contents of the volume were at this time being planned on very different lines from those afterwards adopted. It was intended to continue the essay on the lines of landscape study. At what time he began the first draft which is still preserved, and of which account is given below (pp. 361– 381), it is impossible to say. The dividing line is, as, we shall see, the tour of 1845, and probably the first draft was written before that time. For it includes no references to the painters whose work so greatly impressed him in that year. The central idea of the book, however—namely its theory of beauty in relation to the theoretic faculty-was with him from the first.1 On November 30, 1843, he says in his diary: "In the Artist and Amateur I see a series of essays on beauty commenced which seem as if they would anticipate me altogether." The second essay sufficed, however, to dispel this fear. "Find Rippingille all wrong," he writes on December 30, “in his essay on beauty: shall have the field open.

The foreign tour of 1844, however, diverted Ruskin's interests away from that field. The success of the first volume of Modern Painters was

not a decisive point in his career. We have already heard him refer to the continuation of that work as a mere passing of the time, a parergon almost. He was still, as his diary shows, giving much of his best effort to drawing in water-colours, and also, in some measure, to painting in oils. It was still an open question what was to be the main work of his life. The tour of 1844 did not finally answer the question. He went to Chamouni, and the Simplon, and for a few days to Zermatt. He was absorbed once more in botany, in geology, in drawing. Extracts from his diary of this tour have already been given; they show him occupied in watching skies, in studying mountain forms, in drawing from leaves and flowers. “The hills are as clear as crystal," he writes on June 16; "more lovely, I think, every day, and I don't know how to leave off looking at them." After leaving Chamouni, he went to the Simplon, there meeting James Forbes, and having his interest in geology yet further excited. The panorama of the Alps as seen from the Bel Alp, which he drew at

1 The theory of "Typical Beauty" worked out in this volume is foreshadowed in the Letter to a College Friend of May 16, 1841: see Vol. I. p. 451.

2 See letter to Osborne Gordon of March 10, 1844, in Vol. III. p. 665.

3 See Vol. III. pp. xxv.-xxvii. The itinerary of the tour was as follows: By Paris to Dijon and the Jura; St. Laurent (May 30), Geneva (June 1), St. Martin's (June 5), Chamouni (June 6-July 3), St. Martin's (July 4), Geneva (July 7), St. Gingolph (July 8), Sion (July 9), Brieg (July 10), over the Simplon to Baveno (July 12), return over the Simplon (July 15) to Brieg (July 17), Zermatt (July 18), Brieg (July 21). Ruskin's parents then went to Vevay, while he returned to Chamouni; he rejoined them at Vevay, and they reached Geneva (Aug. 2), Champagnole (Aug. 4); thence to Paris where they stayed some days; returning by Amiens (Aug. 20), Montreuil (Aug. 21), and Calais (Aug. 22) to Dover (Aug. 23).

4 As described in Præterita, ii. ch. v. § 97, and more fully in Deucalion, i. ch. x. ("Thirty Years Since.")

⚫ this time and afterwards slightly coloured, is now in the Sheffield Museum. On the way home he stopped some days in Paris, studying closely the pictures in the Louvre. "I shall try to paint a Madonna some day, I believe," he writes in his diary.1 During the winter of 1844–1845 (for which there are no diaries) the book seems to have made little progress; he felt, he says, "in a cyclone of new knowledge."2 His "fit of figure study " had opened his eyes, in some degree, to the merit of fourteenth-century painting, and caused him to abandon "Rubens and Rembrandt for the Venetian School." In the first draft of the second volume there are unfinished chapters in which lines of beauty are illustrated both from mountain forms and from the human figure; 3 he was enlarging the range of his studies in art and nature, and feeling his way to laws common to all manifestations of the beautiful. We see the bent of his thoughts at this time in the letter to Liddell of October 12, 1844. "As soon," he says, "as I began to throw my positions respecting the beautiful into form, I found myself necessarily thrown on the human figure for great part of my illustrations; and at last, after having held off in fear and trembling as long as I could, I saw there was no help for it, and that it must be taken up to purpose. So I am working at home from Fra Angelico, and at the British Museum from the Elgins." He was soon to be driven with yet more compelling force into such studies. But for the present his hardest work was in manual practice. He took up Turner's "Liber Studiorum,” practised its methods, " and by the springtime in 1845 was able to study from nature accurately in full chiaroscuro, with a good frank power over the sepia tinting."

