156 PRÆTERITA-I

180. I must here, in advance, tell the general reader that there have been, in sum, three centres of my life’s thought: Rouen, Geneva, and Pisa. All that I did at Venice was bye-work, because her history had been falsely written before, and not even by any of her own people understood; and because, in the world of painting, Tintoret was virtually unseen, Veronese unfelt, Carpaccio not so much as named, when I began to study them; something also was due to my love of gliding about in gondolas. But Rouen, Geneva,¹ and Pisa have been tutresses of all I know, and were mistresses of all I did, from the first moments I entered their gates.

In this journey of 1835 I first saw Rouen and Venice -Pisa not till 1840; nor could I understand the full power of any of those great scenes till much later. But for Abbeville, which is the preface and interpretation of Rouen, I was ready on that 5th of June, and felt that here was entrance for me into immediately healthy labour and joy.

181. For here I saw that art (of its local kind), religion, and present human life, were yet in perfect harmony. There were no dead six days and dismal seventh in those sculptured churches; there was no beadle to lock me out of them, or pew-shutter to shut me in. I might haunt them, fancying myself a ghost; peep round their pillars, like Rob Roy;² kneel in them, and scandalize nobody; draw in them, and disturb none. Outside, the faithful old town gathered itself, and nestled under their buttresses like a brood beneath the mother’s wings; the quiet, uninjurious aristocracy of the newer town opened into silent streets, between self-possessed and hidden dignities of dwelling,

months and years in mere enjoyment of the Alps, and have never been able to paint them, nor, to any one else, describe or explain. But I never, to my knowledge, wasted an hour in Abbeville or Rouen, and the Seven Lamps and Stones of Venice, which were the direct outcome of my work in them, are securely right and useful.”]

¹ [Geneva, Ruskin explains further on, “is meant to include Chamouni”: see ii. § 57 (below, p. 296).]

² [See chap. 20 of Rob Roy.]

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