into the condemned city, and up into 
 the gallery where Paul Veronese’s Solomon and the Queen of 
 Sheba glowed in full afternoon light. The gallery windows 
 being open, there came in with the warm air, floating swells 
 and falls of military music, from the courtyard before the 
 palace, which seemed to me more devotional, in their perfect 
 art, tune, and discipline, than anything I remembered of 
 evangelical hvunns. And as the perfect color and sound 
 gradually asserted their power on me, they seemed finally to 
 fasten me in the old article of Jewish faith, that things done 
 delightfully and rightly, were always done by the help and 
 in the Spirit of God. 
 
 Of course that hour’s meditation in the gallery of Turin 
 only concluded the courses of thought which had been lead- 
 ing me to such end through man}^ years. There was no sud- 
 den conversion possible to me, either by preacher, picture, 
 or dulcimer. But that day, my evangelical beliefs were put 
 away, to be debated of no more. 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 MONT VELAN. 
 
 I was crowded for room at the end of last chapter, and 
 could not give account of one or two bits of investigation 
 of the Vaudois character, which preceded the Queen of Sheba 
 
MONT VELAN. 
 
 403 
 
 crash. It wasn’t the Queen herself, — b}- the way, — but only 
 one of her maids of honor, on whose gold brocaded dress, 
 (relieved by a black’s head, who carried two red and green 
 parrots on a salver,) I worked till I could do no more ; — . 
 to my father’s extreme amazement and disgust, when I 
 brought the petticoat, parrots, and blackamoor, home, as the 
 best fruit of my summer at the Court of Sardinia ; together 
 with one lurid thunderstorm on the Kosa Alps, another on the 
 Genis, and a dream or two of mist on the Viso. But I never 
 could make out the set of the rocks on the peak of Viso ; and 
 after I had spent about a hundred pounds at Turin in grapes, 
 partridges, and the opera, my mother sent me five, to make 
 my peace with Heaven in a gift to the Vaudois churches. So 
 I went and passed a Sunday beneath Also ; found he had 
 neitlier rocks nor glaciers wmrth mentioning, and that I 
 couldn’t get info any pleasant confidences with the shepherds, 
 because their dogs barked and snarled irreconcilably, and 
 seemed to have nothing taught them by their masters but to 
 regard all the rest of mankind as thieves. 
 
 I had some pious talk of a mild kind with the pei son I 
 gave my mother’s five pounds to : but an infinitely pleasanter 
 feeling from the gratitude of the overworn ballerina at Turin, 
 for the gift of as many of my own. She was not the least 
 pretty ; and depended precariously on keeping able for her 
 work on small pittance; but did that work well always ; and 
 looked nice, — near the footlights. 
 
 I noticed also curiously at this time, that while the draw- 
 ings I did to please myself seemed to please nobody else, the 
 little pen-and-ink sketches made for my father, merely to ex- 
 plain where I was, came always well ; — one, of the sunset shin- 
 ing down a long street through a grove of bayonets, wdiich 
 he was to imagine moving to military music, is pleasant to 
 me yet. But, on the whole, Turin began at last to bore me 
 as mucli as Belliiizona ; so I thought it might be as well to 
 get home. I drove to Susa on the last day of August, walked 
 quietly with Gouttet over the Genis to Lansde-bourg next 
 day ; and on 2d September sent my mother my love, by 
 telegram, for breakfast- time, on her birthday, getting answer 
 
404 
 
 PE^TERITA. 
 
 of thanks back before twelve o'clock ; and began to think 
 there might be something in telegraphs, after all. 
 
 A number of unpleasant convictions were thus driven into 
 my head, in that 1858 journey, like Jael’s nail through Sis- 
 era’s temples ; or Tintoret’s arrow between St. Sebastian’s 
 eyes : — I must return a moment to Mr. Maurice and Deborah 
 before going on to pleasanter matters. Maurice was not, I 
 suppose, in the habit of keeping a skull on his chimney- 
 piece, and looking at it before he w^ent to sleej), as I had 
 been, for a long while before that talk ; or he would have 
 felt that whether it w^as by nail, bullet, or little pin, mattered 
 little when it was ordained that the crowned forehead should 
 sink in slumber. And he would have known that Jael was 
 only one of the forms of “ Dira Necessitas ” — she, Delilah, 
 and Judith, all the three of them ; only w^e haven’t any rec- 
 ord of Delilah’s hymn when she first fastened Samson’s hair 
 to the beam : and of Judith, nobody says any harm ; — I sup- 
 pose because she gave Holofernes wine, instead of milk and 
 butter. It was Byron, however, not Deborah, who made me 
 understand the thing ; the passage he paraphrased from her, 
 in the “ Giaour,” having rung in my ears ever since I wTote 
 the Scythian banquet-song — 
 
 “The drowsy camel bells are tinkling, 
 
 His mother looked from her lattice high,” etc. 
 
 And I felt now that I had myself driven nails enough into my 
 mother’s heart, if not into my father’s cofiSn ; and would 
 thankfully have taken her home a shawl of divers colors on 
 both sides, and a pretty damsel or two, in imitation of Sis- 
 era : but she always liked to choose her damsels for herself. 
 
 It was lucky, in her last choosing, she chanced on Joan 
 Agnew ; but -we are a far way yet from Joanie’s time, I don’t 
 quite knowhow far. Turner died, as I said, in 1851 : Prout 
 had left us still earlier ; there could be no more sharing of 
 festivities on my birthday with him. He w^ent home to De- 
 Crespigny Terrace from Denmark Hill one evening, seeming 
 perfectly well and happy ; — and we saw him no more. 
 
 And my dog Wisie, was he dead too ? It seems wholly 
 
MONT VELAN. 
 
 405 
 
 wonderful to me at this moment that be should ever have 
 died. He was a wliite spitz, exactly like Carpaccio’s dog in 
 the picture of St. Jerome ; and he came to me from a young 
 Austrian officer, who had got tired of him, — the Count Thun, 
 who fell afterward at Solferino. Before the dog was used 
 enough to us, George and I took him to Lido to give him a 
 little sea bath. George was holding him by his fore-paws 
 upright among the little crisp breakers. Wisie snatched 
 them out of his hands, and ran at full speed — into Fairyland, 
 like Frederick the Great at Mollwitz. He was lost on Lido 
 for three days and nights, living by petty larceny, the fisher- 
 men and cottagers doing all they could to catch him ; but 
 they told me he “ ran like a hare and leaped like a horse.” 
 
 At last, either overcome by liunger, or having made up his 
 mind that even my service was preferable to liberty on Lido, 
 he took the deep water in broad daylight, and swam straight 
 for Venice. A fisherman saw him from a distance, rowed 
 after him, took him, tired among the weeds, and brought him 
 to me — the Madonna della Salute having been proj^itious to 
 his repentant striving with the sea. 
 
 From that time he became an obedient and affectionate 
 dog, though of extremely self-willed and self-possessed char- 
 acter. I w’as then living on the north side of St. Mark’s 
 Place, and he used to sit outside the window on the ledge at 
 the base of its pillars greater part of the day, observant of the 
 manners and customs of Venice. Beturning to England, I 
 took him over the St. Gothard, but found him entirety un- 
 appalled by any of the wmrk of Devils on it — big or little. 
 He saw nothing to trouble himself about in precipices, if they 
 were wide enough to put his paws on ; and the dog wdio had 
 fled madly from a crisp sea wave, trotted beside the fall of the 
 Reuss just as if it had been another White Dog, a little big- 
 ger, created out of foam. 
 
 Reaching Paris, he considered it incumbent upon him to 
 appear unconscious of the existence of that city, or of the 
 Tuileries gardens and Rue Rivoli, since they were not St. 
 Mark’s Place ; — but, half asleep one evening, on a sofa in the 
 entresol at Meurice’s, and hearing a bark in the street wdiich 
 
406 
 
 PR^ETERITA. 
 
 sounded Venetian — sprang tbrougb tbe window in expectation 
 of finding himself on tbe usual ledge — and fell fifteen feet^ to 
 the pavement. As I ran down, I met him rushing up tbe 
 hotel stairs, (be bad gathered himself from the stones in an 
 instant,) bleeding and giddy ; he staggered round and round 
 two or three times, and fell helpless on the floor. I don’t 
 know if young ladies’ dogs faint, really, when they are hurt. 
 He, Wisie, did not faint, nor even moan, but he could not 
 stir, except in cramped starts and shivers. I sent for what 
 veterinary help was within reach, and heard that the dog 
 might recover, if he could be kept quiet for a day or two in a 
 dog-hospital. But my omnibus was at the door, for the Lon- 
 don train. In the very turn and niche of time I heard that 
 Macdonald of St. Martin’s was in the hotel, and would take 
 charge of Wisie for the time necessary. The poor little 
 speechless, luckless, wistfully gazing doggie was tenderly put 
 in a pretty basket, (going to be taken where ? thinks the 
 beating heart,) looks at his master to read what he can in the 
 sad face — can make out nothing ; is hurried out of the inexor- 
 able door, downstairs ; finds himself more nearly dead next 
 day, and among strangers. (Two ?m7es away from Meurice’s, 
 along the Boulevard, it was.) 
 
 He takes and keeps council with himself on that matter. 
 Drinks and eats what he is given, gratefully ; swallows his 
 medicine obediently ; stretches his limbs from time to time. 
 There was only a wicket gate, he saw, between the Boulevard 
 and him. Silently, in the early dawn of the fourth or fifth 
 da}% I think, he leaped it, and along two miles of Parisian 
 Boulevard came back to Meurice’s. 
 
 I do not believe there was ever a more wonderful piece of 
 instinct certified. For Macdonald received him, in astonish- 
 ment, — and Wisie trusted Macdonald to bring him to his lost 
 master again. The Schehallien chief brought him to Den- 
 mark Hill ; where of course Wisie did not know whether 
 
 * Thirteen feet nine, I find, on exact measurement, coming hack to 
 Meurice’s to make sure. It is the height of the capitals of the piers in 
 the Rue Rivoli, 
 
M02sT VELAN. 
 
 407 
 
 something still worse might not befall him, or whether he 
 would be allowed to stay. But he was allowed, and became 
 a bright part of my mother’s day, as v/ell as of mine, from 
 1852 to 1858, or perhaps longer. But I must go back now 
 to 1854-56. 
 
 1854. The success of the first volume of “ Modern Paint- 
 ers ” of course gave me entrance to the polite circles of Lon- 
 don ; but at that time, even more than now, it was a mere 
 torment and horror to me to have to talk to big people whom 
 I didn’t care about. Sometimes, indeed, an incident hap- 
 pened that was amusing or useful to me ; — I heard Macaulay 
 spout the first chapter of Isaiah, without understanding a syl- 
 lable of it ; — saw the Bishop of Oxford taught by Sir Robert 
 Inglis to drink sherry cobbler through a straw ; — and formed 
 one of the worshipful concourse invited by the Bunsen family, 
 to hear them “talk Bunsenese ” (Lady Trevelyan), and see 
 them making presents to — each other — from their family 
 Christmas tree, and private manger of German Magi. But, 
 as a rule, the hours given to the polite circles were an anger- 
 ing penance to me, — until, after I don’t know how many, a 
 good chance came, worth all the penitentiary time endured 
 before. 
 
 I had been introduced one evening, with a little more cir- 
 cumstance than usual, to a seated lady, beside whom it was 
 evidently supposed I should hold it a privilege to stand for a 
 minute or two, with leave to speak to her. I entirely con- 
 curred in that view of the matter ; but, having ascertained in 
 a moment that she was too pretty to be looked at, and yet 
 keep one’s wits about one, I followed, in what talk she led me 
 to, with my eyes on the ground. Presently, in some refer- 
 ence to Raphael or Michael Angelo, or the musical glasses, 
 the word “ Rome ” occurred ; and a minute afterward, some- 
 thing about “Christmas in 1840.” I looked up with a start ; 
 and saw that the face was oval, — fair, — ’the hair, light brown. 
 After a pause, I was rude enough to repeat her words, 
 “Christmas in 1840! — were you in Rome then?’' “Yes,” 
 she said, a little surprised, and now meeting my eyes with 
 hers, inquiringly. 
 
408 
 
 PRjETERITA. 
 
 Another tenth of a minute passed before I spoke again. 
 
 “ Why, I lost all that winter in Eome in hunting you ! ” 
 
 It was Egeria herself ! then Mrs. Cowper-Temple. She 
 was not angry ; and became from that time forward a tute- 
 lary power, — of the brightest and happiest ; differing from 
 Lady Trevetyan’s, in that Lady Trevelyan hadn’t all her own 
 w^ay at home ; and taught me, therefore, to look upon life as 
 a “ Spiritual combat ; ” but Egeria always had her own way 
 everywhere — thought that I aiso should have mine, — and gen- 
 erally got it for me. 
 
 She was able to get a good deal of it for me, almost imme- 
 diately, at Broadlands, because Mr. Cowper-Temple was at 
 that time Lord Palmerston’s private secretary : and it had 
 chanced that in 1845 I had some correspondence with the 
 government about Tintoret’s Crucifixion ; — not the great 
 Crucifixion in the Scuola di San Kocco, but the bright one 
 w'ith the grove of lances in the Church of St. Cassan, which I 
 wanted to get for the National Gallery. I wu’ote to Lord 
 Palmerston about it, and believe we should have got it, but 
 for Mr. Edward Cheney’s putting a spoke in the wheel for 
 pure spite. However, Lord Palmerston was, I believe, satis- 
 fied with what I had done ; and, now perhaps thinking there 
 might be some trustworthy official qualities in me, allowed 
 Mr. Cowper-Temple to bring me, one Saturday evening, to go 
 dowm with him to Broadlands. It was dark when we reached 
 the South-Western station. Lord Palmerston received me 
 much as Lord Oldborough receives Mr. Temple in “Patron- 
 age — gave me the seat opposite his own, he with his back 
 
 to the engine. Mr. Cowper-Temple beside me; — Lord 
 Palmerston’s box of business papers on the seat beside him. 
 He unlocked it and looked over a few, — said some hospitable 
 w'ords, enough to put me at ease, and went to sleep, or at 
 least remained quiet, till we got to Komsey. I forget the 
 dinner, that Saturday ; but I certainly had to take in Lady 
 Palmerston ; and must have pleased her more or less, for on 
 the Sunday morning Lord Palmerston took me himself to the 
 service in Komsey Abbey : drawing me out a little in the 
 drive through the village ; and that day at dinner he put me 
 
MONT VELAN. 
 
 409 
 
 on Ins right hand, and led the conversation distinctly to the 
 wildest political theories I was credited with,* cross-examin- 
 ing me playfully, but attending quite seriously to my points ; 
 and kindly and clearly showing me where I should fail, in 
 practice. He disputed no principle with me, (being, I fan- 
 cied, partly of the same myid with me about principles,) but 
 only feasibilities ; whereas in every talk permitted me more 
 recently by Mr. Gladstone, he disputes all the principles be- 
 fore their application ; and the application of all that get past 
 the dispute. D’Israeli differed from both in making a jest 
 alike of principle and practice ; but I never came into full 
 collision with him but once. It is a long story, about little 
 matters ; but they had more influence in the end than many 
 greater ones, — so I will write them. 
 
