Ruskin Relics

ife, and of unusual interest to his biographer, who accompanied him as secretary, which is to say "man-jack-of-all-trades." In such companionship much personalit

der how I came to write about it." But even in his depression the habit of work made him sketch once more the tracery of the H?tel de Ville. He found out the trick of its geometrical pattern, and

he would make use of every moment, even when ill-health and the fatigue of travelling might seem a good reason for idling. At once on arriving anywhere he was ready to sketch, and up to the minute of departure he went on with his drawing

o the very word. There was an ugly prison, too, put up next the cathedral; and even St. Remi did not make amends. So he hastened on to Troyes, spending a few hours be

walk in the valley of the Yonne and up the chalk hills brought much talk of the geology of flints and the especial charm of coteau scenery, which he said had never been cared for until Turner saw it and glorified this comparatively humble aspect of mountains in the "Rivers of France." He se

ong bold red granite rocks, fully justified his choice. The town, on its Durham-like hill, swept round by the deep river-course, and unspoilt by modernisms, and the wooded, flowery, rocky neighbourhood, full of all that is most charming in French scenery-there are Roman remains, too, but of these he took less note-and the curious details of the twelfth-century church all attracted him mightily. The only drawback was the weather, which broke down with the thunder and gave us cold east winds and dark haze, in which

in his Proutesque style, of a chapel at Rue, near Abbeville. It had been passed as his, when Mrs. Severn went through the portfolios with him, noting the subjects on the back of the mounts; and-with some hesitation, I confess, and neglect of the good rule "When in doubt, don't"-it was shown at both Ruskin Exhibitions as a work by the master, and greatly admire

and "The Talisman." To Ruskin any restoration meant ruin; but as he went round the aisles, disdainful at first but gradually warming to the intelligence and skill of the great modern architect, he confessed that if restoration might be done

like Dovedale and the Meuse and the glens of Fribourg in all that each has of best, and like Chamouni in granite cleavage, and like-itself, in sweet French looks and ways.... The miraculous fairy valley ... one of the sweetest ever made by heaven. The Cyclopean walls, of blocks seven and eight feet long, and three feet thick-the largest-all averaging two and a half (feet) cube, at a guess, laid with their smooth cleavages to the outside, fitted like

us," continuing "The Bible of Amiens," he would spend two days with the monks. C?teaux, the home of the Cistercians, was the first day's trip, marred by the heat and dust, and by finding all vestiges of the monks replaced by an industrial school of the ugliest, which, nevertheless, he inspected with nicely restrained impatience. A moated grange on the wayside homeward caught his eye, and as he sketched it he tried to make me believe that this must at least be a bit of the monks' work, and the journey not in

e; and the first Jura walk was across the hill to the gorge of the Ain. I had often been through the Jura, as a blind, benighted modern, but never before loitered from slab to slab of its fissured limestone summits, looking for the foreground loveliness of nestling flowers which contrast so delicately with the quaint, crannied

u ought to have seen the wood-anemones, and oxalis, and violets"; and then, picking his steps to find the exact spot by a twisted larch-tree, an

OAD, BETWEEN MORE

embe

mere enchantment." At a halt I sketched, when a break in the clouds gave sunbeams darting into the valley beneath, and wisps of white wreathed the steep forests. You see where he got that beautiful cadence to a fine passage, after comparing the Jura upland with a Yorkshire moor, and contrasting the becks of our fells with the enchanted silence of open Jura. "The raincloud clasps her cli

there was the elation of getting into Switzerland. "Why do you like it better than France?" he asked. I was just trying to say why, that it is a free country and some more innocent gush, when the Swiss Customs officers ran up, and insisted on o

ine boards on the floor, scrubbed white, and no needless furniture. Here he said we should stay a week and rest; he had much to write-first ideas for "Pr?terita," you understand. But

y thundery, look in the clouds. At St. Cergues this east wind haze was still more pronounced, the Lake of Geneva ruffled and white, with patches of shadow from small "sailor-boy" clouds, while the whole range opposite was not exactly shrouded but veiled in a persistent thickness of air. Above, the sky was bright, with blue and streaky cirrus, and between the sho

it dun and semi-transparent; its thick veil fouling the little cotton-woolly clouds that nestled in the coves of the Kirkstone group, quite separate from the smoke-pall; and by sunset it had reached to Dungeon Gill, leaving the Bow Fell valleys clear. Coming down by moonlight I found the dales in a dry, cold fog, and heard that there had been no sunshine at Coniston that afternoon. This is Ruskin's plague-cloud, and the real enemy of the weather not only in England but in the Alp

D'OCHES UNDER THE SMOK

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ad, though the mountains to the south and east were still in the "plague-cloud." There was no sketching to be done, and we followed the ridge down to the Col de la Faucille. If you look at his map of the Jura, facsimiled at page 109 of this volume, the Col is where the road suddenly turns round into zigzags after going straight south-west behind the D?le; and you remember how he names the whole chapter from this one spot, as a chie

sse es

la faut

l haze, red in the sunset, brick red, not Alpine rose; and then all was grey. We found our carriage and dro

come on; but now I know. "Fifteen feet thick-of not flowing but flying water"-I will not quote the wonderful pages which every lover of Ruskin, of landscape, and of English undefiled, must know-the "one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it constant as the wreathing of a shell"; and then the bit about its blue, and "the innocent way" of it, a

the cleavage of the Salève. I made a slight note of the lines, the cathedral-like buttresses which flank the level-bedded masonry of the great mountain-wall with masses of a different rock, vertically cloven; and the gorge of Monnetier which cuts the range across with an unexpected breach; and we went over his old debate with the Genevese geologists. Then

TIER AND THE BUTTR

plored changes; but brightened when the landlord guessed who he must be, and quite cheered up-with that last infirmity of noble minds-on hearing that the English sometimes came to see Ruskin's house. Indeed, it was more his home than many a ho

t anybody." But I am sure all his personal friends will bear me out that it never went beyond the glass or two. He was no drinker, and his very strong anti-teetotal attitude was simply the expression of his own habitual and easy temperance. That evening's dinner I remember well. After our walk from Veyrier to Pont d'Etrembières, and more sauntering by the Rh?ne in a beautiful red sunset, we came in late. At table we had some debate about the pictures on the