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1907

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LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA
SAN DIEGO



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PR^TERITA

OUTLINES OF SCENES AND THOUGHTS

PERHAPS WORTHY OF MEMORY

IN MY PAST LIFE



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Praeterita

and

Dilecta

VOL. Ill



By



John Ruskin



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London : George Allen



WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS



June I907

12th to 16//1 Thousand

Jill rights reserved



CONTENTS OF VOL. III.



[Note. — The Tables of Contents which are now added to this
edition of " Preeterita" have been prepared by the compiler of
the Index. The dates at the head of each chapter are those with
which the chapter mainly deals, although other topics, referring
to later years, are often included in the same chapter.]

CHAPTER I.

THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE
1850-60.

PAGE

Authors poem " Mont Blanc Revisited" (1845) — His then
religious temper — Influence of hills on him and gener-
ally — The Grande Chartreuse, its foundation — "We
do not come here to look at the mountains" — Miss
Edgeworth's Sister Frances — Convent of St. Michael
at Le Puy — Catholicism of Chamouni — Wordsworth
quoted — Florentine monks — Results on author's Puri-
tanism — Monastic beliefs — Hugo of Lincoln — Turner
and the Grande Chartreuse — Author's life, 1850-60 —
The Working Men's College — D. G. Rossetti and
F. D. Maurice — Bible lesson by the latter — Religious
infidelity—Pupils at the College — Mr. George Allen —
Belgravian Puritanism— Mr. Molyneux— The Prodigal
Son— Scotch Puritanism — Author's first missal — His
character — Catholic liturgy — Sabbatarianism — 1858.
Sunday at Rheinfelden— Author's first Sunday draw-
ings — Bellinzona — Autumn at Turin — Final rejection
of Puritanism 1-38



VI CONTENTS.



CHAPTER II.

MONT VELAN.
1854-56.

TAGE

Author leaves Turin — Prom's death — Author's dog
" Wisie " — Macaulay — Bishop Wilberforce — Mr.
Cowper Temple— Lord Palmerston — DTsraeli at the
Deanery, Christ Cnurch — The Swiss Alps — Mont
Velan — Charlemagne and Swiss History — Lac de
Chede— Lake of Zurich ; its purity— Bertha of Bur-
gundy — Count Berthold — Foundation of Fribourg,
Berne, and Thun — Canton and commune — Author at
Mornex — Dr. Gosse — Vevay — First meeting with
C. E. Norton 39 _ 77



CHAPTER III.

l'esterelle.

1856-58.

C. E. Norton — His influence on author — What he might
have been — Letter from him, 1887 — 1858. Author's
first acquaintance with Rosie, Wisie, and their mother
— His work with them — Their nicknames for him
— "St. C." — " Archegosaurus " — A letter from
Rosie 78-102

CHAPTER IV.

JOANNA'S CARE.

1S64.

Death of author's father — Joan Ruskin Agnew (Mrs. Arthur
Severn) — Her family— Comes to Denmark Hill — Her
account of author's mother — Of Carlyle at Denmark
Hill -Anecdotes of him— Her character and powers—



CONTENTS. vii



PAGE

Useful to author in her knowledge of Scott and the
Scotch — Scotch character — Influence of Scotch
scenery on Scott and Carlyle — Scott's novels and
poems — His historical knowledge — Author at Ken-
mure, 1876 — Wandering Willie— Scott on music —
War songs — The voice, the instrument — "Farewell
Manchester " — Scott on Richmond Hill — Joanna's
dancing— Right dancing— Byron quoted — Denmark
Hill with Joanie and Rosie — The toy waterfall —
Recollections 103-148



DILECTA.

Preface— Its Aim 151-152

CHAPTER I.

R. Leslie's recollections of Turner at Petworth Park —
Turner as a fisherman — On varnishing days at the
R. A. — His knowledge of ships — The Queen Anne
Street — Turner in Lord (Tottenham's wig — The Old
Tdmeraire — The plague-wind — Is the sun going
out? 153-178

CHAPTER II.

The Old or Fighting Te"me"raire — Pigs and goats on board
s-hip— Derivation of "deck" and " dickey "—Life on
board the / 'ictory with Lord Nelson — Steam v. animal
power— Turner's letters to W. E. Cooke — Diary of
author's father on Switzerland in 1833— Basle and
Berne ......... 179-20^



VI 1) CONTENTS.



CHAPTER III.

