280 PRÆTERITA-II

than a stomach with a tail to it, flattening and wriggling itself up the crystal ripples and in the pure sands of the spring-head of youth.

But there were always good eyes in me, and a good habit of keeping head up stream; and now the time was coming when I began to think about helping princesses by fetching up their balls from the bottom;¹ when I got a sudden glimpse of myself, in the true shape of me, extremely startling and discouraging:-here, in Rome it was, towards the Christmas time.

43. Among the living Roman arts of which polite travellers were expected to carry specimens home with them, one of the prettiest used to be the cutting cameos out of pink shells. We bought, according to custom, some coquillage of Gods and Graces; but the cameo cutters were also skilful in mortal portraiture, and papa and mamma, still expectant of my future greatness, resolved to have me carved in cameo.²

I had always been content enough with my front face in the glass, and had never thought of contriving vision of the profile. The cameo finished, I saw at a glance to be well cut; but the image it gave of me was not to my mind. I did not analyse its elements at the time, but should now describe it as a George the Third’s penny, with a halfpenny worth of George the Fourth, the pride of Amurath the Fifth, and the temper of eight little Lucifers in a swept lodging.

Now I knew myself proud; yes, and of late, sullen; but did not in the least recognize pride or sulkiness for leading faults of my nature. On the contrary, I knew myself wholly reverent to all real greatness, and wholly good-humoured-when I got my own way. What more can you expect of average boy, or beast?

And it seemed hard to me that only the excrescent

¹ [See the story of “The Frog-Prince” in Grimm; p. 142 in the edition prefaced by Ruskin.]

² [Plate XIIIA. is a woodcut from this cameo at Brantwood.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]