II. ROME 263

mamma declaring that “Prout would give his ears to make such a drawing as that.”

With some truth and modesty, I might have said he “would have changed eyes with me”; for Prout’s manner was gravely restricted by his nearness of sight. But also this Blois sketch showed some dawning notions of grace in proportion, and largeness of effect, which enabled me for the first time that year, to render continental subjects with just expression of their character and scale, and well-rounded solidification of pillars and sculpture.

22. The last days of the summer were well spent at Amboise, Tours, Aubusson, Pont Gibaud, and Le Puy;¹ but as we emerged into the Rhone valley, autumn broke angrily on us; and the journey by Valence to Avignon was all made gloomy by the ravage of a just past inundation, of which the main mass at Montelimar had risen from six to eight feet in the streets, and the slime remained, instead of fields, over-I forget in fact, and can scarcely venture to conceive,-what extent of plain. The Rhone, through these vast gravelly levels a mere driving weight of discoloured water;-the Alps, on the other side, now in late autumn snowless up to their lower peaks, and showing few eminent ones;-the bise, now first letting one feel what malignant wind could be,-might, perhaps, all be more depressing to me in my then state of temper; but I have never cared to see the lower Rhone any more; and to my love of cottage rather than castle, added at this time another strong moral principle, that if ever one was metamorphosed into a river, and could choose one’s own size, it would be out of all doubt more prudent and delightful to be Tees or Wharfe than Rhone.

And then, for the first time, at Fréjus, and on the Esterelle and the Western Riviera, I saw some initial letters of Italy, as distinct from Lombardy,-Italy of the stone pine and orange and palm, white villa and blue sea; and

¹ [For the full itinerary of Ruskin’s sojourn in the Continent in 1840-1841, see Vol. I. p. xxxviii. n.]

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