XII. ROSLYN CHAPEL 227

straight path from the beginning, and, whatever time I might waste in vain pleasure, or weak effort, he saved me for ever from false thoughts and futile speculations.¹

253. Why, I know not,-for Mr. London was certainly not tired of me,-the Kataphusin papers close abruptly,² as if their business was at its natural end, without a word of allusion in any part of them, or apology for the want of allusion, to the higher forms of civil and religious architecture. I find, indeed, a casual indication of some ulterior purpose in a ponderous sentence of the paper on the Westmoreland cottage, announcing that “it will be seen hereafter, when we leave the lowly valley for the torn ravine, and the grassy knoll for the ribbed precipice, that if the continental architects cannot adorn the pasture with the humble roof, they can crest the crag with eternal battlements.”³ But this magnificent promise ends in nothing more tremendous than a “chapter on chimneys,” illustrated, as I find this morning to my extreme surprise, by a fairly good drawing of the building which is now the principal feature in the view from my study window,-Coniston Hall.

On the whole, however, these papers, written at intervals during 1838, indicate a fairly progressive and rightly consolidated range of thought on these subjects, within the chrysalid torpor of me.

254. From the Trosachs we drove to Edinburgh: and, somewhere on the road near Linlithgow, my father, reading some letters got by that day’s post, coolly announced to my mother and me that Mr. Domecq was going to bring his four daughters to England again, to finish their schooling at New Hall, near Chelmsford.

And I am unconscious of anything more in that journey, or of anything after it, until I found myself driving down to Chelmsford. My mother had no business of course to

¹ [For an additional passage which here followed in the first draft, see the Appendix; below, p. 615.]

² [The Architectural Magazine itself came to an end: see Vol. I. p. xliv.]

³ [See Vol. I. p. 52.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]