244 PRÆTERITA-II

of St. Vincent, a little distance from y^e towne, the precipice whereoff is equal to anything of that nature I have seen in y^e most confragose cataracts of the Alpes, the river gliding between them at an extraordinary depth. Here we went searching for diamonds, and to the Hot Wells at its foote. There is also on the side of this horrid Alp a very romantic seate: and so we returned to Bathe in the evening.”

3. Of course Evelyn uses the word “horrid” only in its Latin sense;¹ but his mind is evidently relieved by returning to Bath; and although, farther on,² he describes without alarm “the towne and county” of Nottingham as seeming “to be but one entire rock, as it were,” he explains his toleration of that structure in the close of his sentence-“an exceeding pleasant shire, full of gentry.” Of his impressions of the “stupendious” rocks of Fontainebleau, and ungentle people of the Simplon, I have to speak in another place.³

In these and many other such particulars I find the typical English mind, both then and now, so adverse to my own, as also to those of my few companions through the sorrows of this world, that it becomes for me a matter of acute Darwinian interest to trace my species from origin to extinction: and I have, therefore, to warn the reader, and ask his pardon, that while a modest person writes his

¹ [Of rough, shaggy, bristly. So Dryden, “horrid with fern”; and Gray (in a letter), “The Apennines are not so horrid as the Alps, though pretty nearly as high.”]

² [August 14, 1654.]

³ [For an incidental reference to Evelyn at Fontainebleau, see below, p. 313. To Evelyn’s passage of the Simplon, Ruskin does not return in Præterita as published (though he had already briefly referred to the subject in his last Oxford lectures; see Vol. XXXIII. p. 535). But among the MSS. for Præterita, there is a passage in which Ruskin redeems the promise here made. He quotes from the diary (1646) Evelyn’s account of Lago Maggiore and the Simplon Pass, and then continues:-

“Of this passage of course, the first great interest is this evidence it gives that Evelyn had no pleasure whatever in mountain scenery, nor, which is more curious still, in mountain forest, pasture, or flowers. The author of the best book on Forest trees of any European language or time sees nothing in the chestnut woods of Isella, nor the pine forests of Gondo, to merit a word of notice;-the designer of gardens and pleasaunces innumerable perceives in mid-April on the Simplon neither primula nor soldanella. But the second and far greatest interest is the cruelty and brutality with which this party of three English gentlemen-namely, John Evelyn, the poet Waller, and Captain, son of Sir Christopher, Wray-regard, and behave to, the entirely noble peasants over whose land they pass in absolute security from any manner of unjust and unkind treatment.... But my object at present is to discover as far as I may

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