66

"4

During the same winter (1844-1845) Ruskin read Rio's book on Christian art. His interest in this book, quickened by his studies in the Louvre, determined him to revisit Italy and study the early Christian painters before proceeding any further with his essay. The tour of 1845 was the decisive factor in making the second volume what it is, and was

1 Cited in Præterita, ii. ch. v. § 103.

2 Præterita, ii. ch. vi. § 104.

3 See below, Appendix i., p. 368.

4 See Vol. III. p. 669.

5 A good deal of his time and thought in 1844 was occupied with stained glass, in connection with a window he was designing for Camberwell Parish Church; letters dealing with this matter will be found in a later volume of the edition; see Præterita, ii. ch. viii. § 153. Ruskin's remarks on the subject of painted glass (e.g. in Two Paths, §78) were founded on much careful study and some practice.

• Præterita, ii. ch. vi. § 104.

De La Poésie Chrétienne dans son principe, dans sa matière et dans ses formes: Paris, 1836. An English version, with references to the second volume of Modern Painters, appeared in 1854 under the title, The Poetry of Christian Art. Ruskin says that he also read Lord Lindsay's introduction to his "Christian Art" (Præterita, ii. ch. vi. §§ 104, 116, and below, p. 118 n., and Epilogue, § 7, p. 348), but this must be a mistake, as the essay referred to (Progression by Antagonism) was not published till 1846, and the book not till 1847.

also the turning point in Ruskin's career. It revealed to him" the art of man in its full majesty for the first time,” and in himself "a strange and precious gift," enabling him to recognise it. Henceforth he felt that his life "must no longer be spent only in the study of rocks and clouds." He had heard a fresh call, and he accepted it; he must become an interpreter of the nobleness of human art, as well as of the beauty of nature. As Ruskin has himself explained this crisis in his mental and literary life in detail, both in Præterita (ii. chs. vi. and vii.), and in the Epilogue to the present volume (pp. 346–357), there is no occasion further to emphasize it here; but those passages in his works may be illustrated from his letters and diaries of the time.

He set out from England on April 2, 1845, for the first tour that he had ever undertaken without his father and mother.1 His father was unable to go away, and his mother stayed with her husband. Ruskin had with him as travelling companion the young brother of his mother's maid, John Hobbs, called "George" in the Ruskin household, where both master and son were named John. He remained in Ruskin's service till 1854, and seems to have been a youth of cheerful spirit and humour. But the commander-in-chief of the expedition was the Chamouni guide, Joseph

1 The following is the itinerary of the tour: Dover (April 2), Calais, Montreuil (April 3), Beauvais (April 4), Paris (April 5, 6), Sens (April 7), Mont Bard (April 8), Dijon (April 9), Champagnole (April 10), Geneva (April 11), Annecy (April 12, 13, 14), Conflans (April 15), Grenoble (April 16, 17), Gap (April 18), Digne (April 19, 20), Draguignan (April 21), Nice (April 22), Mentone (April 23), Oneglia (April 24), Savona (April 25), Genoa (April 26, 27, 28), Sestri (April 29-May 1), Spezzia (May 2), Lucca (May 3–11), Pisa (May 12–27), Pistoja (May 28), Florence (May 29– July 6), Pietra Mala (July 7), Bologna (July 8), Parma (July 10-13), Pavia (July 14), Milan (July 15-18), Como (July 19, 20), Vogogna (July 21, 22), Macugnaga (July 23-Aug. 3), Ponte Grande (Aug. 4), Domo d'Ossola (Aug. 5), Formazza (Aug. 6), Airolo (Aug. 7), Faido (Aug. 8-17), Baveno (Aug. 18-31), Como, Bergamo, Desenzano (Sept. 5), Verona (Sept. 6-8), Padua (Sept. 9), Venice (Sept. 10-Oct. 13), Padua (Oct. 14), Vicenza, Verona, Brescia (Oct. 18), Milan (Oct. 20), Domo d'Ossola (Oct. 21), Simplon (Oct. 22), Martigny (Oct. 23), Nyon (Oct. 25), Geneva, Champagnole, Dijon (Oct. 28), Mont Bard, Paris (Oct. 31), Beauvais (Nov. 1, 2), Montreuil (Nov. 3), Dover (Nov. 4).

