xxiv INTRODUCTION

seem to have been originally intended for a part or a section in Modern Painters.¹ Ruskin’s diary for the latter part of 1846 is very fragmentary; it shows only that he was still much occupied with architectural subjects, and that he was studying a good deal at the British Museum among the illuminated books and natural history collections (not then removed to South Kensington). His literary production during the next two years (1847, 1848) was small. He suffered a good deal from ill-health and there were other home distractions.

His one contribution to literature in 1847 was-as in the case of some of his earlier productions²-the outcome of an affair of the heart. He was a suitor for the hand of Miss Lockhart, a grandchild of Sir Walter Scott. Lockhart had invited Ruskin to write upon Lord Lindsay’s Sketches of the History of Christian Art. He accepted the invitation, more for the daughter’s sake than for that of her father, then editor of the Quarterly. “With my usual wisdom in such matters,” he says, “I went away into Cumberland to recommend myself to her by writing a Quarterly review.”³ The review, which appeared in the number for June 1847, gave Ruskin occasion to cover ground which he had already traversed in the second volume of Modern Painters⁴ and was presently to occupy in the Seven Lamps.⁵ In the Lake District, where-had his suit been successful-he thought of taking a house,⁶ Ruskin made the acquaintance of Miss Mitford, already (as we have seen⁷) an admirer of Modern Painters. The friendship thus formed lasted throughout her life.⁸ In a letter of 1847 she gives her first impression of “the Graduate.” “Have you ever read,” she writes to her friend, Mrs. Partridge, “an Oxford Graduate’s letters on art? The author, Mr. Ruskin, was here last week, and is certainly the most charming person that I have ever known. The books are very beautiful, although I do not agree in all the opinions; but the young man himself is just what, if one had a son, one would have dreamt of his turning out, in mind, manner, conversation, everything. I quite longed for you to hear and admire him.”⁹ In March 1847, Ruskin settled himself at the Salutation Inn, Ambleside,¹⁰ with George¹¹ as

¹ See Preface, p. 3, and the passage from a MS. in Appendix ii. below, p. 280.

² See Vol. I. pp. xxxiii., xlvii.

³ Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 192.

⁴ As, for instance, in the discussion in the review-of Giotto, Orcagna, and Fra Angelico.

⁵ See below, pp. 50, 63, 103, 121.

⁶ See Collingwood’s Life, 1900, p. 108.

⁷ Vol. I. p. xxxviii.

⁸ Ruskin’s letters to Miss Mitford are collected in a later volume of this edition.

⁹ Letters of Mary Russell Mitford, Second Series, edited by H. F. Chorley, 1872, vol. i. p. 230.

¹⁰ Described in Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 193.

¹¹ See Vol. IV. p. xxiv.

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