 I never went to official dinners in Oxford if I could help 
 it ; not that I was ever really wanted at them, but sometimes 
 it became my duty to go, as an Art Professor ; and when the 
 Princess of Wales came, one winter, to look over the Art 
 Galleries, I had of course to attend, and be of what use I 
 could : and then came commands to the dinner at the Dean- 
 ery, — where I knew no more how to behave than a marmot 
 pup ! However, my place was next but one to DTsraeli’s, 
 whose head, seen close, interested me ; the Princess, in the 
 centre of the opposite side of the table, might be glanced at 
 now and then, — to the forgetfulness of the evils of life. No- 
 body wanted me to talk about anything ; and I recovered 
 peace of mind enough, in a little while, to hear D’Israeli talk, 
 which was nice ; I think we even said something to each other, 
 once, about the salmon. Well — then, presently I was aware 
 of a little ripple of brighter converse going round the table, 
 and saw it had got at the Princess, and a glance of D’Israeli’s 
 
 * The reader will please remember that the “ Life of the Workman ” 
 in the “ Stones of Venice,” the long note on Education at the end of 
 first volume of “Modern Painters.” and the fierce vituperation of tlie 
 Renaissance schools in all my historical teaching, were at this time 
 attracting far more attention, because part of ray architectural and 
 pictorial work, than ever afterward the commercial and social analyses 
 of “ Unto This Last.” 
 
410 
 
 PRJiJTEBITA. 
 
 made me tliiiik it must have something to do with me. And 
 so it had, thus : — It had chanced either the day before, or the 
 day before that, that the Planet Saturn had treated me with 
 his usual adversity in the carrying out of a plot with iUice in 
 Wonderland. For, that evening, the Dean and Mrs. Liddell 
 dined by command at Blenheim : but the girls were not com- 
 manded ; and as I had been complaining of never getting a 
 sight of them latelj^, after knowing them from the nursery, 
 Alice said that she thought, perhaps, if I would come round 
 after papa and mamma were safe off to Blenheim, Edith and 
 she might give me a cup of tea and a little singing, and 
 Rhoda show me how she was getting on wdth her drawing 
 and geometry, or the like. And so it was arranged. The 
 night was wild with snow, and no one likely to come round 
 to the Deanery after dark. I think Alice must have sent me 
 a little note, when the eastern coast of Tom Quad was clear. 
 I slipped round from Corpus through Peckvvater, shook the 
 snow off my gown, and found an armchair ready for me, and 
 a bright fireside, and a laugh or two, and some pretty music 
 looked out, and tea coming up. 
 
 AVell, I think Edith had got the tea made, and Alice was 
 just bringing the muffins to perfection — I don’t recollect 
 that Rhoda was there ; (I never did, that anybody else was 
 there, if Edith was ; but it is all so like a dream now, I’m not 
 sure) — when there was a sudden sense of some stars having 
 been blown out by the wind, round the corner ; and then a 
 crushing of the snow outside the house, and a drifting of it 
 inside ; and the children all scampered out to see what was 
 wrong, and I followed slowly ; — and there were the Dean and 
 Mrs. Liddell standing just in the middle of the hall, and the 
 footmen in consternation, and a silence, — and — 
 
 “ How sorry you must be to see us, Mr. Ruskin ! ” began 
 at last Mrs. Liddell. 
 
 “I never was more so,” I replied. ‘‘But what’s the mat- 
 ter?” 
 
 “Well,” said the Dean, “we couldn’t even get past the 
 parks ; the snow’s a fathom deep in the Woodstock Road. 
 But never mind ; we’ll be very good and quiet, and keep out 
 
MONT VELAN. 
 
 411 
 
 of the way. Go back to your tea, and we’ll have our dinner 
 downstairs.” 
 
 And so we did ; but we couldn’t keep papa and mamma 
 out of the drawing-room when they had done dinner, and I 
 went back to Corpus, disconsolate. 
 
 Now, whether the Dean told the Princess himself, or 
 whether Mrs. Liddell told, or the girls themselves, somehow 
 this story got all round the dinner table, and D’Israeli was 
 perfect in every detail, in ten minutes, nobod}'- knew how. 
 When the Princess rose, there was clearly a feeling on her 
 part of some kindness to me ; and she came very soon, in the 
 drawing-room, to receive the report of the Slade Professor. 
 
 Now, in the Deanery drawing-room, everybody in Oxford 
 who hadn’t been at the dinner was waiting to have their slice 
 of Princess — due officially — and to be certified in the papers 
 next day. The Princess, — knowing whom she had to speak 
 to , — might speak to, or mightn’t, without setting the whole 
 of Oxford by the ears next day, simjfiy walked to the people 
 she chose to honor with audience, and stopped, to hear if they 
 had anything to say, I saw my turn had come, and the re- 
 volving zodiac brought its fairest sign to me : she paused, and 
 the attendant stars and terrestrial beings round, listened, to 
 hear what the marmot-pup had to say for itself. 
 
 In the space of, say, a minute and a half, I told the Princess 
 that Landscape-painting had been little cultivated by the 
 Heads of Colleges, — that it had been still less cultivated by the 
 Undergraduates, and that my young-lady pupils always ex- 
 pected me to teach them how to paint like Turner, in six les- 
 sons. Finding myself getting into difficulties, I stopped : the 
 Princess, I suppose, felt I was getting her into difficulties too ; 
 so she bowed courteously, and went on — to the next Professor, 
 in silence. 
 
 The crowd, which had expected a compliment to Her Royal 
 Highness of best Modern Painter quality, was extremely dis- 
 appointed ; and a blank space seemed at once to form itself 
 round me, when the door from the nurseries opened ; and — 
 enter Rhoda — in full dress ! 
 
 .. Very beautiful ! But just a snip too short in the petti- 
 
412 
 
 PRjETERITA. 
 
 coats, — a trip too dainty in tlie ankles, a dip too deep of sweet- 
 briar red in the ribands. Not the damsel who came to hearken, 
 named Rhoda, — by any means ; — but as exquisite a little 
 spray of rhododendron ferrugineum as ever sparkled in Al- 
 pine dew. 
 
 D’Israeli saw his opening in an instant. Drawing himself 
 to his full height, he advanced to meet Rhoda. The whole 
 room became all eyes and ears. Bowing with kindly rever- 
 ence, he waved his hand, and introduced her to — the world. 
 “ Tkh is, I understand, the young lady in whose art-educa- 
 tion Professor Ruskin is so deeply interested ! ” 
 
 And there was nothing for me but simple extinction ; for I 
 had never given Rhoda a lesson in my life, (no such luck !) ; 
 yet I could not disclaim the interest, — nor disown Mr. Mac- 
 donald’s geometry ! I could only bow as well as a marmot 
 might, in imitation of the Minister ; and get at once away to 
 Corpus, out of human ken. 
 
 This gossip has beguiled me till I have no time left to tell 
 what in proper sequence should have been chiefly dwelt on in 
 this number, — the effect on my mind of the Hospice of St. 
 Bernard, as opposed to the Hermitage of St. Bruno. I must 
 pass at once to the outline of some scenes in early Swiss 
 histoiy, of which the reader must be reminded before he 
 can understand why I had set my heart so earnestly upon 
 drawing the ruined tow'ers of Fribourg, Thun, and Rhein- 
 felden. 
 
 In the mountain kingdom of which I claimed possession by 
 the law of love, in first seeing it from the Col de la Faucille, 
 the ranges of entirely celestial mountain, the “ everlasting 
 clouds ” whose glory does not fade, are arranged in clusters 
 of summits definitely distinct in form, and always recogniza- 
 ble, each in its own beauty, by any careful observer who has 
 once seen them on the south and north. Of these, the most 
 beautiful in Switzerland, and as far as I can read, or learn, the 
 most beautiful mountain in the wmrld, is the Jungfrau of 
 Lauterbrunnen. Next to her, the double peaks of the Wet- 
 terhorn and Wellborn, with their glacier of Rosenlaui ; next 
 to these, the Aiguille de Bionnassay, the buttress of Mont 
 
MONT VELAN. 
 
 413 
 
 Blanc on the south-west ; and after these loveliest, the various 
 summits of the Bernese, Chamouni, and Zermatt Alps, accord- 
 ing to their relative power, and the advantage of their place 
 for the general observer. Thus the Blumlis Alp, though 
 only ten thousand feet high, has far greater general influence 
 than the IMont Combin, which is nearly as high as Mont 
 Blanc, but can only be seen with diflflculty, and in no associa- 
 tion with the lowlands. 
 
 Among subordinate peaks, five, — the Tournette of Annecy, 
 the Dent du Midi of Bex, the Stockhorn, south of Thun, 
 Mont Pilate at Lucerne, and the High Sentis of Appenzell, — 
 are notable as outlying masses, of extreme importance in their 
 effect on the approaches to the greater chain. But in that 
 chain itself, no mountain of subordinate magnitude can assert 
 any rivalship with Mont Velan, the ruling alp of the Great 
 St. Bernard. 
 
 For Mont Velan signals down the valley of the Rhone, past 
 St. Maurice, to Yevay, the line of the true natural pass of the 
 Great St. Bernard, from France into Italy by the Valley of 
 Martigny and Val d’Aosta ; a perfectly easy and accessible 
 pass for liorse and foot, through all the summer; not danger- 
 ous even in winter, except in storm ; and from the earliest 
 ages, down to Napoleon’s, the pass chosen by the greatest 
 kings, and wisest missionaries. The defiles of the Simplon 
 were still impassable in the twelfth century, and the Episco- 
 pate of the Valais was therefore an isolated territory branch- 
 ing up from Martigny ; unassailable from above, but in con- 
 nection with the Monastery of St. Bernard and Abbey of St. 
 Maurice, holding alike Burgundian, Swiss, and Saracen 
 powers at baj’, beyond the Castle of Chiilon. 
 
 And I must remind the reader that at the time when Swiss 
 history opens, there was no such country as France, in her 
 existing strength. There wais a sacred “Isle of France,” and 
 a group of cities,— Amiens, Paris, Soissons, Rheims, Chartres, 
 Sens, and Troyes, — essentially French, in arts, and faith. 
 But round this Frank central province lay Picard}^ Norman- 
 dy, Brittany, Anjou, Aquitaine, Languedoc, and Provence, all 
 ^of them independent national powers : and on the east of the 
 
414 
 
 PHMTERITA, 
 
 Cote d’Or,'^ the strong and true Mngdiom of Burgundy, which 
 for centuries contended with Germany for the dominion of 
 Switzerland, and, from her Alpine throne, of Europe. 
 
 This was, I have said, at the tim.e “ when Swiss history 
 opens ” — as such. It opens a century earlier, in 773, as a 
 part of all Christian history, when Charlemagne convoked his 
 Franks at Geneva to invade Italy, and dividing them there 
 into two bodies, placed Swiss mountaineers at the head of 
 each, and sending one division by the Great St. Bernard, un- 
 der his own uncle, Bernard,! the son of Charles Martel, led 
 the other himself over the Cenis. It was for this march over 
 the Great St. Bernard that Charlemagne is said to have given 
 the foresters of the central Alps their three trumpets — the 
 Bull of Uri, the Cow of Unterwald, and the horn of Lucerne ; 
 and, without question, after his Italian victories, Switzerland 
 became the organic centre of civilization to his whole empire. 
 “It is thus,” says M. Gaullieur, “that the heroic history of 
 old Zurich, and the annals of Tliurgovie and Bhetie, are full 
 of the memorable acts of the Emperor of the West, and 
 among other traditions the foundation of the Water-church, 
 (Wasserkirche,) at Zurich, attaches itself to the sight of a 
 marvellous serpent, who came to ask justice of the Emperor, 
 in a place where he gave it to all his subjects, by the Limmat 
 shore.” 
 
 I pause here a moment to note that there used to be indeed 
 harmless water serpents in the Swiss waters, when perfectly 
 pure. I myself saw those of the Lac de Cliede, in the year 
 1833, and had one of them drawn out of the water by the 
 char-a-banc driver with his whip, that I might see the yellow 
 ring round its neck. The color of the body was dark green. 
 If the reader will compare the account given in “Eagle’s 
 Nest ” of one of the serpents of the Giesbach, he will under- 
 stand at once how easily the myths of antiquity would attach 
 
 * The eastern boundary of France proper is formed by the masses of 
 the Vosges, Cote d’Or, and Monts de la Madeleine. 
 
 f Don’t confuse him with St. Bernard of Annecy, from whom the pass 
 is named ; nor St. Bernard of Annecy with St. Bernard of Dijon, the 
 Madonna’s chosen servant. 
 
3I0NT VELAN. 
 
 415 
 
 themselves among the Alps, as much to the living* serpent as 
 to the living eagle. 
 
 Also, let the reader note that the heryl-aolomd water of the 
 Lake of Zurich and the Limmat gave, in old days, the per- 
 fectest type of purity, of all the Alpine streams. The deeper 
 blue of the Reuss and Rhone grew dark at less depth, and 
 always gave some idea of the presence of a mineral element, 
 causing the color ; while the Aar had soiled itself with clay 
 even before reaching Berne. But the pale aquamarine crys- 
 tal of the Lake of Zurich, with the fish set in it, some score 
 of them — small and great — to a cube fathom, and the rapid 
 fall and stainless ripple of the Limmat, through the whole of 
 its course under the rocks of Baden to the Reuss, remained, 
 summer and winter, of a constant, sacred, inviolable, super- 
 natural loveliness. 
 
 By the shore of the Limmat then, sate Charlemagne to do 
 justice, as Canute by the sea : — the first “ Water church ” of 
 the beginning river is his building ; and never was St. Je- 
 rome’s rendering of the twenty-third Psalm sung in any 
 church more truly : “ In loco pascue, ibi collocavit me, super 
 aquam refectionis educamV' But the Cathedral Minster of 
 Zurich dates from days no longer questionable or fabu- 
 lous. 
 
 During the first years of the tenth century, Switzerland was 
 disputed between Rodolph IL, King of Burgundy, and Bonr- 
 card, Duke of Swabia. The German duke at last defeated 
 Rodolph, near Winterthur ; but with so much difficulty, that 
 he chose rather thenceforward to have him for ally rather 
 than enemy ; and gave him, for pledge of peace, his daughter 
 Bertha, to be Burgundian queen. 
 
 Bertha, the daughter of the Duke Bourcard and Regilinda, 
 was at this time only thirteen or fourteen. The marriage was 
 not celebrated till 921, — and let the reader remember that 
 marriage, — though there was no Wedding March played at 
 it, but many a wedding prayer said, — for the beginning of all 
 happiness to Burgnudy, Switzeiimid, and Germany. Her 
 husband, in the first ten years after their marriage, in alli- 
 ance with Henry the Fowler of Germany, drove the Saracen 
 
416 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 and Hungarian nomad armies out of the Alps : and then 
 Bertha set herself to efface the traces of their ravages ; build- 
 ing, everywhere through her territories, castles, monasteries, 
 ■walled towns, and towers of refuge ; restoring the town and 
 church of Soleure in 930, of Moutiers in the Jura, in 932 ; in 
 the same year endowing the canons of Amsoldingen at Thun, 
 and then the church of Neuchatel ; finally, toward 935, the 
 church and convent of Zurich, of which her mother Begilinda 
 became abbess in 949, and remained abbess till her death ; — 
 the Queen Bertha herself residing chiefly near her, in a tower 
 on Mount Albis. 
 
 In 950 Bertha had to mourn the death of her son-in-law 
 Lothaire, and the imprisonment of her daughter Adelaide on 
 the Lake of Garda. But Otho the Great, of Germany, avenged 
 Lothaire, drove Berenger out of Italy, and himself married 
 Adelaide, reinstating Conrad of Burgundy on the throne of 
 Burgundy and Switzerland : and then Bertha, strong at once 
 under ‘the protection of the king her son, and the emperor 
 her son-in-law, and with her mother beside her. Abbess of 
 the Convent des Dames Nobles of Zurich, began her work of 
 perfect beneficence to the whole of Switzerland. 
 
 In the summer times, spinning from her distaff as she rode, 
 she traversed — the legends say, with onty a country guide to 
 lead her horse, (when such a queen’s horse would need lead- 
 ing !) — all the now peaceful fields of her wide dominion, from 
 Jura to the Alps. My own notion is that an Anne-of-Geier- 
 stein-like maid of honor or two must have gleamed here and 
 there up and down the hills beside her ; and a couple of old 
 knights, perhaps, followed at their own pace. Howsoever, 
 the queen verily did know her peasants, and their cottages 
 and fields, from Zurich to Geneva, and ministered to them 
 for full twelve years. 
 
