FIRST, OR BYZANTINE, PERIOD

CHAPTER I

THE THRONE¹

§ 1. IN the olden days of travelling, now to return no more,* in which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long hoped for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset-hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent,²-in those days, I say, when there was something more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each successive halting-place, than a new arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were few moments of which the recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveller, than that

* I have as little doubt of their return now, as I had then hope of it, though before that day, I shall have travelled whence there is no return. [1879.]

¹ [This chapter is ch. ii. of vol. i. of the “Travellers’ Edition.”]

² [For other descriptions of Ruskin’s mode of travel in these olden days, see Præterita, i. ch. ix., ii. ch. iii. § 55, and Proserpina, “Giulietta.” For the contrary-viz., those of railway travelling-see Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xvii. § 24, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. § 15; Seven Lamps, Vol. VIII. p. 159; Bible of Amiens, ch. i. § 4; and Præterita i. ch. ix. § 177.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]