218 PRÆTERITA-I

Anne Street, and the old man returned kindly answer, as follows:-

“47, QUEEN ANN (sic) STREET WEST,

“October 6th, 1836.

“MY DEAR SIR,-I beg to thank you for your zeal, kindness, and the trouble you have taken in my behalf, in regard of the criticism of Blackwood’s Magazine for October, respecting my works; but I never move in these matters, they are of no import save mischief and the meal tub, which Maga fears for by my having invaded the flour tub.

“P. S.-If you wish to have the manuscript back, have the goodness to let me know. If not, with your sanction, I will send it on to the possessor of the picture of Juliet.”

I cannot give the signature of this letter, which has been cut off for some friend! In later years it used to be, to my father, “Yours most truly,” and to me, “Yours truly.”

The “possessor of the picture” was Mr. Munro of Novar, who never spoke to me of the first chapter of Modern Painters thus coming into his hands. Nor did I ever care to ask him about it; and still, for a year or two longer, I persevered in the study of Turner engravings only, and the use of Copley Fielding’s method for such efforts at colour as I made on the vacation journeys during Oxford days.

244. We made three tours in those summers, without crossing Channel. In 1837, to Yorkshire and the Lakes; in 1838, to Scotland; in 1839, to Cornwall.¹

On the journey of 1837, when I was eighteen, I felt, for the last time, the pure childish love of nature which Wordsworth so idly takes for an intimation of immortality.² We went down by the North Road, as usual; and on the fourth day arrived at Catterick Bridge, where there is a clear pebble-bedded stream, and both west and east some rising of hills, foretelling the moorlands and dells of upland

¹ [The first draft of Præterita contains a passage (following on § 204) which gives a note of this tour: see the Appendix, below, p. 613.]

² [For Ruskin’s numerous references to the Ode, see the General Index.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]