152 PRÆTERITA-I

me bled. “He wants all the blood he has in him to fight the illness,” said the old doctor, and brought me well through, weak enough, however, to claim a fortnight’s nursing and petting afterwards, during which I read the Fair Maid of Perth, learned the song of “Poor Louise,”¹ and feasted on Stanfield’s drawing of St. Michael’s Mount, engraved in the Coast Scenery,² and Turner’s Santa Saba, Pool of Bethesda, and Corinth, engraved in the Bible series,³ lent me by Richard Fall’s little sister.⁴ I got an immense quantity of useful learning out of those four plates, and am very thankful to possess now the originals of the Bethesda and Corinth.⁵

Moreover, I planned all my proceedings on the journey to Switzerland, which was to begin the moment I was strong enough.⁶ I shaded in cobalt a “cyanometer” to measure the blue of the sky with;⁷ bought a ruled notebook for geological observations, and a large quarto for architectural sketches, with square rule and foot-rule ingeniously fastened outside. And I determined that the events and sentiments of this journey should be described in a poetic diary in the style of Don Juan, artfully combined with that of Childe Harold. Two cantos of this work were indeed finished-carrying me across France to Chamouni⁸-where I broke down, finding that I had exhausted on the Jura all the descriptive terms at my disposal, and that none were left for the Alps. I must try to give, in the next chapter, some useful account of the same part of the journey in less exalted language.⁹

¹ [The “Lay of Poor Louise,” in ch. x. of the Fair Maid of Perth.]

² [Stanfield’s Coast Scenery. A Series of Views in the British Channel, from original drawings taken expressly for the work, by Clarkson Stanfield, Esq., R. A.: Smith, Elder and Co., 1836. St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, is Plate 3; the Norman, Plate 4 and 5.]

³ [For the title of this book, see Vol. XIII. p. 447 n. “Santa Saba” is “Engedi and Convent of St. Saba” : see ibid., pp. 447, 448. The drawing of Corinth was in Ruskin’s collection: see Vol. XIII. p. 447 (No. 50).]

⁴ [See ii. § 212; below, p. 441.]

⁵ [Nos. 51 and 50 in Ruskin’s exhibition of 1878.]

⁶ [The facsimile opposite is of a geological map made for this journey: see the Introduction, above, p. lxxxi.]

⁷ [See Vol. I. pp. xxx.-xxxi.]

⁸ [See Vol. II. pp. 396-428.]

⁹ [For the itinerary of the journey of 1835, see Vol. II. p. 395.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]