 In 962, her son Conrad gave authority almost monarchic, 
 to her Abbey of Bayern e, which could strike a coinage of 
 its own. Not much after that time, her cousin Ulrich, 
 Bishop of Strasbourg, came to visit her ; and with him and 
 the king her sou, she revisited all the religious institutions 
 she had founded, and finally, with them both, consecrated 
 
MONT YELAN 
 
 417 
 
 the Church of Neuchatel to the Virgin. The Monustery of 
 the Great St. Bernard was founded at the same time. 
 
 I cannot find the year of her death, but her son Conrad 
 died in 993, and was buried beside his motiier at Payerne. 
 
 And during the whole of the 11th century, and more than 
 half of the 12th, the power of Bertha’s institutions, and of 
 the Church generally, increased in Switzerland ; but gradually 
 corrupted by its wealth of territor}^ into a feudal hierarch^', 
 against which, together with that of the nobles who were 
 always at war with each other, Duke Berthold IV., of Zseh* 
 ringen, undertook, in 1178, the founding of Fiubourg in 
 Uchtland. 
 
 The culminating point of the new city above the scarped 
 rocks which border the Sarine-(on the eastern bank?) was 
 occupied by the Chateau de Tyr (Tyrensis), ancient home of 
 the Counts of that country, and cradle, it is believed,, of the 
 house of Thierstein. Berthold called his new town Freyburg, 
 as well as that which existed already in his states of Breisgau, 
 because he granted it in effect the same liberties, the same 
 franchises, and the same communal charter (Handfeste) which 
 had been given to the other Fribourg. A territory of nine 
 leagues in circumference was given to Fribourg in Uchtland, 
 a piece which they still call “the old lands.” Part of the 
 new colonists came from Breisgau, Black Forest people ; part 
 from the Roman Pays de Vaud. The Germans lived in the 
 valley, the others on the heights. Built on the confines of 
 France and Germany, Fribourg served for the point of 
 contact to two nations until then hostile ; and the Handfeste 
 of Fribourg served for a model to all the municipal constitu- 
 tions of Switzerland. Still, at this day, the town is divided 
 into two parts, and into tw'O languages. 
 
 This was in 1178. Twelve years later, Berthold V., the 
 greatest and the best of the Dukes of Zaehringen, made, of 
 the village of Burgdorf in the Emmenthal, the town of 
 Berthoud, the name given probably from his own ; and then, 
 in the year 1191, laid the foundations of the town of Berne. 
 
 He chose for its site a spot in the ro3^al domain, for he 
 intended the new city to be called the Imperial city ; and 
 27 
 
418 
 
 PE^TERITA, 
 
 the place he chose was near a manor which had served in 
 the preceding century for occasional residence to the Kodol- 
 phian kings. It "was a long high promontory, nearly an 
 island, whose cliff sides were washed by the Aar. The Duke 
 of Zaehriiigen’s Marshal, Cuno of Babenberg, received orders 
 to surround with walls the little island on which stood the 
 simple hamlet of Berne, now become the powerful city of 
 Berne, praiseworthy at first in the democratic spirit of its 
 bourgeois, and afterward in its aristocracy, whose policy’', at 
 once elevated, firm, consistent, and ambitious, mingled itself 
 in all the great affairs of the neighboring countries, and 
 became a true power, upon which the sovereigns of the first 
 order had sometimes to count. 
 
 Lasth^, Berthold built the Castle of Thun, where the Aar 
 issues out of its lake ; castle which, as may be seen at the 
 present day, commanded the whole level plain, opening to 
 Berne, and the pass into the Oberland. 
 
 Thus the three towms Fribourg, Berne, and Thun, form, at 
 the close of the twelfth century, the triple fortress of the 
 Dukes of Zsehringen, strengthened by a body of burghers to 
 whom the Dukes have granted privileges till then unknown ; 
 this Ducal and Civic allied power asserting itself in entire 
 command of Switzerland proper, against the Counts of Savoy 
 in the south, the Burgundian princes in the east, and the ec- 
 clesiastical power of Ital}^ vested in the Bishops of Sion, in 
 the Valais,— thence extending from the mouth of the Eh one 
 into the Pays de Vaud, and enthroned there at Payerne by 
 the bequests of Queen Bertha. The monks of her royal ab- 
 bey at Payerne, seeing that all the rights they possessed over 
 the Pays de Vaud were endangered by the existence of Fri- 
 bourg, opposed the building of the Church of St. Nicholas 
 there, asserting that the ground assigned to it and its monas- 
 tery belonged to the Abbey of Payerne. Berthold IV. \vas 
 on the point of attacking the monks on their own rock when 
 the nobles of the Vaud interfered, as mediators. 
 
 Four of them — Ame, Count of Geneva, Vauthier of Blonay, 
 Conrad of Estaveyer, and Kodolph of Montagny— compelled 
 Berthold to ratify the privileges, and resign the lands, of the 
 
MONT YELAN. 
 
 419 
 
 monks of Paj'erne, by a deed signed in 1178 ; the church and 
 monastery of St. Nicholas being founded at Fribourg under 
 their rule. And this constitution of Fribourg, whether the 
 Dukes of Zsehringen foresaw it or not, became the fecund 
 germ of a new social order. The “Commune” was the ori- 
 gin of the “ Canton,” “and the beneficent sera of communal 
 liberty served for acheminement to the constitutional liberties 
 and legislative codes of modern society.” 
 
 Thus far M. Gaullieur, from whose widow I leased my own 
 chalet at Mornex, and whose son I instructed, to the best of 
 my power, in clearing land of useless stones on the slope of 
 the Saleve, — under the ruins of the old Chateau de Savoie, 
 the central castle, once, of all Savoy ; on the site of which, 
 and summit of its conical hill-throne, seated himself, in his 
 pleasure villa, all the summer long, my very dear friend and 
 physician, old Dr. Gosse of Geneva ; Avhose mountain garden, 
 about three hundred feet above mine, was indeed enclosed 
 by the remaining walls and angle towers of the Castle of 
 Savoy, of which the Doctor had repaired the lowest tow^er so 
 as to serve for a reservoir to the rain rushing down the steep 
 garden slopes in storm, — and to let none of it be wasted 
 afterward in the golden Saleve sunshine. 
 
 “ C’etait line tour de guerre,” said the Doctor to me tri- 
 umphantly, as he first led me round the confines of his es- 
 tate. “ Voyez. C etait une tour de guerre. J’en ai fait une 
 bouteille ! ” 
 
 But that walk by the castle wall was long after the Mont 
 Velan times of which I am now telling ; — in returning to 
 which, will the reader please note the homes of the four Vau- 
 dois knights who stood for Queen Bertha’s monastery: Ame 
 of Geneva, Vauthier of Blonay, Conrad of Estaveyer, and 
 Eodolph of Montagny ? 
 
 Arne’s castle of Geneva stood on the island, where the clock 
 tower is now ; and has long been destroyed : of Estaveyer and 
 Montagny I know nothing ; but the Castle of Blonay still 
 stands above Vevay, as Chillon still at the head of her lake ; 
 but the chfiteau of Blonay has been modified gradually into 
 comfort of sweet habitation, the war towers of it sustaining 
 
420 
 
 PR.^JTERTTA. 
 
 timber-latticed walls, and crowned by pretty turrets and pin- 
 nacles in cheerful nobleness — trellised all with fruitage or 
 climbing flowers ; its moats now all garden ; its surrounding 
 fields all lily and meadowsweet, with blue gleamings* it may 
 be of violet, it may be of gentian ; its heritage of human life 
 guarded still in the peacefully scattered village, or farm-house, 
 here and there half hidden in apple-blossom, or white with 
 fallen cherry-blossom, as if with snow. 
 
 I have already told how fond my father was of staying at 
 the Trois Eois of Vevay, when I was up among the aiguilles 
 of Chamouni. In later years, I acknowledged his better taste,^ 
 and would contentedly stay with him at Vevay, as long as he 
 liked, — myself always perfectly happy in the fields and on the 
 hillsides round the Chateau Blonay. Also, my father and 
 mother were quite able at any time to get up as far as Blonay 
 themselves ; and usually walked so far with me when I w^as 
 intent on the higher hills, — waiting, they, and our old servant, 
 Lucy Tovey, (whom we took abroad with ns sometimes that 
 she might see the places we were always talking of,) until I 
 had done my bit of drawing or hammering, and we all went 
 down together, through the vineyards, to four o’clock dinner ; 
 then the evening was left free for me to study the Dent d’Oche 
 and chains of crag declining southward to Geneva, by sunset. 
 
 Thus Vevay, year after j^ear, became the most domestic of 
 all our foreign homes. At Venice, my mother always thought 
 the gondola would upset ; at Chamouni, my father, that I 
 should fall into the Mer de Glace ; at Pisa, he would ask me, 
 “ What shall I give the coachman ? ” and at Florence, dispute 
 the delightfulness of Cimabue. But at Vova}", we were all of 
 a mind. My father was professionally at home in the vine- 
 yards, — sentimentally in the Bosquet de Julie ; my mother 
 liked apple orchards and narcissus meads as much as I did ; 
 and for me, there was the Dent du Midi, for eternal snow, in 
 the distance ; the Eochers de Naye, for climbing, accessibly 
 near ; Chillon for history and poetry ; and the lake, in the 
 whole breadth of it from Lausanne to Meillerie, for Turnerian 
 mist effects of morning and Turnerian sunsets at evening ; 
 and moonlights, — as if the moon were one radiant glacier of 
 
MONT VELAN. 
 
 421 
 
 frozen gold. Then if one wanted to go to Geneva for any- 
 thing, there were little steamers, — no mortal would believe, 
 now, how little ; one used to be afraid an extra basket of 
 apples would be too much for them, when the pier was full of 
 market people. They called at all the places along the north 
 shore, mostly for country folks ; and often their little cabins 
 were quite empty. English people thought the lake of Gen- 
 eva too dull, if they had ever more than an hour of it. 
 
 It chanced so, one day, when we were going from Vevay to 
 .Geneva. It was hot on the deck, and we all went down into 
 the little cabin, which the waves from the paddle wheels 
 rushed past the windows of, in lovely wild masses of green 
 and silver. There was no one in the cabin but ourselves (that 
 is to say, papa, mamma, old Anne, and me), and a family 
 whom we supposed, rightly, to be American, of the best sort. 
 A mother with three daughters, and her son,— he in charge 
 of them all, perhaps of five or six and twenty ; his sisters 
 younger ; the mother just old enough to he their mother ; all 
 of them quietly and gracefully cheerful. There was the cabin 
 table betw’een us, covered with the usual Swiss news about 
 nothing, and an old caricature book or two. The waves went 
 on rushing by ; neither of the groups talked, but I noticed 
 that from time to time the young American cast somewhat 
 keen, though entirely courteous, looks of scrutiny at my father 
 and mother. 
 
 In a few minutes after I had begun to notice these looks, 
 he rose, with the sweetest quiet smile I ever saw on any face 
 (unless, perhaps, a nun’s, when she has some grave kindness 
 to do), crossed to our side of the cabin, and addressing him- 
 self to my father, said, with a true expression of great glad- 
 ness, and of frank trust that his joy would be understood, 
 that he knew who we were, was most thankful to have met 
 us, and that he prayed permission to introduce his mother 
 and sisters to us. 
 
 The bright eyes, the melodious voice, the perfect manner, 
 the simple, but acutely flattering, words, won my father in an 
 instant. The New Englander sat down beside us, his mother 
 and sisters seeming at once also to change the steamer’s 
 
423 
 
 PB^TERITA. 
 
 cabin into a reception room in their own home. The rest of 
 the time till we reached Geneva passed too quicklj" ; we 
 arranged to meet in a day or two agaiD, at St. Martin’s. 
 
 And thus I became possessed of my second friend, after 
 Dr. John Brown ; and of. my first real tutor, Charles Eliot 
 Norton. 
 
 CHAPTEK m. 
 
 l’esterelle. 
 
 Sallenches, Savoy, Wi September, 1888. 
 
 The meeting at St. Martin’s with Norton and his family 
 was a very happy one. Entirely seusible and amiable, all 
 of them ; with the farther elasticity and acuteness of the 
 Americau intellect, and no taint of American ways. Charles 
 himself, a man of the highest natural gifts, in their kind ; 
 observaut and critical rather than imaginative, but with an 
 all-pervading sympathy and sensibility, absolutely free from 
 envy, ambition, or covetousness : * a scholar from liis cradle, 
 not only now a man of the world, but a gentleman of the 
 world, whom the highest born and best bred of every nation, 
 from the Bed Indian to the White Austrian, would recognize 
 in a moment, as of their caste. 
 
 In every branch of classical literature he was my superior ; 
 knew old English writers better than I, — much more, old 
 French ; and had active fellowship and close friendship with 
 the then really progressive leaders of thought in his own 
 country, Longfellow, Lowell, and Emerson. 
 
 All the sympathy, and all the critical subtlety, of his mind 
 had been given, not only to the reading, but to the trial and 
 
 * I mean, covetousness of beautiful tilings, the only sort that is 
 possible to people like Charles Norton or me. He gave me his best 
 Greek “ Fortune,” a precious little piece of flying marble, with her feet 
 on the world, engraved with hexagonal tracery like a honeycomb. We 
 both love its honey — but best, given by each other. 
 
L'ESTERELLE. 
 
 423 
 
 following out of the whole theory of “ Modern Painters ; ” so 
 that, as I said, it was a real joy for him to meet me, and a 
 very bright and singular one for both of us, when I knocked 
 at his door in the Hotel du Mont Blanc at five in the morn- 
 isg ; and led him, as the roselight flushed the highest snow, 
 up the winding path among the mountain meadows of Sal- 
 lenches. 
 
 I can see them at this moment, those mountain meadows, 
 if I rise from my writing-table, and open the old barred valves 
 of the corner window of the Hotel Bellevue ; — yes, and there 
 is the very path we climbed that day together, apparently un- 
 changed. But on what seemed then the everlasting hills, be- 
 yond which the dawn rose cloudless, and on the heaven in 
 which it rose, and on all that w^e that day knew, of human 
 mind and virtue, — how great the change, and .sorrowful, I 
 cannot measure, and, in this place, I will not speak. 
 
 That morning gave to me, I said, my first tutor for Dr. 
 John Brown, however far above me in general power, and in 
 the knowledge proper to his own profession, yet in the sim- 
 plicity of his affection liked everything I wrote, for what was 
 true in it, however imperfectly or faultfully expressed : but 
 Norton saw all my weaknesses, measured all my narrownesses, 
 and, from the first, took serenely, and as it seemed of neces- 
 sity, a kind of paternal authority over me, and a right of guid- 
 ance though the younger of the two, — and always admit- 
 ting my full power in its own kind; nor only admitting, but 
 in the prettiest way praising and stimulating. It was almost 
 impossible for him to speak to anyone he cared for, without 
 some side-flash of witty compliment ; and to me, his infinitely 
 varied and loving praise became a constant motive to exertion, 
 and aid in effort : yet he never allowed me in the slightest 
 violation of the laws, either of good writing, or social pru- 
 dence, without instant blame or warning. 
 
 I was entirely conscious of his rectorial power, and affec- 
 tionately submissive to it ; so that he might have done anj'- 
 
 * Gordon was only my master in Greek, and in common sense ; he 
 never criticised my books, and, I suppose, rarely read them. 
 
424 
 
 PRjETERITA. 
 
 tliiug with me, but for the unhappy difference in our innate, 
 and unchangeable, political faiths. 
 
