xxii INTRODUCTION

I recollect you and my mother wondering why I didn’t say darkened land. I suppose I meant the rocks looked whiter by contrast with the pines-a very artistical observation for a child.”

For the cottage, too, Ruskin had conceived a great affection:-

“October 9.-We shall be very sorry to leave our cottage, and I shall especially regret a grassy walk, some twenty yards long, which I walk up and down whenever I want exercise, without going far from home; but it is very beautiful, with a few clusters of brambles twining among the rocks at the side of it, and itself quite smooth sward, a group of ash-trees at the bottom overhanging a rocky stream, and the open hills above it.”

They were a merry party, and in spite of constant rain the days passed cheerily. “Both Millais and I,” wrote Ruskin to Miss Mitford (August 17), “came down here to rest; he having painted, and I corrected press, quite as much as was good for either of us; but he is painting a little among the rocks, and I am making some drawings which may be useful to me; and when either of us are tired we go and build bridges over the stream, or piers into the lake, or engage in the more laborious and scientific operation of digging a canal to change the course of the stream, where it is encroaching on the meadows.” “I had a long letter to-day,” wrote Miss Mitford to a friend, “from John Ruskin, who is in the Highlands with two young friends-the Pre-Raphaelite painter and his brother, and his own beautiful wife. They are living in a hut on the borders of Loch Achray, playing at cottagers, as rich people like to do.” Millais was in the same holiday mood. “This year,” he wrote to Mr. Combe, “I am giving myself a holiday, as I have worked five years hard ... Ruskin comes and works with us, and we dine on the rocks all together ... We have in fine weather immense enjoyment painting out on the rocks, and having our dinner brought to us there, and in the evening climbing up the steep mountains for exercise, Mrs. Ruskin accompanying us.” Among other pursuits Millais was able to indulge his passion for fishing, and Ruskin sent some of the spoils to Denmark Hill:-

“I am so very glad,” he writes (September 21), “the salmon came well and tasted well. I don’t like any killing sports, but there was great interest in seeing the fish brought up through the dark water, looking like a serpent at the end of a lance, and thrust into the shallow current among the rocks, his scales flashing through the amber water and white foam.”

[Version 0.04: March 2008]