I'ACK

Author's treatment of Puritanism not careless — His here-
ditary connection with the Scottish covenanters — His
great-grandfather, the Rev. W. Tweddale of Glenluce
— Pedigree of the family — Documents respecting
Turner — Agreement (1819) for drawings of the Rhine —
Delineation of his character from a cast of his head
taken after death —Description of him from life (1843)
by Mrs. John Simon — A railway journey with Turner —
His "seeing" eyes — The origin of his " Rain, Steam,
and Speed " 206-229



Index 231-328



PRETERIT A.

CHAPTER I.

THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE.

MONT BLANC REVISITED.
( Written at Nyo?i in 1845.)

O Mount beloved, mine eyes again
Behold the twilight's sanguine stain
Along thy peaks expire.

Mount beloved, thy frontier waste

1 seek with a religious haste

And reverent desire.

They 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 ;
VOL. in.



2 PRJETERITA.

Since, from the things that trustful rest,
The partridge on her purple nest,

The marmot in his den,
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 honourable be ;
And this, that leads me to condemn,
Be rather want of love for them

Than jealousy for Thee.

I. THESE verses, above noticed (vol. ii. § 109),
with one following sonnet, as the last rhymes
I attempted in any seriousness, were never-
theless themselves extremely earnest, and ex-
press, 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. My mother at once found fault
with the words 'sanguine stain,' as painful,
and untrue of the rose-colour on snow at
sunset ; but they had their meaning to myself,



I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 3

— 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 purest 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 wholly true. Whatever might
be my common faults or weaknesses, they
were rebuked among the hills; and the only
days I can look back to as, according to the
powers given me, rightly or wisely in entire-
ness spent, have been in sight of Mont Blanc,
Monte Rosa, or the Jungfrau.

When I was most strongly under this in-
fluence, 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 mountains in solemnizing the
thoughts 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



4 PRJETERITA.

the fifteenth century, and then by the coarse
lusts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth :
destruction so total that religious men them-
selves became incapable of education by any
natural beauty or nobleness ; and though
still useful to others by their ministrations
and charities, in the corruption of cities,
were themselves lost, — or even degraded, if
they ever went up into the mountain to
preach, or into the wilderness to pray.

2. There is no word, in the fragment of
diary recording, in last ' Praeterita,' * 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 courses of re-
ligious thought in me, afterwards 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 any-
where ; the mountains round were simplest

* This should be Mast but one.' See vol. ii. § 209.— Ed.



I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 5

commonplace 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 expression but of supercili-
ousness without sagacity, and an ungraciously
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, leaning on the
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 mountains.' Under which rebuke I bent
my head silently, thinking however all the



O PR^TERITA.

same, 'What then, by all that's stupid, do
you come here for at all ? '

3. Which, from that hour to this, I have
not conceived; nor, after giving my best at-
tention to the last elaborate account of Car-
thusian faith, ' La Grande Chartreuse, par
tin Chartreux, Grenoble, 5, Rue Brocherie,
1S84,' am I the least wiser. I am informed
by that author that his fraternity are Ere-
mite beyond all other manner of men, — that
they delight in solitude, 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 uttermost; but do not hold
that liking to be the least pious or amiable
in myself, nor understand why it seems
so to them ; or why their founder, St.
Bruno, — a man of the brightest faculties in
teaching, and exhorting, and directing; also,
by favour 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



I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. *J

crozier of protection, and come away to
enjoy meditation on the next world by
himself.

And why 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 themselves
of being buried by avalanches, or trouble to
their venerating 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 — until the days when books
were illuminated no more for religion, but
for luxury, and the amusement of sickly
fancy.

4. Without endeavouring to explain any
of these matters, I will try to set down



8 PR.ETERITA.

in this chapter, merely what 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 Fleury,
which, read over and over again through
all my childhood, 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 Germany and England.

But the first impression from life of the
secluded Sisterhoods * 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 per-
mitted to see of chapel or interior buildings,
was a cheerful, simple creature, pleased with
us at once for our courtesy to her, and
admiration of her mountain home, and belief

Of the Brotherhoods, of course the first I knew were
those of St. Bernard ; but these were not secluded for their
own spiritual welfare, any more than our coastguardsmen
by the Goodwin sands ; and are to be spoken of elsewhere,
and in quite other relations to the modern world.