 Since that day at Sallenches it has become a matter of the 
 most curious speculation to me, what sort of soul Charles 
 Norton would have become, if he had had the blessing to be 
 born an English Tory, or a Scotch Jacobite, or a French Gen- 
 tilhomme, or a Savoyard Count. I think I should have liked 
 him best to have been a Savoyard Count ; say. Lord of the 
 very Tower of Sallenches, a quarter of a mile above me at the 
 opening of the glen, — habitable yet, and inhabited ; it is half 
 hidden by its climbing grapes. Then, to have read the “Fio- 
 retti di San Francesco,” (which he found out, New Englander 
 though he was, before I did,) in earliest boyhood ; then to 
 have been brought into instructively grievous collision with 
 Commerce, Liberty, and Evangelicalism at Geneva ; then to 
 have learned Political Economy from Carlyle and me ; and 
 finally devoted himself to write the History of the Bishops of 
 Sion ! What a grand, happy, consistent creature he would 
 have been, — while now he is as hopelessly out of gear and 
 place, over in the States there, as a runaway star dropped into 
 Purgatory ; and twenty times more a slave than the blackest 
 nigger he ever set his white scholars to fight the South for ; 
 because all the faculties a black has may be fully developed 
 by a good master (see Miss Edgeworth’s story of the grateful 
 Negro),'* — while only about the thirtieth or fortieth part of 
 Charles Norton’s effective contents and capacity are beneficially 
 spent in the dilution of the hot lava, and fructification of the 
 hot ashes, of American character ; — which are overwhelming, 
 borne now on volcanic air, — the life of Scotland, England, 
 France, and Italy. I name Scotland first, for reasons which 
 will be told in next “ Prseterita,” — “Joanna’s Care.” Mean- 
 
 * I showed the valley of Chamoiiiii, and the “ Pierre-a-Bot ” above 
 Neuchatel, to Mrs. Beecher Stowe and her pretty little daughter 
 Georgie, — when Georgie was about sixteen, and wouldn’t let me say a 
 word against Uncle Tom ; howbeit, that story of the Grateful Negro, 
 Robinson Crusoe, and Othello, contain, any of the three, more, alike 
 worldly and heavenly, wisdom than would furnish three “Uncle Tom’s 
 Cabins.” 
 
L'ESTERELLE. 
 
 425 
 
 time, here is the last letter I have from Norton, showing how 
 we have held hands since that first day on Geneva lake. 
 
 “ Shady Hill, April Wi, 1887. 
 
 It is very good of you, my dearest Ruskin, to send me 
 such a long, pleasant letter, not punishing me for my silence, 
 but trusting to — 
 
 ‘ My thought, whose love for you, 
 
 Though woi’ds come hindmost, holds his rank before.’ 
 
 You are doing too much, and your letter gives me a fear lest, 
 out of care for me, you added a half-hour of effort to the work 
 of a too busy day. How long it is since I first began to preach 
 prudence to you ! and my preaching has availed about as much 
 as the sermons in stones avail to convert the hard-hearted. 
 Well, we are glad to take each other as we are, you ever im- 
 prudent, I ever (I leave the word to your mercy). 
 
 “ The last number of ‘ Prseterita ’ pleased me greatly. There 
 was a sweet tone in it, such as becomes the retrospect of a wise 
 man as he summons the scenes of past life before his eyes ; 
 the clearness, the sharp-cut outline of your memories is a won- 
 der, and their fulness of light and color. My own are very 
 different. I find the outlines of many of them blurred, and 
 theii; colors faint. The loss that came to me fifteen years 
 ago included the loss of vividness of memory of much of my 
 youth. 
 
 “ The winter has been long and hard with us. Even yet 
 there are snow banks in shady places, and not yet is there a 
 sign of a leaf. Even the snowdrops are hardly venturing 
 out of the earth. But the birds have come back, and to-day 
 I hear the woodpeckers knocking at the doors of the old trees 
 to find a shelter and home for the summer. We have had 
 the usual winter pleasures, and all m}^ children have been 
 well, though Lily is always too delicate, and ten days hence I 
 part with her that she may go to England and try there to 
 escape her summer cold. She goes out under Lowell’s 
 charge, and will be with her mother’s sister and cousins in 
 England. My three girls have just come to beg me to go out 
 
426 
 
 PR^TEBITA, 
 
 Avitli them for a walk. So, good-by. I will write soon again. 
 Don’t you write to me when you are tired. I let my eyes 
 rest for an instant on Turner’s sunset, and your sunrise from 
 Herne Hill, which hang before me ; and with a heart full of 
 loving thanks to you, 
 
 “I am ever 
 
 “ Your affectionate, 
 
 “ C. E. N. 
 
 “ My best love to Joan, — to whom I mean to write.” 
 
 Somewhat more of Joan (and Charles also) I have to tell, as 
 I said, in next “ Prseterita.” 
 
 I cannot go on, here, to tell the further tale of our peace 
 and war ; for the fates wove for me, but a little while after 
 they brought me that friend to Sallenches glen, another net 
 of Love ; in which alike the warp and woof were of deeper 
 colors. 
 
 Soon after I returned home, in the eventful year 1858, a 
 lady wrote to me from — somewhere near Green Street, W., 
 — saying as people sometimes did, in those days, that she saw 
 I was the only sound teacher in Art ; but this farther, very 
 seriously, that she wanted her children — two girls and a boy 
 — taught the beginnings of Art rightly ; especially the younger 
 girl, in whom she thought I might find some power worth 
 developing : would I come and see her ? I thought I should 
 rather like to ; so I went, to near Green Street ; and found 
 the mother — the sort of person I expected, but a good deal 
 more than I expected, and in all sorts of w'ays. Extremely 
 pretty still, herself, nor at all too old to learn many things ; 
 but mainly anxious for her children. Emily, the elder 
 daughter, wasn’t in ; but Rosie was, — should she be sent for 
 to the nursery ? Yes, I said, if it would not tease the child, 
 she might be sent for. So presently the drawing-room door 
 opened, and Rosie came in, quietly taking stock of me wdth 
 her blue eyes as she walked across the room ; gave me her 
 hand, as a good dog gives its paw, and then stood a little 
 
L'ESTERELLE, 
 
 427 
 
 back. Nine years old on 3d January, 1858, thus now rising 
 tovvard ten ; neither tall nor short for her age ; a little stiff in 
 her way of standing. The eyes rather deep blue at that 
 time, and fuller and softer than afterward. Lips perfectly 
 lovely in profile ; a little too wide, and hard in edge, seen in 
 front, the rest of the featui-es what a fair, Avell-bred Irish 
 girl’s usually are ; the hair, perhaps, more graceful in short 
 curl round the forehead, and softer than one sees often ; in 
 the close-bound tresses above the neck. 
 
 I thought it likeh^ she might be taught to draw a little, if 
 she would take time ; I did not expect her to take pain^, and 
 told her mother so, at once. Kosie says never a word, but 
 we continue to take stock of each other. “ I thought you so 
 ugly,’" she told me afterward. She did not quite mean that ; 
 but only, her mother having talked much of my “ greatness ” 
 to her, she had expected me to be something like Garibaldi, 
 or the Elgin Theseus : and was extremely disappointed. 
 
 I expressed myself as ready to try what I could make of 
 Rosie ; only I couldn’t come every other day all the way in to 
 Green Street. Mamma asked wTat sort of a road there was 
 to Denmark Hill ? I explained the simplicity and beauty of 
 its ramifications round the Elephant and Castle, and how' one 
 w'as quite in the country as soon as one got past the triangu- 
 lar field at Champion Hill. And the wildernesses of the Obe- 
 lisk having been mapped out, and determined to be passable, 
 the day was really appointed for first lesson at Denmark 
 Hill — and Emily came with her sister. 
 
 Elilily was a perfectly sweet, serene, delicately-chiselled mar- 
 ble nymph of fourteen, softly dark-eyed, rightly tender and 
 graceful in all she did and said. I never saw such a faculty 
 for the aiTangement of things beautifully, in any other human 
 being. If she took up a handful of fiowers, they fell out of her 
 hand in WTeathed jewelleiy of color and form, as if they had 
 been sowm, and had blossomed, to live together so, and no 
 otherwise. Her mother had the same gift, but in its more 
 witty, thoughtful, and scientific range ; in Emily it was pure 
 wild instinct. For an Irish girl, she was not witty, for she 
 could not make a mistake ; one never laughed at what she said. 
 
428 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 but the room was brighter for it. To Kose and me she soon 
 became no more Emily, but “ Wisie,” named after my dead 
 Wisie. All the children, and their hither, loved animals ; — 
 my first sight of papa was as he caressed a green popinjay 
 which was almost hiding itself in his waistcoat. Emily’s 
 pony, Swallow, and Rosie’s dog, Brnno, will have their day 
 in these memoirs ; but Emily’s “Bully ” was the perfectest pet 
 of all;— he used to pass half his day in the air, above her 
 head, or behind her shoulders, holding a little tress of her 
 long hair as far out as he could, on the wing. 
 
 That first day, when they came to Denmark Hill, there was 
 much for them to see ; — my mother, to begin with, and she 
 also had to see them ; on both sides the sight was thought 
 good. Then there were thirty Turners, including the great 
 Rialto ; half-a-dozen Hunts ; a beautiful Tintoret ; iny minerals 
 in the study ; the loaded apple trees in the orchard ; the 
 glowing peaches on the old red garden wall. The lesson lost 
 itself that day in pomiferous talk, with rustic interludes in 
 the stables and pigsty. The pigs especially, it was observed 
 were highly educated, and spoke excellent Irish. 
 
 When next they came, lessons began duly, with perspec- 
 tive, and the analysis of the essential qualities of triangles ! 
 I must state here, generally, that ever since the year I lost in 
 efforts to trisect an angle myself, education, both in drawing 
 and ethics, has been founded by me on the pleasarit and 
 pretty mysteries of trigonometry ! the more resolutely, be- 
 cause I always found ignorance of magnitudes at the root of 
 modern bad taste and frivolity ; and farther, because all the 
 grace, and much of the sentiment, both of plant and mountain 
 form, depends on the angle of the cone they fill with their 
 branches, or rise into with their cliffs. 
 
 These geometrical lessons are always accompanied, when I 
 have girls to teach, by the most careful pencil study of the 
 forms of leaves as they grow, whether on ground or branch. 
 
 In botanical knowledge, and perception of plant-character, 
 my eldest Irish pupil, mamma, was miles and miles my 
 superior ; and in powers of design, both the children were 
 so ; but the fine methods of measurement and delineation 
 
L'ESTEUELLE. 
 
 429 
 
 were new to all of them ; nor less the charm of faithfully 
 represented color, in full daylight, and in the open air. 
 Having Turner’s mountain drawings of his best time beside 
 us, and any quantity of convolvuluses, hollyhocks, plums, 
 peaches, and apples, to bring in from the garden, the after- 
 noon hours went fast ; but so much more in talk than work, 
 tliat I soon found, if either triangles or bindweeds were to 
 come to anything, it must be under the governess’s super- 
 intendence, not mamma’s : and that I should have to make 
 my way to Green Street, and up to the school-room, after 
 all, on at least two out of three of the lesson days. Both the 
 children, to my extreme satisfaction, approved of this an-ange- 
 ment, and the final order was that whenever I happened to go 
 through Green Street, I should, pay them a visit in tlie 
 nursery. Somehow, from that time, most of my London 
 avocations led me through Green Street. 
 
 It chanced above all things well for me that their governess 
 was a woman of great sense and powder, whom the children 
 entirely loved, and under whom mamma put herself, in the 
 school-room, no less meekly than they ; partly in play, but 
 really also a little subdued b}^ the clear insight of the fear- 
 lessly frank preceptress into her own faults. I cannot call 
 them “ foibles,” for her native v/it and strength of character 
 admitted none. 
 
 Rosie had shortly expressed her sense of her governess’s 
 niceness by calling her “Bun;” and I had not been long- 
 free of the school-room before she w^anted a name for me also, 
 significant of like approval. After some deliberation, she 
 christened me “ Crumpet ; ” then, impressed by seeing my 
 gentleness to beggars, canonized me as “Saint Crumpet,” or, 
 shortly and practically, “ St. C.,” — which I remained ever 
 afterward ; only Emily said one day to her sister that the C. 
 did in truth stand for “ Chrysostom.” 
 
 The drawing, and very soon painting, lessons went on 
 meantime quite effectively, both the girls working with quick 
 intelligence and perfect feeling ; so that I was soon able, with 
 their mother’s strong help, to make them understand the 
 essential qualities both of good painting and sculpture. Rose 
 
430 
 
 pbj:eterita. 
 
 went on into geology ; but only far enough to find another 
 play-name for me — “ Archegosaurns.” This was meant partly 
 to indicate my scientific knowledge of Depths and Ages ; 
 ])arfly to admit me more into family relations, her mother 
 having been named, by her cleverest and fondest friend, 
 “ Lacerta” — to signify that she had the grace and wisdom of 
 the serpent, without its poison. 
 
 And things went on, — as good girls will know how, through 
 all that winter ; — in the spring, the Fates brought the first 
 whirlpool into the current of them, in that (I forget exactly 
 Avhy) it was resolved that they should live by the Cascine of 
 Florence in the spring, and on the Lung’ Arno, instead of in 
 the Park by the Serpentine. But there was the comfort for 
 me that Kosie was really a little sorry to go away ; and that 
 she understood in the most curious way how sorry I was. 
 
 Some wise, and prettily mannered, people have told me I 
 should not say anything about Rosie at all. But I am too old 
 now to take advice, and I won’t have this following letter — 
 tlie first she ever wrote me — moulder away, when I can read 
 it no more, lost to all loving hearts. 
 
 Nice, Monday^ March 
 
 Dearest S'h Crumpet, — I am so sorry — I couldn’t write be- 
 fore, there wasn’t one bit of time — I am so sorry you were 
 
 di^sap^^ointed — I only got yr letter yesterday (Sund.a}^), & we 
 
 only got to Nice late on Saturday afternoon— So I have got 
 up so early this morning to try & get a clear hour before 
 breakfast to wnate to you, which you see I’m doing — So you 
 thoLiglit of us, dear S*^. Crumpet, A we too tliought so much 
 of you — Thank you very much for the Diaiy letter ; it was 
 so nice of you to w’rite so long a one — I have so much to tell 
 you too Archigosaurus so I will begin from Dover, & tell 
 w’hat befel us up to Nice — Emily asks me to say that she 
 did a picture at Dover of Dover Castle in a fog — I think it 
 was to please you — 'Well we had a roughish passage, but we^ 
 
 * I leave pauses where the old pages end. — J, R. 
 
UESTERELLE. 
 
