xxvi INTRODUCTION

genius, but I believe I have genius; something different from mere cleverness, for I am not clever in the sense that millions of people are-lawyers, physicians, and others. But there is the strong instinct in me which I cannot analyse to draw and describe the things I love-not for reputation, nor for the good of others, nor for my own advantage, but a sort of instinct like that for eating or drinking. I should like to draw all St. Mark’s, and all this Verona stone by stone, to eat it all up into my mind, touch by touch. More and more lovely I find it every time, and am every year dissatisfied with what I did the last.”

It was thus in full zest that Ruskin settled down to finish his book. He and his wife made many friends at Venice, and they were surrounded with attentions and civilities. Rawdon Brown received them in his house for a week while they were looking for suitable apartments, and of all their Venetian friends he was the most valued and helpful. He had already been settled in Venice for nearly twenty years, and his knowledge of persons, places, and books was all at Ruskin’s disposal. Ruskin owed so much to this help that some notice of Rawdon Brown, fuller than has already been given (Vol. IX. p. 420 n.), may here be added:-

“He was,” says Professor Charles Eliot Norton, “one of the kindliest of men; an English gentleman in the full meaning of the term; Oxford bred, of the old-fashioned conservative type, hating modern innovations, loving the poetry and picturesqueness of the past; solitary in his mode of life, but of a social disposition, and with a pleasant vein of humour, a wide range of culture, and quick sympathies that made him a delightful host. He had come to Venice as a young man, and he spent the last fifty years of his life there, never, I believe, revisiting England during all that time. ‘I never wake in the morning but I thank God,’ he said, ‘that He has let me spend my days in Venice; and sometimes of an evening, when I go to the Piazzetta, I am afraid to shut my eyes, lest when I open them I should find it had all been a dream.’ ... His home for many years was the upper part of the so-called Casa della Vite, ‘the house of the Vine,’ once the Casa Gussoni, on the reach of the Grand Canal, just above the Ca’ d’Oro. The Gussoni were great people in the sixteenth century, and when this palace was built its front wall was painted by Tintoret, with two grand figures suggested by Michelangelo’s ‘Dawn and Twilight.’ Faint traces of them remained twenty years ago. ... In his apartment, furnished with English comfort, Mr. Brown had surrounded himself with a store of Venetian treasures, gradually accumulated during his long residence in the city at a time when the old houses were breaking up and their possessions were scattered. His means had enabled him to gratify his tastes as a scholar and an antiquary. His working-room was filled with

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