xx INTRODUCTION

And later, after he had left:-

“BRIG OF TURK, 5 July [1853].-... The pleasantness of these people consists in very different qualities: in Lady Trevelyan in her wit and playfulness, together with very profound feeling; in Sir Walter in general kindness, accurate information on almost every subject, and the tone of mind resulting from a steady effort to do as much good as he can to the people on a large estate, I suppose not less than twenty square miles of field and moor. He has a museum at the top of the house containing a very valuable collection of minerals, birds, and shells, which was very delightful to me, as the days were generally wet.”

It was at Wallington also that Ruskin first met a man who became one of his dearest friends, Dr. John Brown.¹ On the same occasion he visited Sir John Swinburne at Capheaton in order to see his Turners.

After a stay of some days at Wallington, the party set out for the Trossachs, travelling by stage-coaches. They took the journey leisurely, and visited many picturesque romantic places on the way, such as Melrose, Stirling, and Dunblane. Ruskin used his sketches at the latter place to illustrate his lectures, and wrote enthusiastically of it to his father:-

“DOUNE [2 July, 1853].-We have just dined at Stirling; drove on to Dunblane and saw the most lovely abbey there-far the finest thing I have seen in Scotland ... Dunblane is exquisitely beautiful in its simplicity: grand concentric arches, and the oval window in the centre of the west end set with two leaves alternately sloping as in the margin [sketch], and the proportion of the whole quite heavenly.² It is a lovely afternoon, and William Millais is half beside himself with delight, and all of us very happy.”

At Callander the two brothers found apartments in the New Trossachs Hotel, but took most of their meals with the Ruskins, who were accommodated in the schoolmaster’s house, at Brig o’ Turk, a few hundred yards away. “We are in a Highland cottage,” Ruskin wrote to his parents, July 13, “just under Ben Ledi, established in the most delightful way possible, and you could be within four hundred yards of us, in a clean and comfortable inn. I wish you would come.” The Highland scenery, however, by no means satisfied him:-

¹ See Præterita, ii. § 227.

² This is the window shown in Plate IV., and described in the text, p. 31.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]