 431 
 
 sat on deck & didn’t mind — We thought & talked about 
 you — Every great wave that came we called a ninth wave and 
 we thought how pleasant it w^ be to sit in a storm and draw 
 them, but I think if you had wanted it done I’d have tryed to 
 do it S^ Crumpet — Tliere ^vas what do you think at the prow 
 of our steamer — ^yr brother Archigosaurus, an alligator, and 
 we said it was you — Well so we got to Calais, breakfasted at 
 the Table d’Hdte there, and then began that weary railroad 
 journey from Calais to Paris — The scenery was just the same 
 all the way — I suppose you know it — Those long straight 
 rows of poplars cut even at the tops & flat uninteresting 
 
 countiy. I drew the po^^lars in perspective for j'ou St Crum- 
 IDet — We got to Paris on Friday evening & stayed till 
 
 AVednesday — No, I couldn’t I tell you, there wasn’t one bit of 
 time or do you think I would not have seized it directly for 
 I know yr thinking why didn’t she write — Its too long to say 
 all we did & didn’t do in Paris, so I’ll only tell about the 
 Louvre and Notre Dame. We went to the Louvre. Oh S\ 
 Crumpet how we thought of you there — How we looked and 
 talked about the Titians you told us to look at particularly 
 the glass ball one & the white Rabbit — Yes we looked so 
 much at them and we did, all of us, think them so very beau- 
 tiful — I liked two portraits of Titian’s of two dark gentlemen 
 with earnest eyes better than any I think. W'e thought his 
 skins (I mean the skins he made his picture-people have) so 
 very beautifully done & we looked at the pinks at the corners 
 of the eyes & thought of the Portrait of Lord Bute’s & you 
 again St Crumpet. We liked the picture of Paul Veronese 
 
 of the children playing with the dog very much I think one 
 of them the most prominent with dark eyes & not looking at 
 the dog is very beautiful. AYhy does Paul Veronese put his 
 own family in the pictures of sacred subjects, I wonder? 
 I liked the little puppy in the boys arms trying to get away 
 — The statues in the Louvre I think most beautiful. Is it 
 wrong SK Crumpet to like that noble Venus Victrix as well 
 as Titian If it is, am I a hardened little tinner ? Oh, but 
 
432 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 they are so beautiful those statues there’s one of a Venus 
 leaning against a tree with a Lacerta running up it — Notre 
 Dame they are spoiling as quick as they can by colouring 
 those grand old pillars with ugly daubs of green and yellow 
 etc. Is not that “ light ” in the French ? * It’s a bore 
 saying all we thought of Paris, I must get on to the moun- 
 tains not to say Alps — Don’t be Kinfishery f dear S‘. Crum- 
 pet ; how good it was of you to give yr Turners that you love 
 so much to the Oxford Museum From Paris we started early 
 on Wednesday morning & travelled all day & all the night in 
 the train — Yes you would have said “ Poor Posie ” I was 
 bored But we got over it very well — It was so pleasant to be 
 running after the sun to the south (Dont be Kinglishery) & 
 awaking at about 5 in the morning to see long plains of grey- 
 headed silvery olives and here and there pink perky peach 
 trees dancing among them — And there were groups of dark 
 cool cypress trees pointing upwards, & hills & grey rocks 
 sloping to the sea — the Mediterranean So we shook off our 
 sleepiness, at least Papa Mama and I did for Emily k Adele 
 still slept ; & saw behind those peaks of craggy hills a pink 
 smile coming in the sky telling us that the morning had come 
 really at last So we watched & suddenly there rose (popped 
 w‘* be a better word for it really rose in one instant) such a 
 
 sun — “ nor dim, nor red ” (you know the verse) & then 
 dipped back again below the hills It was so beautiful — But 
 I shocked Mama by saying “ Jack in the box ” which awoke 
 Emily who declared of course she had been wide awake and 
 had seen it all. Why do people always do that, S‘. Crumpet ? 
 Tliis was just before we came to Marseilles. It had been snow- 
 ing the day befoj-e & it was nice to go to sleep k wake up in the 
 summer — We got to Toulon and there we spent the day k 
 oh Archigosaurus we saw so many Lacertas there ; again we 
 
 ♦ Referring to a debate over Mrs. Browning’s poem in defence of 
 them ; the one in wliich she says, rightly, that they are no more 
 “ light ” than a rifle-ball is. 
 
 f King^^XiQvy . Sitting sulkily on a branch. 
 
UE8TERELLE, 
 
 433 
 
 thought of you — How can you wish to be a parrot * — are you 
 not our saint — You wouldn’t look a bit nice in a gold laced 
 cap ; don’t you know blue is the colour you should w^ear. 
 At Toulon it was like July — I don’t like such heat — Trans- 
 plantation & scorching is too much for an Irish rose — But I 
 
 sat with Mama and Emily on a rock & sketched Toulon Har- 
 bour (or rather tried to) for you S\ Crumpet. Then the next 
 we posted, the country was so beautiful some of it & towards 
 evening we saw snowy peaks, they were the mountains of 
 Savoy. I was pretty tired that night & we had to sleep at 
 Frejus such a disagreeable place. The next day we had six 
 horses to our carriage for it was a hilly road. We walked 
 about two hours of the way over the hills f You know what 
 sort of a view there was at the top, S‘. Crumpet & how one 
 stands & stares & says nothing because the words of Grand 
 Glorious, Beautiful etc cannot in one quarter express what 
 one thinks. You the author of M-Ps c'^ describe it Irish roses 
 can’t. But I can tell you how my cousins the moorland roses 
 nodded at me as I passed and how they couldn’t understand 
 why Iiish hedge roses bloomed in July instead of March 
 
 I can tell you how the fields were white with Narcissi, how 
 the roads were edged with mauve-coloured anemones & how 
 the scarlet anemones stood up in the meadows tantalizing me in 
 the carriage so much because I wanted to feel them And 
 there were myrtles (wild) growing close to the blue Mediter- 
 ranean & Mama lay down on them by the seaside at Cannes 
 while Papa and I were talking to a perfectly deaf old French 
 fisherman who gave his % to me as he caught them putting 
 them half alive into my hands, oh, you w^* have been alive 
 
 * I suppose I liad not expressed this farther condition, of being" her 
 father's parrot. 
 
 f The pass of the Esterelle, between Frejus and Nice ; more beauti- 
 ful, always, to me, than all the groves and cliffs of the Eiviera. — J. E., 
 1889. 
 
 t “ Fish ” to be understood; also that the fisherman was not “per- 
 fectly ” deaf, for papa could not have talked with his eyes only, as Eose 
 could. 
 
 28 
 
43i 
 
 PBJSTERITA. 
 
 there Archigosaurus. How I wish you had been there. Well 
 we got here (Nice) on Saturday evening & we climbed up an 
 old Roman Ampitheatre and saw of all sunsets the most glo- 
 rious. We said it was like Light in the West, Beauvais, and 
 again we thought of you Oh S‘. Crumpet I think of you so 
 much & of all your dearnesses to me I wish so very much 
 
 that you were happy — God can make you so — We will try 
 not to forget all 3^011 taught ns — It was so nice of you. 
 Thank you so much from both of us. — Mama is very glad you 
 went to Dr. Ferguson She says you must not give him up. 
 How veiy kind of you to see & talk to our old man Cer- 
 tainly the name is not beautiful We have all read 3'our let- 
 ter & we all care for it. That was indeed a “ dear Ii’ish la- 
 bourer.” I like him so much ; such a nice letter. I hope 
 M" & Ruskiii are well now. Will you give them our love 
 please & take for yourself as much as ever 3’ou please. It 
 will be a great deal if you deign to take all we send }^ou. I 
 like Nice but I don’t much like being transplanted except 
 going home. I am ever }^our rose. 
 
 Postscript. 
 
 Yes, write packets — trunks, & we shall like them so much. 
 Indeed I couldn’t wiite before, I’ll try to write again. You 
 must see how we think of you k talk of }'ou — rose posie. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Joanna’s c.vee. 
 
 The mischances which have delayed the sequence of “ Prae- 
 terita” must modify somewhat also its intended order. I 
 leave Rosie’s letter to tell what it can of the beginning of hap- 
 piest days ; but omit, for a little while, the further record of 
 them, — of the shadows which gathered around them, and in- 
 creased, in my father’s illness ; and of the lightning which 
 struck him down in death — so sudden, that I find it extremely 
 
JOANNA'S CARE. 
 
 435 
 
 difficult, in looking back, to realize tbe state of mind in wliicii 
 it left either my mother or me. My own principal feeling 
 was certainly anxiety for her, who had been for so man^^ years 
 in every thought dependent on my father’s wishes, and with- 
 drawn from all other social pleasure as long as she could be 
 his companion. I scarcely felt the power I had over her, my- 
 self ; and ^vas at first amazed to find my own life suddenly 
 becoming to her another ideal ; and that new hope and pride 
 were possible to her, in seeing me take command of my 
 father’s fortune, and permitted by him, from his grave, to 
 cany out the theories I had formed for my political work, 
 with unrestricted and deliberate energy. 
 
 My mother’s perfect health of mind, and vital religious 
 faith, enabled her to take all the good that was left to her, in 
 the world, while she looked in secure patience for the heavenly 
 future : but there was immediate need for some companion- 
 ship which might lighten the burden of the days to her. 
 
 I have never yet spoken of the meinbers of my grand- 
 mother’s family, who either remained in Galloway,’^ or were 
 associated with 1113^ early da^^s in London. Quite one of the 
 dearest of them at this time, was Mrs. Agnew, born Catherine 
 Tweddale, and named Catherine after her aunt, my fatlier’s 
 mother. She had now for some years been living in widow- 
 hood ; her little daughter, Joan, only five years old v.dien her 
 father died, having grown up in their pretty old house at 
 Wigtown, f in the simplicity of entirely natural and contented 
 life : and, though again and again under the stress of domes- 
 tic sorrow, untellable in the depth of the cup which the death- 
 angels filled for the child, j’et in such dail}^ happiness as her 
 own bright and loving nature secured in her relations wuth all 
 those around her ; and in the habits of childish play, or edu- 
 cation, then common in the rural towns of South Scotland : 
 
 * See “Prffiterita,” vol. i., p, 62. 
 
 f Now palled down and tlie site taken for tlie new county hnildings. 
 The house as it once stood is seen in the centre of the wood-cat at page 
 6 of Gordon Fraser's Gnide, with tlie Stewartry hills in the distance. 
 I have seldom seen a truer rendering of the look of an old Scottish 
 town. 
 
43G 
 
 PRyETERITA. 
 
 of which, let me say at once that there was greater refinement 
 in them, and more honorable pride, than probably, at that 
 time, in any other district of Europe ; * a certain pathetic 
 melody and power of tradition consecrating nearly every scene 
 with some past light, either of heroism or religion. 
 
 And so it chanced, providentially, that at this moment, 
 when my mother’s thoughts dwelt constantly on the past, 
 there should be this child near us, — still truly a child, in her 
 powers of innocent pleasure, but already so accustomed to 
 sorrow, that there was nothing that could farther depress her 
 in my mother’s solitude. I have not time to tell of the pretty 
 little ways in which it came about, but they all ended in my 
 driving to No. 1, Cambridge Street, on the 19th April, 1864 : 
 
 * Tlift following couple of pages, from “ Redgauntlet,” put in very 
 few words tlie points of difference between them and the fatally pro- 
 gressive follies and vanities of Edinburgh : — 
 
 ‘ Come away, Mr. Fairford ; the Edinburgh time is later than ours,’ 
 said the Provost. 
 
 “ ‘And come away, young gentleman,’ said the Laird : ‘I remember 
 your father weel, at the Cross, thirty years ago. I reckon you are as 
 late in Edinburgh as at London ; fmir o’clock hours, eh? ’ 
 
 ‘ Not quite so degenerate,’ replied Fairford ; ‘but certainly many 
 Edinburgh people are so ill-advised as io postpone their dinner iiW three, 
 that they may have full time to answer their London correspondents.’ 
 
 “ ‘ London correspondents !’ said Mr. Maxwell ; ‘ and pray, wdiat the 
 devil have the people of Auld Reekie to do with London correspondents?’ 
 “ ‘ The tradesmen must have their goods,’ said Fairford. 
 
 “ ‘ Can they not buy our own Scottish manufa(;tures, and pick their 
 customers’ pockets in a more patriotic manner?’ 
 
 “ ‘ Tlien the ladies must have fashions,’ said Fairford. 
 
 “ ‘Can they not busk the plaid over their heads, as their mothers 
 did? A tartan screen, and once a year a new cockernony from Paris, 
 shou'd serve a countess ; but ye have not many of them left, I think. 
 Mareschal, Airley, Winton, AYemyss, Balmerino — ay, ay, the countesses 
 and ladies of quality will scarce take up too much of your ball-room 
 tioor with their quality hoops nowadays.’ 
 
 “ ‘There is no want of crowding, however, sir,’ said Fairford ; ‘ they 
 begin to talk of a new Assembly Room.’ 
 
 “ ‘ A new Assembly Room ! ’ said the old Jacobite Laird. ‘ Uraph— 
 I mind quartering three hundred men in the Assembly Room you hare. 
 But. come, come : I’ll ask no more questions — the answers all smell of 
 new lords, new lands.’ ” 
 
JOANNA^ S CARE. 
 
 437 
 
 where her uncle (my cousin, John Tweddale) brought her up 
 to the drawing-room to me, saying, “This is Joan.” 
 
 I had seen her three years before, but not long enough to 
 remember her distinctly : only I had a notion that she would 
 be “ nice,” * and saw at once that she was entirely nice, both 
 in my mother’s waj^, and mine ; being now seventeen years 
 and some — well, for example of accuracy and conscience — 
 forty-five days, old. And I very thankfully took her hand out 
 of her uncle’s, and received her in trust, saying— I do not 
 remember just what, — but certainly feeling much more 
 strongly than either her uncle or she did, that the gift, both 
 to my mother and me, was one which we should not easily 
 bear to be again withdrawn. I put her into my father’s 
 carriage at the door, and drove her out to Denmark Hill. 
 Here is her own account of what followed between my 
 mother and her : — 
 
 “ I was received with great kindness b}" the dear old lady, 
 who did not inspire me, as she did so many other people, 
 with a feeling of awe ! We were the best of friends, from 
 the first. She, ever most considerate of what would please 
 me, and make me happy ; and I, (ever a lover of old ladies !) 
 delighted to find it so easily possible to please her. 
 
 “ Next morning she said, ‘ Now tell me frankly, child, 
 what you like best to eat, and you shall have it. Don’t 
 hesitate ; sa.y what you’d really like, — for luncheon to-day, 
 for instance.’ I said, truthfully, ‘ Cold mutton, and oysters’ ; 
 and this became a sort of standing order (in months with the 
 letter r!) — greatly to the cook’s amusement. 
 
 “ Of course I respectfully called the old lady ‘ 3Irs. Raskin ’ ; 
 but in a day or two, she told me she didn’t like it, and would 
 I call her ‘ Aunt ’ or ^ Auntie ’ ? I readily did so. 
 
 “ The days flew in that lovely garden, and as I liad only 
 been invited to stay a week, until Mr. Kuskin should return 
 home,f I felt miserable wdien he did come, thinking I must 
 
 * And the word means more, with me, than with Sydney Smith (see 
 his Memoirs) ; but it means all that he does, to begin with. 
 
 f I must have been going away somewhere the day after I brought her 
 to Denmark Hill. 
 
43S 
 
 PRj^TEUITA. 
 
 go back to LoDclon streets, and noise ; (though I was always 
 very happy with my good uncle and aunts). 
 
 “ So, when the last evening came, of my week, I said, with 
 some hesitation, ‘ Auntie, I had better go back to my uncle’s 
 to-morrow ! ’ 
 
 “ She flung down her netting, and turned sharply round, 
 saying, ‘ Are you unhappy, child ? ’ ‘ Oh no ! ’ said I, ‘ only 
 
 my week is up, and I thought it was time ’ 
 
 “ I was not allowed to finish my sentence. She said, 
 
 ‘ Never let me hear you say anything again about going ; as 
 long as you are happy here, stay, and well send for your 
 clothes, and make arrangements about lessons, and everything 
 else here.’ 
 
 “And thus it came about that I stayed seven years! — till I 
 married ; going home now and then to Scotland, but always 
 getting pathetic little letters there, telling me to ‘ come back 
 as soon as niy mother could spare me, that I was much 
 missed, and nobody could ever fill my place.’ And auntie 
 was very old then (not that she ever could bear being called 
 old, at ninety !), and I could not ever bear the thought of 
 leaving her ! ” 
 
 Thus far Joanie ; nor virtually have she and I ever parted 
 since. I do not care to count how long it is since her mar- 
 riage to Arthur Severn ; only I think her a great deal prettier 
 now than I did then : but other people thought her extremely 
 2)retty then, and I am certain that everybody the guileless 
 and melodious sweetness of the face. Her first conquest was 
 almost on our threshold ; for half an hour or so after we had 
 reached Denmark Hill, Carlyle rode up the front garden, joy- 
 fully and reverently received as always ; and stayed the whole 
 afternoon ; even, (Joan says) sitting with us during our early 
 dinner at five. Many a day after that, he used to come ; and 
 one evening, “in describing with some rapture how he had 
 once as a young man had a delightful trip into Galloway, 
 ‘ where he was most hospitably entertained in the town of 
 Wigtown by a Mr. Tweddale,’ I (Joan) said quietly, ‘ I am so 
 glad ! That was my grandfather, and Wigtown is my native 
 place ! ’ He turned in a startled, sudden waj% saying, ‘ Bless 
 
JO ANNANS CARE. 
 
