To Mrs. HEWITT1

LANSLEBOURG, 1st Sept., '58.

I don't think women were in general meant to reason. I never knew but one rational woman in my life, and that is my own mother (when one doesn't talk about actors or Mr. Gladstone, or anybody she has taken an antipathy to). . . . For the Imaginative side there is more to be said. The great painters evidently have all their ideas so completely "imaged" before they begin that they would paint you the grief of the people they have put into their picture from the other side, if you wanted it.

To his FATHER

Sunday Evening, PARIS, 12th September, 1858. I never was present at so disgraceful an English service as this morning. Rue d'Aguesseau is shut up, and the church was a school for gymnastics, with all the ropes and poles swinging among the chairs, and a tattered canvas covering over the broken glass of the roof. The sermon worse than the church, utterly abominable and sickening in its badness. I went away straight to the Louvre, and found it worse arranged than ever, and the great Paul Veronese 2 (which I thought more of than ever) with its varnish chilled and in a shocking state. Came back through Tuileries-a wonderful view, it being a quite cloudless day, with exquisite quietness of air, yet not sultry; all Paris under fourteen years old was in the gardens, and a good deal of old Paris besides, and I am amazed to find that the Parisians will not for a moment bear comparison with the Turinoises.

I can only explain to you the difference by the fact that the Turinoises always reminded me of Titian-at their best, and of Sir Peter Lely at their worst: but these Paris women remind me of no one but Chalon. There is a terrible and strange hardness into which the unamiable ones settle as they grow old. An Italian woman, at the worst, degrades herself into an animal; but the French woman degrades herself into a Doll;-the gardens looked to me as if they were full of automata or waxworks. So with the men-the sexagenarians for the

1 [This extract is No. 158 in Sotheby's Sale Catalogue, February 26, 1906. The word "grief" in the last line but one must be a misprint; perhaps for "chief." For other letters to the same correspondent, see below, pp. 312, 424, and Vol. XXXVII. p. 732. In one of those at the latter place, Ruskin calls her My dear ward." She was a friend of Ruskin and his father (see below, p. 436), and she drew under Ruskin's instructions, but was not his "ward" in any other sense.]

66

2 [Either the "Wedding Feast at Cana" or the "Dinner at Simon the Pharisee's": see Vol. XII. p. 449.]

3 [See above, p. 174.]

1858]

A CHILD OF ITALY

291

most part have a quite cruel and heartless expression without the least grandeur;-an Italian, however ferocious or sensual, always looks like a man, or like a beast; but these French look like nutmeg-graters-they don't make tigers, or snakes, or sloths of themselves, but thumbscrews. The children, of course, always pretty, but spoiled by over-dressing; even the poorest get themselves up with little short petticoats and caps, and boots, and all sorts of artificialness. In Italy one constantly sees a wild, graceful, confessed poverty, without abject misery; but here, there is no interval between starvation and toilette. One of the finest things I saw at Turin was a group of neglected children at play on a heap of sand one girl of about ten, with her black hair over her eyes and half naked, bare-limbed to above the knees, and beautifully limbed, lying on the sand like a snake; an older one did something to offend her, and she rose with a spring and a shriek like a young eaglet's -as loud as an eaglet's at least, but a good deal sweeter, for eagles have not pleasant voices. The same girl, here, in the same station of life, would have had her hair combed and plaited into two little horns on each side of her head-would have had a parasol and pink boots, and would have merely pouted at her companion instead of shrieking at her. I don't, of course, think it proper for girls to lie bare-legged on heaps of sand, or to shriek when they are displeased; but it is picturesque, if not pleasing, and I think also, something better than a picture might have been made of the little Italian eaglet, if anybody had taken her in hand: but nothing whatever of the parasoled and pink-booted children.

I walked after dinner to Notre Dame (now utterly destroyed-I went merely to make sure of that fact)—and so back to see sunset from the fountains of the Place de la Concorde, which were beautiful beyond description in the golden twilight.

I can't tell till to-morrow at Calais about the boats or trains, but will telegraph to you by which train I come. I left Geneva at six o'clock yesterday morning, dined at Tonnerre, and arrived here comfortably at ten minutes past nine.

And thus, I hope, terminates my diary for the year 1858, except my small notes of weather and work which I keep at home.

TO ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

[DENMARK HILL] October 14th, 1858.

DEAR MRS. BROWNING,-You must, of course, be quite sure by this time that something has been the matter with me.

1 1 [The scene is described in The Cestus of Aglaia (Vol.

Well, it is quite

XIX. p. 82).]

true. I have had cloud upon me this year, and don't quite know the meaning of it; only I've had no heart to write to anybody. I suppose the real gist of it is that next year I shall be forty, and begin to see what life and the world mean, seen from the middle of them— and the middle inclining to the dustward end. I believe there is something owing to the violent reaction often after the excitement of the arrangement of Turner's sketches; 2 something to my ascertaining in the course of that work how the old man's soul had been gradually crushed within him, leaving him at the close of his life weak, sinful, desolate-nothing but his generosity and kindness of heart left; something to my having enjoyed too much of lovely things, till they almost cease to be lovely to me, and because I have no monotonous or disagreeable work by way of foil to them;-but, however it may be, I am not able to write as I used to do, nor to feel, and can only make up my mind to the state as one that has to be gone through, and from which I hope some day to come out on the other side.