2 George's quaint remarks, and Couttet's chaff of him, supply the element of light comedy in Ruskin's letters home. Thus George did not appreciate the heat and compulsorily light diet of Florence. "Oh, sir,' he said, writes Ruskin (June 13), "think of them at home walking in the acacia walk and eating as many strawberries as they like, and having all the blinds down in the library, and here are we, without a breath of air, and mustn't eat anything. For I had told him what is very true, that he mustn't touch fruit of any kind now that the hot weather has begun.' Among the Alps, George became a mighty walker. But, said Couttet, "afin que George aille bien, il faut lui donner à manger souvent, et beaucoup à la fois" (Aug. 14). George's criticism of the composition of Turner has often been made in more pretentious language. Ruskin had shown him first the actual spot, and then Turner's vision of it. "George didn't recognize it at first,” writes Ruskin from Faido (August 17), "and on my showing him how it had been adapted-Well, he is a cunning old gentleman, to be sure; just like Mrs. Todgers, dodging among the tender pieces with a fork.' Vide Martin Chuzzlewit." [Ch. ix. The

Marie Couttet, who had been with Ruskin in 1844, and in whose prudence, resourcefulness, and integrity his parents had full confidence. It was amply deserved, and Ruskin cherished to the last the warmest affection for his old guide, philosopher, and friend. But all Couttet's care did not allay the anxiety of the fond parents at Denmark Hill, which is indicated clearly enough by passages in the son's letters home. "I am very cautious about ladders," he writes (Florence, June 16); "and always try their steps thoroughly, and hold well with hands." So again: "I will take great care of boats at Baveno, merely using them on calm afternoons for exercise (Faido, Aug. 15); and from Baveno, on his way to Venice (Aug. 23), "You needn't be afraid of railroads; I shan't trouble their dirty ironwork." Turner had foreseen the old people's anxiety and tried to dissuade Ruskin from going: "Why will you go to Switzerland—there'll be such a fidge about you, when you're gone."2 But he had his work to do; nor in the doing of it did he ever lose loving thought of his parents. There is a letter to his mother which illustrates very beautifully the relations between them :

BAVENO, Sunday, 24th Aug.

MY DEAREST MOTHER,-As I received on the 22nd a letter of my father's dated 13th August, I trust that this will either arrive on or remark is made of Mrs. Todgers by Bailey, the boot-boy.] George knew how to humour his master. It is a quaint glimpse that we get of the party at Padua, where, when Ruskin was feeling unwell, George was sent out to buy some scrap of a picture to hang in the bedroom; "and he brought me a seven-inch square bit of fifteenth century tempera, a nameless saint with a scarlet cloak and an embossed nimbus, who much comforted me” (Præterita, ii. ch. vii. § 145). For further account of George, see ibid. ii. ch. vi. § 108.

1 For Ruskin's references to Couttet, see below, Epilogue, § 4; Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. xvii. § 30 n.; Fors Clavigera, Letters 4, 5, 75; Proserpina, ii. ch. iv.; "The Story of Arachne," § 1, in Verona and its Rivers, 1894; Præterita, vol. ii. passim. Ruskin's letters home during this tour show how carefully Couttet guided, guarded, and physicked his charge. Nothing escaped him; he held an umbrella over Ruskin while the latter sketched; he was even at hand to see that Ruskin always took "a squeeze of lemon in his water." The peasant's time must have hung heavily during the long sojourn at Florence, but Couttet "solaced himself by making a careful collection of all the Florentine wild flowers" (Præterita, ii. ch. vii. § 130) in order, as we learn from one of the letters home, that Ruskin might compare them with the flowers in Florentine pictures. It must have been with considerable relief that Couttet saw his young employer turn to the mountains. At Macugnaga he was in his element"cooking the dinner (as Ruskin wrote, July 29), going out to gather strawberries for tea, mulling wine in the evening, and encouraging everybody all day like Mark Tapley." Couttet's saying of his charge-"le pauvre enfant, il ne sait pas vivre -shows how well he had read one aspect of Ruskin's eager temperament. It may be interesting to state that Couttet received for his services four francs a day clear for himself, Ruskin paying his board and lodging.

2 Præterita, ii. ch. vi. § 106. Ruskin believed "he made up his mind that I was heartless and selfish." It seems possible that Turner's love of mystification may have had something to do with his advice; for he knew that one of Ruskin's motives was to hunt up the artist's sketching-ground. There were, however, disturbances at that time in Switzerland, and a possibility of danger.