 439 
 
 the child, is that so ? ’ adding some veiy pretty compliments 
 to my place and. its people, which filled my heart with great 
 pride. And, on another occasion, after he had been to meet 
 the Queen at Dean Stanley’s, in describing to us some of the 
 conversation, he made us laugh by telling how, in describing 
 to Her Majesty the beauty of Galloway, that ‘he believed 
 there was no finer or more beautiful drive in her kingdom 
 than the one round the shore of the Stewartry, by Gatehouse 
 of Fleet,’ he got so absorbed in his subject that, in drawing 
 his chair closer to the Queen, he at last became aware he had 
 fixed it on her dress, and that she could not move till he 
 withdrew it ! Do you think I may say farther ” (Of course, 
 Joanie), “that Carlyle as a young man often went to my 
 great aunt’s (Mrs. Church) in Dumfriesshire ; and he has 
 several times told me that he considered her one of the most 
 remarkable and kindest women he had ever known. On one 
 occasion while there, he went to the little Cummertrees 
 Church, where the then minister (as a joke sometimes called 
 ‘ Daft Davie Gillespie ’) used to speak his mind very plainly 
 from the pulpit, and while preaching a sermon on ‘ Youth 
 and Beauty being laid in the grave,’ something tickled 
 Carlyle, and he was seen to smile ; upon which Mr. Gillespie 
 stopped suddenly, looked with a frown at Carlyle (who was 
 sitting in my aunt’s pew), and said, ‘ Mistake me not, young 
 man ; it is youth alone that you possess.’ This was told to 
 me, (Joan,) by an old cousin of mine who heard it, and was 
 sitting next Carlyle at the time.” 
 
 lam so glad to be led back by Joanie to the thoughts of 
 Carlyle, as he showed himself to her, and to me, in those 
 spring days, when he used to take pleasure in the quiet of the 
 Denmark Hill garden, and to use all his influence with me to 
 make me contented in my duty to my mother ; which he, as, 
 with even greater insistence. Turner, always told me was my 
 first ; — -both of them seeing, with equal clearness, the happi- 
 ness of the life that was possible to me in merely meeting my 
 father’s affection and hers, with the tranquil exertion of* my 
 own natural powers, in the place where God had set me. 
 
 Both at the time, and ever since, I have felt bitter remorse 
 
4i0 
 
 FRMTERITA, 
 
 that I did not make Carlyle free of the garden, and his horse 
 of the stables, whether we were at home or not; for the fresh 
 air, and bright view of the Norwood hills, were entirely grate- 
 ful and healing to him, when the little back garden at Cheyne 
 Row was too hot, or the neighborhood of it too noisy, for his 
 comfort. 
 
 And at this time, nearly every opportunity of good, and 
 peace, was granted in Joan’s coming to help me to take care 
 of my mother. She was perfectly happy, herself, in the se- 
 clusion of Denmark Hill ; while yet the occasional evenings 
 spent at George Richmond’s, or with others of her London 
 friends, (whose circle rapidly widened) enabled her to bring 
 back to my mother little bits of gossip which were entirely 
 refreshing to both of us ; for I used to leave my study when- 
 ever Joanie came back from these expeditions, to watch my 
 mother’s face in its glittering sympathy. I think I have said 
 of her before, that although not witty herself, her strong 
 sense gave her the keenest enjoyment of kindly humor, 
 whether in saying or incident ; and I have seen her laughing, 
 partly at Joanie and partly with her, till the tears ran down 
 her still brightly flushing cheeks. Joan was never tired of 
 telling her whatever gave her pleasure, nor of reading to her, 
 in quieter time, the books she delighted in, against which, 
 girls less serenely, — nay, less religiously, bred, would assuredly 
 have rebelled, — any quantity, for instance, of Miss Edgeworth 
 and Richardson. 
 
 (I interrupt myself for a moment to express, at this latter 
 time of life, the deep admiration I still feel for Richardson. 
 The follies of modern novel writing render it impossible for 
 young people to understand the perfection of the human 
 nature in his conception, and delicacy of finish in his dia- 
 logue, rendering all his greater scenes unsurpassable in their 
 own manner of art. They belong to a time of the English 
 language in which it could express with precision the most 
 delicate phases of sentiment, necessarily now lost under Amer- 
 ican,’ Cockney, or scholastic slang.) 
 
 Joanie herself had real faculty and genius in all rightly 
 girlish directions. She had an extremely sweet voice, whether 
 
JOANNA'S CARE. 
 
 441 
 
 in reading or singing ; inventive wit, winch was softly satiri- 
 cal, bat never malicious ; and quite a peculiar, and perfect, 
 sense of clownish humor, which never for an instant dimin- 
 ished her refinement, but enabled her to sing either humor- 
 ous Scotch, or the brightest Christy Minstrel carols, with a 
 grace and animation winch, within their gentle limits, could 
 not be surpassed. She had a good natural faculty for draw- 
 ing also, not inventive, but realistic ; so that she answered my 
 first lessons with serviceable care and patience ; and was soon 
 able to draw and paint flowers which were a great deal liker 
 the flowers themselves than my own elaborate studies ; — no 
 one said of them, “ What wonderful drawing ! ” but every- 
 body said, “ How like a violet, or a buttercup ! ” At that 
 point, however, she stayed, and yet stays, to my sorrow, never 
 having advanced into landscape drawing. 
 
 But very soon, also, she was able to help me in arranging 
 my crystals ; and the day divided itself between my mother’s 
 room, the mineral room, the garden, and the drawing-room, 
 with busy pleasures for every hour. 
 
 Then, in my favorite readings, the deep interest which, in 
 his period of entirely central power, Scott had taken in the 
 scenery of the Solway, rendered everything that Joanie could 
 tell me of her native bay and its hills, of the most living 
 interest to me ; and although, from my father’s unerring 
 tutorship, I had learned Scott’s own Edinburgh accent with a 
 precision which made the turn of every sentence precious to 
 me, (and, I believe, my own rendering of it thoroughly in- 
 teresting, even to a Scottish listener,) — yet every now and 
 then Joanie could tell me something of old, classic, Galloway 
 Scotch, which was no less valuable to me than a sudden light 
 thrown on a chorus in .Slschylus would be to a Greek scholar ; — 
 nay, only the other day I was entirely crushed by her inter- 
 preting to me, for the first time, the meaning of the name of 
 the village of Captain Clutterbuck’s residence, — Kennaquhair.'^ 
 
 * “ Ken na’ where ’’ ! Note the cunning with which Scott himself 
 throws his reader off the scent, in the first sentence of “ The Monas- 
 tery,” by quoting the learned Chalmers “ for the derivation of the word 
 ‘ Quhair,’ from the winding course of the stream ; a definition which 
 
442 
 
 PRJETERITA. 
 
 And it has chiefly been owing to Joan’s help, — and even so, 
 only within the last five or six years, — that I have fully under- 
 stood the power, not on Sir Walter’s mind merely, but on the 
 character of all good Scotchmen, (much more, good Scotch- 
 women,) of the two lines of coast from Holy Island to Edin- 
 burgh, and from Annan to the Mull of Galloway. Between them, 
 if the reader will glance at any old map which gives rivers and 
 mountains, instead of railroads and factories, he will find that 
 all the highest intellectual and moral powers of Scotland were 
 developed, from the days of the Douglases at Lochmaben, to 
 those of Scott in Edinburgh, — Burns in Ayr, — and Carlyle at 
 Ecclefechan, by the pa^iloral country, everywhere habitable, 
 but only by hardihood under suffering, and patience in 
 poverty ; defending themselves always against the northern 
 Pictish war of the Highlands, and the southern, of the Eng- 
 lish Edwards and Percys, in the days when whatever was love- 
 liest and best of the Catholic religion haunted still the — then 
 not ruins, — of Melrose, Jedburgh, Dryburgh, Kelso, Dum- 
 blane, Dundrennan, Hew Abbey of Dumfries, and, above all, 
 the most ancient Cave of Whithorn, — the Candida Casa of St. 
 Ninian ; while perfectly sincere and passionate forms of Evan- 
 gelicalism purified and brightened the later characters of 
 shepherd Cameronian life, being won, like all the great vic- 
 tories of Christianity, by martyrdoms, of which tlie memory 
 remains most vivid by those very shores where Christianity 
 was first planted in Scotland, — Whithorn is, I think, only ten 
 
 coincides in a remarkable degree with the serpentine turns of the 
 Tweed ” ! (“ It’s a serpentine turn of his own, I think ! ” says Joanie, 
 
 as I show her the sentence,) while in the next paragraph he gives an 
 apparently historical existence to “ the village of which we speak,” by 
 associating it with Melrose, Jedburgh, and Kelso, in the “ splendor of 
 foundation by David I.,” and concludes, respecting the lands with 
 which the king endowed these wealthy fraternities, with a grave sen- 
 tence, perhaps the most candid ever written by a Scotsman, of the cen- 
 turies preceding the Reformation: “In fact, for several ages the pos- 
 sessions of these Abbeys were each a sort of Goshen, enjoying the calm 
 light of peace and immunity, while the rest of the country, occupied 
 by wild clans and marauding barons, was one dark scene of confusion, 
 blood, and unremitted outi'age.” 
 
JOANN.rS CARE. 
 
 U3 
 
 miles south of Wigtown Bay ; and in the churchyard of Wig- 
 town, close to the old Agnew burying-ground, (where most of 
 Joanie’s family are laid,) are the graves of Margaret Mac- 
 Lachlan, and Margaret Wilson, over which in rhythm is 
 recorded on little square tombstones the story of their mar- 
 tyrdom. 
 
 It was only, I repeat, since what became practically my 
 farewell journey in Italy in 1882, that I recovered the train of 
 old associations by revisiting Tweedside, from Coldsti-earn up 
 to Ashestiel ; and the Solway shores from Dumfries to Whit- 
 horn ; and while what knowledge I had of southern and 
 foreign history then arranged itself for final review, it seemed 
 to me that this space of low mountain ground, with the eternal 
 sublimity of its rocky seashores, of its stormy seas and dan- 
 gerous sands ; its strange and mighty crags, Ailsa and the 
 Bass, and its pathless moorlands, haunted by the driving- 
 cloud, had been of more import in the true world’s history 
 than ail the lovely countries of the South, except only Pales- 
 tine, In my quite last journey to Venice I was, I thiiik, justly 
 and finally impressed with the sadness and even weakness of 
 the Mediterranean coasts ; and the temptation to human 
 nature, there, to solace itself with debasing pleasures ; while 
 the very impossibility of either accumulating the treasures, or 
 multiplying the dreams, of art, among those northern waves 
 and rocks, left the spirit of man strong to bear the hardships 
 of the world, and faithful to obey the precepts of Heaven. 
 
 It is farther strange to me, even now, on reflection — to 
 find how great the influence of this double ocean coast and 
 Cheviot mountain border was upon Scott’s imagination ; 
 and how salutary they were in withdrawing him from the 
 morbid German fancies which proved so fatal to Carl^de : 
 but there was this grand original difference between the 
 two, that, with Scott, his story-telling and singing were all in 
 the joyful admiration of that past with which he could re- 
 people the scenery he gave the working part of his day to 
 traverse, and all the sensibility of his soul to love;* while 
 
 * Yet, remember, so just and intense is his perception, and so stern 
 liis condemnation, of whatever is corrupt in the Scottish character, that 
 
444 
 
 PR^TERITA. 
 
 Carlyle s mind, fixed anxiously on the future, and besides 
 embarrassed by the practical pinching, as well as the uncoji- 
 fessed shame, of poverty, saw and felt from his earliest child- 
 hood nothing but the faultfulness and gloom of the present. 
 
 It has been impossible, hitherto, to make the modern 
 reader understand the vastness of Scott’s true historical 
 knowledge, underneath its romantic coloring, nor the con- 
 centration of it in the production of his eternally great poems 
 and romances. English ignorance of the Scottish dialect 
 is at present nearly total ; nor can it be without very earnest 
 effort, that the melodj^ of Scott’s verse, or the meaning of his 
 dialogue, can ever again be estimated. He must now be read 
 with the care which we give to Chaucer ; but with the greater 
 reward, that what is only a dream in Chaucer, becomes to us, 
 understood from Scott, a consummate historical morality and 
 truth. 
 
 The first two of his great poems, “ The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel ” and “ Marmion,” are the re-animation of Border 
 legends, closing with the truest and grandest battle-iDiece 
 that, so far as I know, exists in the wdiole compass of litera- 
 ture ^ ; — the absolutely fairest in justice to both contending 
 nations, the absolutely most beautiful in its conceptions of 
 both. And that the palm in that concej^tion remains with 
 the Scotch, through the sorrow of their defeat, is no more 
 than accurate justice to the national character, which rose 
 from the fraternal branches of the Douglas of Tantallon and 
 the Douglas of Dunkeld. But, — between Tantallon and 
 
 while of distinctly evil natures — Varney, Rashleigh, or Lord Dalgarno 
 — he takes world-wide examples, — the unpardonable baseness* * of so- 
 called respectable or religious persons, and the cruelties of entirely 
 sellish soldiers, are always Scotch. Take for the highest type the Lord 
 Lindsay of “The Abbot,” and for the worst, Morton in “ The Monastery,” 
 then the terrible, hecnuse at first siiu ere, Balfour of Burleigh in “ Old 
 Mortality”; and in lower kind, the Andrew Fairservice and MacVittie 
 of “ Rob Roy,” the Peter Peebles of “ Redgauntlet,” the Glossin of 
 “Guy Mannering.” and the Saddletree of the “ Heart of Midlothian.” 
 
 * I include the literature of all foreign languages, so far as known to 
 me : there is nothing to approach the finished delineation and flawless 
 majesty of conduct in Scott s Floddeu. 
 
JOANNA'S CARE. 
 
 445 
 
 Dmikekl, — wliat moor or mountain is there over which the 
 purple cloud of Scott’s imagination has not wrapt its light, in 
 those two great poems? — followed by the entirely heroic en- 
 chantment of “The Lady of the Lake,” dwelling on the High- 
 land virtue which gives the strength of clanship, and the 
 Lowland honor of knighthood, founded on the Catholic 
 religion. Then came the series of novels, in which, as I have 
 stated elsewhere, those which dealt with the history of other 
 nations, such as “Ivanhoe,” “Kenilworth,” “Woodstock,” 
 “ Quentin Durward,” “ Peveril of the Peak,” “ The Betrothed ” 
 and “ The Crusaders,” however attractive to the general 
 world, were continually weak in fancy, and false in prejudice ; 
 but the literally Scotch novels, “ Waveiley,” “Guy Mannering,” 
 “ Tlie Antiquary,” “Old Mortality,” “The Heart of Mid- 
 lothian,” “ The Abbot,” “ Eedgauntlet,” and “ Tiie Fortunes 
 of Nigel,” arc, whatever the modern world may think of 
 them, as faultless, throughout, as human work can be : and 
 eternal examples of the ineffable art wdiich is taught by the 
 loveliest nature to her truest children. 
 
 Now of these, observe, “Guy Mannering,” “Eedgauntlet,” a 
 great part of “Waverley,” and the beautiful close of “The Ab- 
 bot,” piss on the two coasts of Solway. The entire power of 
 “Old Mortality ” rises out of them, and their influence on 
 Scott is curiously shown by his adoption of the name “ Ochil- 
 tree ” for his bedesman of Montrose, coming not from the near 
 liills, as one at first fancies, but from the Ochiltree Castle, 
 which in Mercator’s old map of 1G37 I find in the centre of 
 the archbishopric, then extending from Glasgow to Wigtown, 
 and correspondent to that of St. Andrew’s on the east, — the 
 subordinate bishopric of Candida Casa, answering to that of 
 Dunkeld, with the bishoprics of the isles Sura, Mura, and 
 Isla. It is also, Mercator adds in his note, called the “ bish- 
 opric of Galloway.” 
 
