RUSKIN, JOHN. 



with good accent, thinking of what I read, and 

 even asking troublesome questions about it, to 

 the extent of being one day eagerly and admir- 

 ingly congratulated by the whole class the mo- 

 nient we got into quad, on the consummate man- 

 ner in which I had floored our tutor, 1 having no 

 more intention to floor, or consciousness of liav- 

 ing floored, than a babe unborn. A few weeks 

 after coming up my tutor announced to me, with 

 a look of approval, that I was to read my essay 

 in hall on Saturday. J descended from the ros- 

 trum to receive, as 1 doubted not, the thanks of 

 the gentleman commoners. Not in envy, but in 

 fiery disdain, varied in expression through every 

 form and manner of the English language, they 

 explained to me that 1 had committed Iese->najest6 

 against the order of gentleman commoners; that 

 no gentleman commoner's essay ought ever to 

 contain more than twelve lines, with four words 

 in each ; and that the impropriety of writing an 

 essay with any meaning in it, like vulgar stu- 

 dents, the thoughtlessness and audacity of read- 

 ing one that would take at least a quarter of an 

 hour, and then reading it all, might for this once 

 be forgiven to such a greenhorn, but that Coven- 

 try wasn't the word for the place I should be 

 ent to if I ever did such a thing again. 

 " I went back to Oxford in January, 1840, for 

 last push. The work had come by that time 

 to high pressure, until twelve at night from six 

 in the morning, with little exercise, no cheerful- 

 ness, and no sense of any use in what I read, 

 to myself or anybody else. One evening 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. My mother stead- 

 ily maintained there was nothing serious the 

 matter, and that I only wanted rest and fresh 

 air. Sir James Clark cheerfully but decidedly 

 ordered me abroad before autumn. 



" 1 found my life again, all the best of it, and 

 so the year 1842 dawned for me with many things 

 in its morning cloud. I went up for my degree, 

 but find no entry of it. I only went up for a 

 pass, but still wrote Latin so badly that there 

 was a chance of my not passing, but the ex- 

 aminers forgave it because the divinity, philoso- 

 phy, and mathematics were all above the average, 

 and they gave me a complimentary double fourth. 

 What should I be or do? My utterly indulgent 

 father was ready to let me do anything, with my 

 room always luxuriously furnished in his house, 

 my expenses paid if I chose to travel. I had not 

 the least love of adventure, but liked to have 

 comfortable rooms always ordered, and a three- 

 course dinner ready by three o'clock. Although 

 no coward under circumstances of accidental dan- 

 ger, I extremely objected to any vestige of danger 

 a* a continuous element in one's life. I would 

 not go to India for fear of tigers, nor to Russia 

 for fear of bears, nor to Peru for fear of earth- 

 quakes. This year I did not draw much ; the things 

 I now saw were beyond drawing; but I took to 

 careful botany, while the month's time set apart 

 for Chamouni was spent in merely finding out what 

 to be done, and where. We went home by 

 Rhine and Flanders. 



" Perhaps my mother had sometimes admitted 

 ito her quiet soul the idea that it might be nice 

 have a larger garden. Sometimes a gold-tas- 

 eled Oxford friend would come out from Caven- 

 ish or Grosvenor Square to see me, and there 

 ras only the little back room opposite the nurs- 

 ry for him to wash his hands in. As his bank 

 fiance enlarged, even my father thought it pos- 

 ihle that his country customers might be more 



impressed by enjoying their after-dinner sherry 

 with more room lor their legs. And now that I 

 was of age, and B. A., and so on, did not I also 

 want a larger house? No; but ever since I could 

 drive a spade I had wanted to dig a canal, and 

 make locks on it, like Harry in Harry and Lucy. 

 And in the field at the back of the Denmark Hill 

 house, now, in this hour of all our weaknesses, 

 1 saw rny way to a canal with any number of 

 locks down toward Dulwich. 



" At last the lease of the larger house was 

 bought, and everybody said how wise and proper, 

 and my mother did like arranging 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 cows, 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 porier's lodge, 

 where undesirable visitors could be turned back 

 before startling us with their knock. But for 

 all these things we never were so happy again 

 never more at home; and I never got my canal 

 dug, after all! 



" The next year there was traveling enough for 

 us up and down the new garden walks. Also, the 

 first volume of Modern Painters took the best of 

 the winter's leisure. The house itself had no 

 specialty, either of comfort or inconvenience; the 

 breakfast room, opening on the lawn and farther 

 afield, was extremely pretty when its walls were 

 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 Wat- 

 son and his sisters in the evening and had decora- 

 tion enough in our Northcote portraits, Turner's 

 Slave Ship, and, in later years, his Rialto, with 

 our John Lewis arid two Copley Fieldings, and 

 every now and then a new Turner drawing. My 

 own workroom, above the breakfast room, was 

 only distinct as being such, in its large, oblong 

 table, occupying so much of the fifteen by twenty- 

 five feet of available space within bookcases that 

 the rest of the floor virtually was only passage 

 around it. I always wrote on the flat of the 

 table, a bad habit,* enforced partly by the fre- 

 quent need of laying drawings or books of refer- 

 ence beside me. 



" 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 explain 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 or- 

 ganisms, and down to the minutest detail and fin- 

 ished material structure naturally produced. The 

 second, to explain and illustrate the power of 

 two schools of art unknown to the British public, 

 that of Angelico of Florence and Tintoret of 

 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 Tintoret has never obtained the purchase of 

 any good example of him for the National Gallery. 

 But I permit myself perhaps with vain com- 

 placency the thought that I have had consider- 

 able share in the movement which led to the use- 

 ful-work of the Arundel Society in Italy, and to 

 the enlargement of the National collection by its 

 now valuable series of fourteenth century re- 

 ligious 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 



