I. OF AGE 247

the maze, were of thrilling attraction to me; and the Cartoons¹ began to take the aspect of mild nightmare and nuisance which they have ever since retained.

My runs with cousin Mary in the maze, (once, as in Dantesque alleys of lucent verdure in the Moon, with Adèle and Elise,) always had something of an enchanted and Faery-Queen glamour in them: and I went on designing more and more complicated mazes in the blank leaves of my lesson books-wasting, I suppose, nearly as much time that way as in the trisection of the angle. Howbeit, afterwards, the coins of Cnossus, and characters of Dædalus, Theseus, and the Minotaur, became intelligible to me as to few:² and I have much unprinted MSS. about them, intended for expansion in Ariadne Florentina, and other labyrinthine volumes, but which the world must get on now without the benefit of, as it can.³

6. Meantime, from the Grove, whitehaired mamma Monro,⁴ and silvery-fringed Petite, had gone to their rest. Mrs. Gray cared no longer for the pride of her house,⁵ or shade of her avenue; while more and more, Mr. Gray’s devotion to Don Quixote, and to my poetry in Friendship’s Offering, interfered with his business habits. At last it was thought that, being true Scots both of them, they might better prosper over the Border. They went to Glasgow, where Mr. Gray took up some sort of a wine business, and read Rob Roy instead of Don Quixote. We went to Glasgow to see them, on our Scottish tour,⁶ and sorrowfully perceived them to be going downwards, even in their Scottish world. For a little change, they were

¹ [Of Raphael; afterwards removed to the South Kensington Museum. Ruskin criticised them in the first volume of Modern Painters: see Vol. III. p. 29 n.]

² [For coins of Cnossus, see Plate XVIII. in Vol. XX. and Fig. 7 in Vol. XXVII.; for discussion of Dædalus, Theseus, and the Minotaur, see Aratra Pentelici (Vol. XX. pp. 351-354), and Fors Clavigera, Letter 23 (Vol. XXVII. pp. 400 seq.).]

³ [Some of Ruskin’s hitherto unprinted MSS. on Greek coins are now given at the end of Vol. XX.]

⁴ [Mrs. Gray’s mother: see i. § 115; above, p. 101.]

⁵ [See i. § 116; above, p. 101.]

⁶ [In 1838: see above, p. 223.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]