I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 9

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 enquired
earnestly of us, what sort of creatures we
were, — how far we believed in God, or tried
to be good, or hoped to go to heaven ? And
our responses under this catechism 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 un-
necessarily called ourselves, anything else
than Catholic ? The one flaw in our faith
which at last her charity fastened on, 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 in-
voluntarily into an eager and beautiful little
sermon, to every word of which her own
perfectly happy and innocent face gave vivid



I O PR^TERITA.

power, and assurance of sincerit}-, — how 'we
needed to be sure of our safety in Christ,
and that every one might be so who came
to Him and prayed to Him ; and that all
good Catholics were as sure of heaven as if
they were already there ; ' and so dismissed
us at the gate with true pity, and beseech-
ing 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.



I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. I I

5. The second and fourth summers after
that, 1842 and 1844, were spent happily
and quietly 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, — recognising 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
Sunday services, in England, which exhaust
the little faith we have left.

Wordsworth, in his continental notices of
peasant Catholicism, recognises, also at Cha-
mouni, very gracefully this external pretti-
ness —

' They too, who send so far a holy gleam,

As they the Church engird with motion slow,
A product of that awful mountain seem

Poured from its vaults of everlasting snow.
Not virgin lilies marshalled in bright row,

Not swans descending with 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.'

* Not in the Priory itself, but the Hotel de 1' Union.
The whole village is called "The Priory."



1 2 PRiETERITA.

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 Catholic districts of Savoy, the
Waldstetten, and the Tyrol, to their per-
petual honour and peace ; and this without
controversy, or malice towards the holders
of other beliefs.

6. Next, in 1845, I saw in Florence, as
above told, the interior 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 re-
tained of their old thoughts and ways, were
wholly beautiful ; 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 understanding, courtesy, and moral
sense.

Men of the outer world, I mean, of course,
— official and commercial. Afterwards at
Venice I had a very dear and not at all



I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. I 3

monastic, friend, Rawdon Brown ; but his
society were the Venetians of the fifteenth
century. The Counts Minischalchi 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 Italy,
where I wanted a niche to be quiet in, and
chiefly at last in Assisi, I got on with any
broken French or Italian I could stutter, with-
out minding; and was always happy.

7. 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 adversaries; 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 immediate contest or progress, I saw in



14 PRJETERITA.

the steady course of the historical reading
by which I prepared myself to write the
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
earthly pleasure, were alike disobeying the
laws of God when they withdrew from their
direct and familiar duties, and ceased, whether
in ascetic or self-indulgent lives, to honour
and love their neighbour as themselves.

While 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.

8. In which pure religion neither St. Bruno
himself nor any of his true disciples failed :
and I perceive it finally notable of them,
that, poor by resolute choice of a life of



I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. I 5

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 directly wholesome influence
on the outer world than any other order of
monks so narrow in number, and restricted
in habitation. For while the Franciscan
and Cistercian monks became everywhere a
constant element in European society, the
Carthusians, in their active sincerity, re-
mained, in groups of not more than from
twelve to twenty monks in any single monas-
tery, the tenants of a few wild valleys of the
north-western Alps ; the subsequent overflow-
ing of their brotherhood 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, as-
sociated 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 mountain
fastnesses, and sent out to minister to the



1 6 PRJETERITA.

world, a succession of men of immense mental
grasp, and serenely authoritative innocence ;
among whom our own Hugo of Lincoln, in
his relations with Henry I. and Cceur 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 scarcely be used without cruelty, nor in
its scope without error; the great Saints are
always in some degree incredible or unin-
telligible ; 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.*

9. 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
checked by his love and awe of the sea, and
sailor heroism, and confused by his classical

The original building was grouped round a spring in
the rock, from which a runlet was directed through every
cell.



I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 1 7

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.

10. The events of the ten years 1850 —
i860, for the most part wasted in useless
work, must be arranged first in their main
order, before I can give clear account of any
thing that happened in them. But this break-
ing down of my Puritan faith, being the matter
probably most important to many readers of
my later books, shall be traced in this chapter
to the sorrowful end. Note first the main
facts of the successive years of the decade.

1 85 1. Turner dies, while I am at first main-
work in Venice, 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. Drawings
as many — of a sort ; useless too.

1853. Henry Acland in Glenfinlas with

me. Drawing of gneiss rock made ; now in
VOL. III. b



1 8 PRJRTERITA.

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 Switzer-
land, and propose to engrave a series of draw-
ings of the following Swiss towns : Geneva,
Fribourg, Basle, Thun, Baden, and Schaff-
hausen. I proceed to make drawings for this
work, of which 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 Chillon. It leaves out rhythm,
which I now consider a defect in said defi-
nition ; 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.

11. 1855. Notes on Royal Academy
begun. The spring is so cold that the haw-