The year stole away without my knowing how; nevertheless, I went to the north of Switzerland to sketch-Habsburg, Königsfeld, Morgarten, and Grütli. None of thein, I'm sorry to say, much worth drawing. Habsburg has only a window or two and a rent or two of old wall left; Morgarten is beside the ugliest and dullest lake in all Switzerland. I went on to Bellinzona and stayed there long-six weeks --but got tired of the hills and began to think life in the City Square was the real thing. Away I went to Turin! of all places-found drums and fifes, operas and Paul Veroneses, stayed another six weeks, and got a little better, and I begin to think nobody can be a great painter who isn't rather wicked-in a noble sort of way.

I merely write this, not by way of a letter, but just that you may know there is something the matter with me, and that it isn't that I don't think of you nor love you.

Don't answer this till I send you another; 3 perhaps I shall be in a better humour. I had nearly come to see you at Havre, but couldn't. They wanted me so much at home after I had been four months away. -Ever affectionately Robert's and yours, J. RUSKIN.

1 [On "8 February 1859," says Mr. W. M. Rossetti, "I was asked by Ruskin to meet him at Long's Hotel in Bond Street, share his dinner there, and go on to the National Gallery. As we were leaving the hotel, he said to me, 'To-day I am forty years old: how much time gone, and how much work demanding to be done!" (Some Reminiscences, 1906, vol. i. p. 181).]

2

[Compare what Ruskin says on this subject in Vol. VII. p. 5.]

3 [But the other was long delayed, as Mrs. Browning complained in her reply of January 1, 1859: see the Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, vol. ii. p. 299.1

1858]

THE SENSE OF REACTION

293

To CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 1

DENMARK HILL, 24th October, '58.

DEAR NORTON,-At last I begin to write letters again. I have been tired, ill, almost, and much out of heart during the summer; not fit to write to you, perhaps chiefly owing to the reaction from the intense excitement of the Turner work; partly because at 39 one begins to feel a life of sensation rather too much for one. I believe I want either to take up mathematics for a couple of years, or to go into my father's counting-house and sell sherry for the same time-for otherwise, there seems to me a chance of my getting into a perfect Dryasdust. I actually found the top of St. Gothard "dull" this year. Besides this feeling of weariness, I have more tiresome interruption than I can bear; questions-begging for opinions on pictures, etc.-all which I must put a stop to, but don't yet see my way clearly to the desired result; the upshot of the matter being that I am getting every day more cold and sulky-and dislike writing letters even to my best friends; I merely send this because I want to know how you are.

I went away to Switzerland this year the moment Academy was over; and examined with a view to history Habsburg, Zug, Morgarten, Grütli, Altdorf, Bürglen, and Bellinzona-sketching a little, but generally disgusted by finding all traditions about buildings and places untraceable to any good foundation; the field of Morgarten excepted, which is clear enough. Tell's birthplace, Bürglen, is very beautiful. But somehow, I tired of the hills for the first time in my life, and went away-where do you think?-to Turin, where I studied Paul Veronese in the morning and went to the opera at night for six weeks! And I've found out a good deal--more than I can put in a letter— in that six weeks, the main thing in the way of discovery being that, positively, to be a first-rate painter-you mustn't be pious; but rather a little wicked, and entirely a man of the world. I had been inclining to this opinion for some years; but I clinched it at Turin.

Then from Turin I came nearly straight home, walking over the Cenis, and paying a forenoon visit to my friends at Chamouni, walking over the Forclaz to them from St. Gervais and back by the roadand I think I enjoyed that day as if it had been a concentrated month: but yet-the mountains are not what they were to me. A curious mathematical question keeps whispering itself to me every now and then, Why is ground at an angle of 40, anything better than ground

[Atlantic Monthly, June 1904, vol. 93, pp. 801-802. No. 15 in Norton, vol. i.

pp. 65-68.]

at an angle of 30-or of 20-or of 10-or of nothing at all? It is but ground, after all.

Apropos of St. Gervais and St. Martin's-you may keep that block of gneiss altogether if you like it; I wish the trees had been either in the sky, or out of it.1

Please a line to say how you are. Kindest regards to your Mother and Sisters. My Father and Mother are well and beg kindest regards to you.

I have written your initials and mine in the two volumes of Lowell 2 (how delightful the new prefaces to the Fable !). He does me more good in my dull fits than anybody, and makes me hopeful again. What a beautiful face he has !-Ever affectionately yours, J. RUSKIN.

To J. J. LAING 3

[1858?]

DEAR LAING, I am much pleased with all your letters, and all shall be done as you wish. The money will come to-morrow. I was not surprised at your account, but I had not had time to turn round since I got to London.

One sentence surprised me-your saying "Don't think I want to equal you." Why should not I think this? Do you really suppose that I want to keep you back? I have many faults-sensuality, covetousness, laziness-lots of things I could tell you of-but God knows, and I take Him solemnly to witness thereto this day, that if I could make you, or any one, greater than myself in any way whatever, I would do so instantly, and my only vexation with my pupils is when I can't get them to do what I think good for them; my chief joy, when they do great things.-Truly yours, J. R.

TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 4

[DENMARK HILL] 29th November [1858]. DEAR NORTON,-I'm so intensely obliged to you for your letter and consolations about Paolo Veronese and Titian, and Turner and Correggio and Tintoretto. Paolo and Titian are much deeper, however,

1 [See above, p. 277. "Some trees originally painted against the sky had been practically washed out, leaving only traces" (C. E. N.). The drawing is here reproduced (Plate XVII.).]

[See above, p. 277.]

3 ["Some Ruskin Letters," in the English Illustrated Magazine, August 1893, p. 782.1

4 [Atlantic Monthly, June 1904, vol. 93, pp. 802-803 (the postscript was omitted). No. 16 in Norton; vol. i. pp. 72-75.]