 “Even I,” says Joanie, again, “remember old people who 
 knew the real ‘ Old Mortality.’ He used to come through 
 all the Galloway district to clean and re-cut the old worn 
 gravestones of the martyrs ; sometimes, I have been told, to 
 f.he long since disused kirkyard of Kirkchrist, the place where 
 
PUMTERITA, 
 
 446 
 
 my great aunt, Mrs. Churcli (Oarlyle’s friend, of whom I have 
 spoken) began her married life. Kirkchrist is just on the 
 opposite side from Kirkcudbright, overlooking the Kiver 
 Dee.” • 
 
 I must go back to a middle-aged map of 1773, to find the 
 noble river rightly traced from its source above Kenmure 
 Castle to the winding bay which opens into Solway, by St. 
 Mary’s Isle ; where Kirkchrist is marked as Christ K, with a 
 cross, indicating the church then existing. 
 
 I was staying with Arthur and Joan, at Kenmure Castle 
 itself in the 3’ear 1876, and remember much of its dear peo- 
 ple : and, among the prettiest scenes of Scottish gardens, the 
 beautiful trees on the north of that lawn on which the last 
 muster met for King Chailes ; “ and you know,” says Joanie, 
 “ the famous song that used to inspire them all, of ‘ Ken- 
 rnure’s on and awa, Willie ! ’ ” * The thoughts come too fast 
 upon me, for before Joanie said this, I was trying to recollect 
 on what height above Solwa}% Dai'sie Latimer pauses with 
 Wandering Willie, in whom Scott records for ever the glory, 
 — not of Scottish music only, but of all Manic, rightly so 
 called, — which is a part of God’s own creation, becoming an 
 expression of the purest hearts. 
 
 I cannot pause now to find the spot,f and still less the 
 church}"ard in which, at the end of Wandering Willie’s tale, 
 his grandsire wakes : but, to the living reader, I have this to 
 say very earnestly, that the whole glory and blessing of these 
 sacred coasts depended on the rise and fall of their eternal 
 sea, over sands which the sunset gilded \vith its withdrawing 
 glow, from the measureless dist.ances of the west, on the 
 ocean horizon, or veiled in silvery mists, or shadowed with 
 
 * “ Lady Huntley plays Scotch tunes like a Highland angel. She 
 ran a set of variations on ‘ Keumure's on and awa.’ which I told her 
 were enough to raise a whole country-side. I never in niy life heard 
 such fire thi-owu into tliat sort of music .” — Sir Walter writing to his 
 daughter Sophia. Lockhart's “ Life A vol. iv. , page 871. 
 
 f It is on the highest hit of moor between Dumfries and Annan. 
 Wandering Willie's pari.shine ” is only thus defined in “ Rcdgauntlet ” 
 — “They ca’ the place Primrose Knowe.” 
 
JOANNA'S GAIiE. 
 
 44 T 
 
 fast-flying storm, of which nevertheless every cloud was pure, 
 and the winter snows blanched in the starlight. For myself, 
 the impressions of the Solway sands are a part of the greatest 
 teaching that ever I received during the joy of youth : — for 
 Turner, they became the most pathetic that formed his char- 
 acter in the prime of life, and the five Liber Studiorum sub- 
 jects, “Solway Moss,” “Peat Bog, Scotland,” “The Falls of 
 Clyde,” “Ben Arthur,” and “ Dumblaue Abbey,” remain 
 more complete expressions of his intellect, and more noble 
 monuments of his art, than all his mightiest Jifter work, until 
 the days of sunset in the west came for it also. 
 
 As “ Bedgauiitlet ” is, in its easily readable form, inacces- 
 sible, nowadays, I quote at once the two passages which 
 prove Scott’s knowledge of music, and the strong impression 
 made on him by the scenery between Dumfries and Annan. 
 Hear, first, of Darsie Latimer’s escape from the simplicity of 
 his Quaker friends to the open downs of the coast which had 
 formerly seemed so waste and dreaiy. “ The air I breathed 
 felt purer and more bracing ; the clouds, riding high upon 
 a summer breeze, drove in gaj' succession over my head, now 
 obscuring the sun, now letting its rays stream in transient 
 flashes upon various parts of the landscape, and especially 
 upon the broad mirror of the distant Frith of Solway.” 
 
 A moment afterward he catches the tune of “ Old Sir 
 Thom a Lyne,” sung by three musicians cosily niched into 
 what }mu miglit call a hunker,'^ a little sand-pit, dry and snug,, 
 surrounded by its banks, and a screen of furze in full bloom. 
 Of whom the 3'oungest, Benjie, “ at first somewhat dismayed 
 at my appearance, but calculating on my placabilitrf, almost 
 ill one breath assured the itinerants that I ivas a grand gen- 
 tleman, and had plenty of money, and was very kind to poor 
 folk, and informed me that this was Willie Steenson, ‘ Wan- 
 dering Willie, the best fiddler that ever kittled thairrn (cat- 
 gut) with horsehair.’ I asked him if he was of this country. 
 ^ This country ! ’ replied the blind man, ‘and of every country 
 
 is a modem word, meauing, first, a large chest ; then, a recess 
 scooped ill soft rock. 
 
PR^^TERITA. 
 
 4 IS 
 
 ill broad Scotland, and a wee bit of England to the boot. 
 But yet I am in some sense of this country, for I was bom 
 within hearing of the roar of Solway.' 
 
 I must pause again to tell the modern reader that no word 
 is ever used by Scott in a hackneyed sense. For three hun- 
 dred years of English commonplace, roar has rhymed to 
 shore, as breeze to trees ; yet in this sentence the word is as 
 powerful as if it had never been written till now ! for no 
 other sound of the sea is for an instant comparable to the 
 breaking of deep ocean, as it rises over great spaces of sand. 
 In its rise and fall on a rocky coast, it is either perfectly 
 silent, or, if it strike, it is with a crash, or a blow like that of 
 a heavy gun. Therefore, under ordinary conditions, there 
 may be either splash, or crash, or sigh, or boom ; but not roar. 
 But the hollow sound of the countless ranks of surfy break- 
 ers, rolling mile after mile in ceaseless following, everyone 
 of them with the apparent anger and threatening of a fate 
 which is assured death unless fled from, — the sound of this 
 approach, over quicksands, and into inextricable gulfs of 
 mountain bay, this, heard far out at sea, or heard far inland, 
 through the peace of secure night — or stormless day, is still 
 an eternal voice, with the harmony in it of a mighty law, 
 and the gloom of a mortal warning. 
 
 “The old man preluded as he spoke, and then taking the 
 old tune of ‘Galashiels’ for his theme, he graced it with a 
 wildness of complicated and beautiful variations ; during 
 which it was wonderful to observe how his sightless face was 
 liglited up under the conscious pride and heartfelt delight in 
 the exercise of his own very considerable powers. 
 
 “ ‘ What think you of that now, for threescore and twa? ’ ” 
 
 I pause again to distinguish this noble pride of a man of 
 unerring genius, in the power which all his life has been too 
 short to attain, up to the point he conceives of, — from the 
 base complacency of the narrow brain and dull heart, in their 
 own chosen ways of indolence or error. 
 
 The feeling comes out more distinctly still, three pages 
 forward, when his wife tells him, “The gentleman is a gen- 
 tleman, Willie ; ye maunna speak that gate to him, hinnie.” 
 
JOANNA'S CARE. 
 
 449 
 
 “ The cleevil I mauuna ! ” said Willie, * “ and what for maiin- 
 na I? If he was ten gentles, he camia draw a how like me^ 
 can hef 
 
 I need to insist upon this distinction, at this time in Eng- 
 land especially, when the names of artists, whose birth was 
 an epoch in the world’s history, are dragged through tlie gut- 
 ters of Paris, Manchester, and New Yoik, to decorate the last 
 puti's written for a morning concert, or a montlily exhibition. 
 I have just turned out of the house a book in which I am 
 told by tlie modern picture dealer that Mr. A., B., 0., D., or 
 F. is “ the Mozart of the nineteenth century ” ; the fact being 
 that Mozart’s birth wrote the laws of melody for all the world 
 as irrevocably as if they had been set down by the waves of 
 Solway ; and as widely as the birth of St. Gregory in the 
 sixth century fixed to its date forever the establishment of 
 the laws of musical expression. Men of perfect genius are 
 known in all centuries by their perfect respect to all law, and 
 love of past tradition ; their work in the world is never inno- 
 vation, but new creation ; without disturbing for an instant 
 the foundations which were laid of old time. One would 
 have imagined — at least, anyone but Scott would have imag- 
 ined — that a Scottish blind fiddler would have been only the 
 exponent of Scottish feeling and Scottish art ; it was even 
 with astonishment that I myself read the conclusion of his 
 dialogue with Darsie Latimer : “ ‘ Are ye in the wont of 
 
 * Joanie tel)<5 me she has often heard the fame of the Wandering 
 Willie spoken of : he was well known in travel from the Border right into 
 Galloway, stopping to play in villages and at all sorts of ont of the-way 
 houses, and, strangely, siieceeded by a blind woman fiddler, who used to 
 come led by a sister ; and the chief singing lessons in Joanie’s young 
 days were given through Galloway by a blind man, who played the fid- 
 dle to perfection ; and his ear was so correct that if in a class of fifty 
 voices one note was discordant, he would stop instantly, tap loudly on 
 the fiddle with the back of his bow, fly to the spot where the wrong 
 note came from, pounce on the person, and say, “It was and it’s 
 no use denying it ; if I can’t see, I can hear ! ” and he’d make the cul- 
 prit go over and over the phrase till it was conquered. He always 
 opened the class with a sweeping scale, dividing off so many voices to 
 each note, to follow in succession, 
 
 29 
 
450 
 
 PRv^TERITA. 
 
 drawing np wi’ all the. gangrel bodies that ye meet on the 
 high road, or find cowering in a sand-bnnker upon the links ? ’ 
 demanded Willie. 
 
 “ ‘ Oh, no ! only with honest folks like yourself, Willie/* 
 was my reply. 
 
 “ ‘ Honest folks like me ! How do ye ken whether I am 
 honest, or what I am? I may be the deevil himsell for what 
 ye ken ; for he has power to come disguised like an angel of 
 light ; and besides, he is a prime fiddler. He played a sonata 
 to Corelli, ye ken.’” 
 
 This reference to the simplest and purest writer of Italian 
 melody being not for the sake of the story, but because Wil- 
 lie’s own art had been truly founded upon him, so that he 
 had been really an angel of music, as well as light to him. 
 See the beginning of the dialogue in the previous page. 
 “ ‘ Do you ken the Laird ? ’ said Willie, interrupting an over- 
 ture of Corelli, of which he had whistled several bars with 
 great precision.” 
 
 I must pause again, to crowd together one or two explana- 
 tions of the references to music in my own writings hitherto, 
 which I can here sum by asking the reader to compare the use 
 of the voice in war, beginning with the cry of Achilles on the 
 Greek wall, down to what may be named as the two great 
 instances of modern choral war-song : the singing of the 
 known Church-hymn * at the Battle of Leuthen (‘‘Friedrich,” 
 vol. ii., p. 259), in which “ five-and-twenty thousand victor 
 voices joined : ” 
 
 “ Now thank God one and all, 
 
 With heart, with voice, with hands, 
 
 Who wonders great hath done 
 To us and to all lands ; ” — 
 
 and, on the counter side, the song of the Marseillaise on the 
 march to Paris, which began the conquests of the French 
 Kevolution, in turning the tide of its enemies. Compare 
 these, I say, with the debased use of modern military bands 
 
 * Pmlm, I believe, rather ; but see my separate notes on St. Louis* 
 Psalter (now in preparation). 
 
JOANNA'S GAEE. 
 
 451 
 
 at dinners and dances, whicli inaugurate sucli victory as ive 
 bad at the Battle of Balaclava, and the modern no-Battle 
 of the Baltic, when our entire war fleet, a vast job of iron- 
 mongers, retreated, under Sir C. Napier, from before the 
 Russian fortress of Cronstadt. 
 
 I preface with this question the repetition of what I have 
 always taught, that the Voice is tlie eternal musical instru- 
 ment of Iieaven and earth, from angels down to birds. Half 
 way between them, my little Joanie sang me yesterday, 13tli 
 May, 1889, “Farewell, Manchester,” and “ Golden Slumbers,” 
 t\vo pieces of consummate melody, which can only be ex- 
 pressed by the voice, and belonging to the group of like 
 melodies which have been, not invented, but inspired, to all 
 nations in the days of their loyalty to God, to their prince, 
 and to themselves. That Manchester has since become the 
 funnel of a volcano, which, not content with vomiting pesti- 
 lence, gorges the whole rain of heaven, that falls over a dis- 
 trict as distant as the ancient Scottish border, — is not indeed 
 wholly Manchester’s fault, nor altogether Charles Stuart’s 
 fault ; the beginning of both faults is in the substitution of 
 mercenary armies for the troops of nations led by their Jdngs. 
 Had Queen Mary led, like Zenobia, at Langside ; had Charles 
 I. charged instead of Prince Rupert at Naseby ; and Prince 
 Edward bade Lochiel follow him at Culloden, we should not 
 to-day have been debating who was to be our king at Birming- 
 ham or Glasgow. For the rest I take the bye-help that Fors 
 gives me in this record of the power of a bird’s voice only.'^ 
 
 * “An extraovdinary scene is to be witnessed every evening at Leices- 
 ter in the freemen’s allotment gardens, where a nightingale has estab- 
 lished itself. The midnight songster was first heard a week ago, and 
 ever}" evening hundreds of people line the roads near the trees where 
 tlie bird has his haunt. The crowds patiently wait till the music begins, 
 and the bulk of the listeners remain till midnight, while a number of 
 enthn.siasts linger till one and two o’clock in the morning. Strange to 
 say, the bird usually sings in a large thorn bush just over the mouth of 
 tlie tunnel of the Midland main line, but the songster is heedless of 
 noise, and smoke, and steam, his .stream of song being uninterrupted 
 for four or live hours every night. So large has been the throng of 
 
452 
 
 PR^TElilTA. 
 
 But the distinction of the music of Scotland from every 
 other is in its association with sweeter natural sounds, and 
 filling a deeper silence. As Fors also ordered it, yesterday 
 afternoon, before Joanie sang tnese songs to me, I had been, 
 for the first time since my return from Venice, down to the 
 shore of my own lake, with her and her two youngest chil- 
 dren, at the little promontory of shingle thrown out into it 
 by the only mount:un brook on this eastern side, (Beck 
 Leven,) which commands the windings of its wooded shore 
 under Furness Fells, and the calm of its fairest expanse of 
 mirror wave, — a scene which is in general jdmost melancholy 
 in its perfect solitude ; but, when the woods are in their 
 gladness, and the green — how much purer, how much softer 
 than ever emerald ! — of their unsullied spring, and the light 
 of dawning summer, possessing alike the clouds and moun- 
 tains of the west, — it is, literally, one of the most beautiful 
 and strange remnants of all that was once most sacred in this 
 British land, — all to which we owe, whether the heart, or the 
 voice, of the Douglas “ tender and true,” or the minstrel of 
 the Eildons, or the bard of Plynlimmon, or the Ellen of the 
 lonely Isle, — to whose lips Scott has entrusted the most 
 beautiful Ave Maria that was ever sung, and which can never 
 be sung rightly again until it is remembered that the harp io 
 the true ancient instrument of Scotland, as well as of Ireland.* 
 
 listeners that the chief constable has drafted a number of policemen to 
 maintain order and prevent damage .” — Pall Mail Gazette, May 11th, 
 1889. 
 
