xxiv INTRODUCTION

a loving and faithful study of wild nature as had never yet been accomplished:-

“Millais,” he writes (July 6), “has fixed on his place, a lovely piece of worn rock, with foaming water and weeds and moss, and a noble overhanging bank of dark crag; and I am to be standing looking quietly down the stream; just the sort of thing I used to do for hours together. He is very happy at the idea of doing it, and I think you will be proud of the picture, and we shall have the two most wonderful torrents in the world, Turner’s ‘St. Gothard’ and Millais’ ‘Glenfinlas.’ He is going to take the utmost possible pains with it, and says he can paint rocks and water better than anything else. I am sure the foam of the torrent will be something quite new in art.”

In a similar strain is a letter to Dr. Furnivall:-

“GLENFINLAS, October 16th.

“MY DEAR FURNIVALL,-I have been living so idle a life for the last month or two that the laziness has become quite inveterate, and I can’t so much as write you a letter-except to answer your kind questions.

“We have been since 5th July living in this kind of house, with a little garden, about eighteen feet long by ten wide, sloping down the bank in front, and part of Ben Ledi sloping up (among the writing) behind.¹ A bog in front-a wonderful rocky dingle in the distance at A-where Millais is painting a picture of a torrent among rocks, which will make a revolution in landscape painting if he can only get it finished. It is not nearly done yet, and the cold is coming fast.

“I am to lecture at Edinburgh, 1st November to 11th. I hope to be home before Christmas, but shall linger on the road, though it is too late to Turner-hunt. I have stopped all this time to keep Millais company-to keep him up to the Pre-Raphaelite degree of finish-which I have done with a vengeance, as he has taken three months to do half a background two feet over, and perhaps won’t finish it now. But I have got maps of all the lichens on the rocks, and the bubbles painted in the foam.

“I am glad you like my education bit²-but before you give all the people a share in the government, hadn’t you better make

¹ See the facsimile of a portion of this letter, containing Ruskin’s slight pen sketch of the house.

² This refers to Appendix 7 (“Modern Education”) in the third volume of The Stones of Venice, then just issued.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]