 * Although the violin was known ns early as 1270, and occurs again 
 and again in French and Italian sculpture and illumination, its intro- 
 duction, in super.seding both the voice, the golden bell, and the silver 
 trumpet, was entirely owing to the demoralization of the Spanish 
 kingdom in Naples, of which Evelyn writes in 1644, “The building of 
 the city is, for the size, the most magnificent in Europe. To it belongeth 
 three thousand churches and monasteries, and those best built and 
 adorned of any in Italy. They greatly affect the Spanish gravity in 
 their habit, delight in good horses, the streets are full of gallants on 
 horseback, and in coaches and sedans, from hence first brought into 
 England by Sir Sanders Duncomb ; the country people so jovial, and 
 addicted to music, that the very husbandmen almost universally play 
 
JOANNA'S CARE. 
 
 453 
 
 I am afraid of being diverted too far from Solway Moss, and 
 must ask the reader to look back to my description of the 
 Si^irit of music in the Spanish chapel at Florence (“The 
 Strait Gate,” pages 134 and 135), remembering only this pas- 
 sage at the beginning of it, “ After learning to reason, you 
 will learn to sing : for you will want to. There is much 
 reason for singing in the sweet world, when one thinks 
 rightly of it. None for grumbling, provided always you have 
 entered in at the strait gait. You will sing all along the 
 road then, in a little while, in a manner pleasant for other 
 people to hear,” 
 
 I will only return to Scott for one half page more, in which 
 he has contrasted with his utmost masterhood the impres- 
 sions of English and Scottish landscape. Few scenes of the 
 world have been oftener described, with the utmost skill and 
 sincerity of authors, than the view from Kichmond Hill sixty 
 yeai-s since ; but none can be compared with the ten lines in 
 “ The Heart of Midlothian,” edition of 1830, page 374. “ A 
 
 huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promon- 
 tories of massive and tufted groves, was tenanted by number- 
 less flocks and herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained, 
 and unbounded, through the rich pastures. The Thames, 
 here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with forests, 
 moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of 
 the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories, 
 and bore on his bosom a hundred barks and skiffs, whose 
 white sails and gayly fluttering pennons gave life to the 
 whole. 
 
 on the gnitar, singing and composing songs in praise of their sweet- 
 hearts. and will commonly go to the field with their fiddle, — they are 
 merry, witty, and genial, all which I attribute to the excellent quality 
 of the air.” 
 
 What Evelyn means by the fiddle is not quite certain, since he him- 
 self, going to study “ in Padua, far beyond the sea,” there learned to 
 play on “ ye theorba, taught by Signior Dominico Bassano, who had a 
 daughter married to a doctor of laws, that played and sung to nine 
 several instruments, with that skill and addresse as few masters in 
 Italy exceeded her ; she likewise composed divers excellent pieces. I 
 had never seen any play on the Naples viol before,” 
 
454 
 
 FB^TEBITA. 
 
 ‘'As the Duke of Argyle looked on this inimitable land- 
 scape, his thoughts naturally reverted to his own more grand 
 and scarce less beautiful domains of Inverary. ‘ This is a fine 
 scene,’ he said to his companion, curious perhaps to draw out 
 her sentiments ; ‘ we have nothing like it in Scotland.’ ‘ It’s 
 braw rich feeding for the cows, and they have a fine breed o’ 
 cattle here,’ replied Jeanie ; ‘ but I like just as weel to look at 
 tlie craigs of Arthur’s Seat, and the sea coming in ayont them, 
 as at a’ thae muckle trees.’” 
 
 I do not know ho\v often I have already vainly dw^elt on the 
 ■vulgarity and vainness of the pride in mere magnitude of tim- 
 ber which began in Evelyn’s “Sylva,” and now is endlessly 
 measuring, whether Californian pines or Parisian towers, — of 
 which, though they could darken continents, and hide the 
 stars, the entire substance, cost, and pleasure are not \vorth 
 one gleam of leafage in Kelvin Grove, or glow of rowan tree 
 by the banks of Earn, or branch of wild rose of Hazel dean ; — 
 but I may forget, unless I speak of it here, a walk in Scott’s 
 own haunt of Rhymer’s Glen,* where the brook is narrowest 
 in its sandstone bed, and Mary Ker stopped to gather a wild 
 rose for me. Her brother, then the youngest captain in the 
 English navy, afterward gave his pure soul up to his Captain, 
 
 * “Captain Adam Ferguson, who liad written, from the lines of Tor- 
 res Vedras, liis liopes of finding, wlien tlie war should be over, some 
 shelteri ug cottage upon the Tweed, within a walk of Abbotsford, was 
 de’ighted to see his dreams realized ; and the family took up their resi- 
 dence ne.xt spring at the new house of Toftfield, on which Scott then 
 bestowed, at the ladies’ request, the name of Huntley Burn ; — this more 
 harmonious designation being taken from the mountain brook which 
 passes througli its grounds and gai'den, — the same famous in tra<lition 
 as the scene of Thomas the Rhymer’s interviews with the Queen of 
 Fairy. 
 
 “ On completing this purchase, Scott writes to John Ballantyim : — 
 ‘Dear John, — I have closed wMth Usher for his beautiful patrimony, 
 which makes me a great laird. I am afraid the people will take me up 
 for coining. Indeed these novels, while their attractions last, are some- 
 thing like it. T am very glad of your good prospects. Still I cry, l*ru- 
 {fence! Prudence! Yours truly, W. S.’” — Lockhart's Life A vol. iv., 
 page 82 . 
 
JOANNA^ S CARE. 
 
 455 
 
 Christ, — not like banished Norfolk, but becoming a monk in 
 the Jesuits’ College, Hampton. 
 
 And still I have not room enough to say what I should like 
 of Joanie’s rarest, if not. chiefest merit, her beautiful dancimr. 
 Real dancing, not jumping, or whirling, or trotting, or jig- 
 ging, but dancing, — like Green Mantle’s in “ Redgauntlet,” 
 winning applause from men and gods, whether the fishermen 
 and ocean Gods of Solway, or the marchmen and mountain 
 Gods of Cheviot.'^ Karest, nowadays, of -all the gifts of cul- 
 
 * I must liere once for all explain distinctly to the most matter of- 
 fact reader, the sense in which throughout all my earnest writiug of the 
 last twenty years I use the j>lural word “gods.” I mean by it, the 
 totality of spiritual powers, delegated by the Lord of the universe to do, 
 in their several heights, or offices, parts of His will respecting men, or 
 the world that man is imprisoned in ; — not as myself knowing, or in 
 security believing, that there are such, but in meekness accepting the 
 testimony and belief of all ages, to the presence, in heaven and earth, 
 of angels, principalities, powers, thrones, and the like, — with genii, 
 fairies, or spirits ministering and guardian, or destroying or tempting ; 
 or aiding good work and inspiring the mightiest. For all these, I take 
 the general w'ord “gods,” as the best understood in all languages, and 
 the truest and widest in meaning, including the minor ones of seraph, 
 cherub, ghost, wraith, and the like ; and myself knowing for an indis- 
 putable fact, that no true happiness exists, nor is any good work ever 
 done by human creatures, but in the sense or imagination of such pres- 
 ences. The following passage from the first volume of “ Fors Clavigera” 
 gives example of the sense in which I most literally and earnestly refer 
 to them : — 
 
 “You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown land- 
 scapes for you ! That was also a discovery, and some day may be use- 
 ful. But the sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown, 
 but in green, and blue, and all imaginable colors, here in England. 
 Not one of you ever looked at them, then ; not one of you cares for the 
 loss of them, now, when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that 
 he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box. 
 There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell. once upon a 
 time, divine as the vale of Tempe ; you might have seen the gods there 
 morning and evening, — Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the Light, 
 walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the 
 pinnacles of its crags. You cared neither for gods nor grass, but for 
 cash (which you did not know the way to get). You thought you could 
 get it by what the calls ‘ Kailroad Enterprise.’ You enterpvised 
 
456 
 
 PRJETERITA. 
 
 tivated womankind. It used to be said of a Swiss girl, in 
 terms of commendation, she “prays well and dances well 
 but now, no human creature can pray at the pace of our com- 
 mon prayers, or dance at the pace of popular gavottes, — more 
 especially the last ; for however fast the clergyman may gab- 
 ble, or the choir-boys yowl, their psalms, an earnest reader 
 can always think his prayer, to the end of the verse ; but no 
 mortal footing can give either the right accent, or the due 
 pause, in any beautiful step, at the pace of modern waltz or 
 polka music. Nay, even the last quadrille I ever saw well 
 danced, (and would have given half my wits to have joined 
 hands in,) by Jessie and Vicky Yokes, with Fred and Eosina, 
 was in truth not a quadrille, or four-square dance, but a 
 beautifully flying romj). But Joanie could always dance 
 everything rightly * * having not only the brightest light and 
 warmth of heart, but a faultless foot ; faultless in freedom — 
 
 a railroad throngli the valley, you blasted its rocks away, heaped thou- 
 sands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, and 
 the gods with it ; and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in 
 half- an hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton ; which you think 
 a lucrative process of exchange, you Fools everywhere! ” 
 
 * Of ricjht dancing, in its use on the stage, see the repeated notices in 
 “ Time and Tide.” Here is the most careful one : — “She did it beau- 
 tifully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an infant 
 prodigy ; there was no evidence, in the finish or strength of her motion, 
 that she had been put to continual torture through half her eight or 
 nine years. She did nothing more than any child, well taught, but 
 painlessly', might do. She caricatured no older person, — attempted 
 no curious or fantastic skill. She was dressed decently,— she moved 
 decently,— she looked and behaved innocently,— and she danced her 
 joyful dance with perfect grace, spirit, sweetness, and self forgetfulness. 
 >\iid through all the vast theatre, full of English fathers and mothers 
 and children, there was not one hand lifted to give her sign of praise 
 but mine. 
 
 Presently after this came on the forty thieves, who, as I told you, 
 were girls ; and there being no thieving to be presently done, and time 
 hanging heavy on their hands, arms, and legs, the forty thief girls pro- 
 ceeded to light forty cigars. Whereupon the British public gave them a 
 round of applause. 
 
 Whereupon I fell a-thinking ; and saw little more of the piece, ex- 
 cept as an ugly and disturbing dream.” 
 
JOANNA'S (JARE. 
 
 45T 
 
 never iiaiTOwed, or lifted into point or arch by its boot or 
 heei, but level, and at ease ; small, almonl to a fault, and in its 
 swiftest steps rising and falling with the gentleness which 
 only Byron has found words for— 
 
 ‘ ‘ Naked foot, 
 
 That shines like snow — and falls on earth as mute.” 
 
 The modern artificial ideal being, on the contraiy, expressed 
 by the manner of stamp or tap, as in the Laureate’s line — 
 
 “ She tapped her tiny silken sandalled foot.” 
 
 From which type the way is short, and has since been trave5*sed 
 quickly, to the conditions of patten, clog, golosh, and liigh- 
 heeled bottines, with the real back of the foot thrown behind 
 tlie ankle like a negress’s, which have distressed alike, and 
 disgraced, all feminine motion for the last quarter of a cen- 
 tuiy, — the slight harebell having little chance enough of 
 raising its head, once well under the hoofs of our proud 
 maidenhood, decorate with dead robins, transfixed humming- 
 birds, and hothouse flowers, — for its “ Wedding March by 
 Mendelssohn.” To think that there is not enough love or 
 praise in all Europe and America to invent one other tune 
 for the poor things to strut to ! 
 
 I draw back to my own home, twenty years ago, permitted 
 to thank Heaven once more for the peace, and hope, and 
 loveliness of it, and the Elysian walks with Joanie, and 
 Paradisaical with Rosie, under the peach-blossom branches by 
 the little glittering stream which I had paved with crystal for 
 them. I had built behind the highest cluster of laurels a 
 reservoir, from which, on sunny afternoons, I could let a 
 quite rippling film of water run for a couple of hours down 
 behind the hayfield, where the grass in spring still grew 
 fresh and deep. There used to be always a corncralm or tvvo 
 in it. Twilight after twilight I have hunted that bird, and 
 never once got glimpse of it : the voice was always at the 
 other side of the field, or in the inscrutable air or earth. 
 And the little stream had its falls, and pools, and imaginary 
 
458 
 
 PRJSTERITA. 
 
 lakes. .Here and there it laid for itself lines of graceful 
 sand ; there and here it lost itself under beads of chalcedony. 
 It wasn’t the Liffey, nor the Nith, nor the Wandel ; but the 
 two girls were surely a little cruel to call it “ The Gutter ! ” 
 Happiest times, for all of us, that ever w^ere to be ; not but 
 that Joanie and her Arthur are giddy enough, both of them 
 yet, with their five little ones, but they have been sorely 
 anxious about me, and I have been sorrowful enough for my- 
 self, since ever I lost sight of that peach-blossom avenue. 
 “ Eden-land ” Kosie calls it sometimes in her letters. Whether 
 its tiny river were of the waters of Abana, or Euphrates, or 
 Thamesis, I know not, but they were sweeter to my thirst 
 than the fountains of Trevi or Branda. 
 
 How things bind and blend themselves together! The 
 last time I saw the Fountain of Trevi, it was from Arthur’s 
 father’s room — Joseph Severn’s, where we both took Joanie 
 to see him in 1872, and the old man made a sweet drawing 
 of his pretty daughter-in-law, now in her schoolroom ; he 
 himself then eager in finishing his last picture of the Marriage 
 in Cana, which he had caused to take place under a vine 
 trellis, and delighted himself by painting the crystal and ruby 
 glittering of the changing rivulet of water out of the Greek 
 vase, glowing into wine. Fonte Branda I last saw with 
 Charles Norton,* under the same arches where Dante saw it. 
 
 * I must here say of Joanna and Charges Norton this mnch farther, 
 that they were mostly of a mind in the advice they gave me about my 
 books ; and though .Joan was, as it must have been already enough 
 seen, a true-bred Jacobite, she curiously objected to my early Catholic 
 opinions as roundly as either Norton or John P. Robinson. The three 
 of them — not counting Lady Trevelyan or little Connie, (all together 
 five opponent powers) -may be held practically answerable for my hav- 
 ing never followed up the historic study begun in Val d’Arno, for it 
 chanced that, alike in Florence, Siena, and Rome, all these friends, 
 tutors, or enchantresses were at different times amusing themselves 
 when I wuas at my hardest work ; and many happy days were spent by 
 all of us in somewhat luxurious hotel life, when by rights I should have 
 been still under Padre Tino in the sacristy of Assisi, or Cardinal Agostini 
 at Venice, or the Pope himself at Rome, with my much older friend 
 than any of these, Mr. Rawdou Brown’s perfectly faithful and loving 
 
JOANNA'S CARE. 
 
 459 
 
 We drank of it together, and walked together that evening on 
 the hills above, where the fireflies among the scented thickets 
 shone fitfully in the still iindarkened air. Hgio they shone ! 
 moving like fine-broken starlight through the purple leaves. 
 How they shone ! through the sunset that faded into thunder- 
 ous night as I entered Siena three days before, the white 
 edges of the mountainous clouds still lighted from tlie west, 
 and the openly golden sky calm behind the Gate of Siena’s 
 heart with its still golden words, “ Cor magis tibi Sena 
 pandit,” and the fireflies everywdiere in sky and cloud rising 
 and falling, mixed with the lightning and more intense than 
 the stars. 
 
 Brantwood, 
 
 Jtine IWi, 1889, 
 
 servant Antonio, Of Joanna’s and Connie’s care of me some farther 
 history will certainly, if I live, be given in No. VII., “ The Rainbows 
 of Giesbach ” ; of Chai’les Norton’s visit to me there also. 
 

 
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