III. CUMÆ 285

read her guide-books accurately, knew always where she was, and in her sincere religion, conquered her early Puritanism to the point of reverently visiting St. Paul’s grave and St. Cecilia’s house, and at last going up the Scala Santa on her knees, like any good girl of Rome.

48. So passed the days, till there was spring sunshine in the air as we climbed the Alban mount, and went down into the ravine under La Riccia, afterwards described in perhaps the oftenest quoted passage of Modern Painters.¹ The diary says: “A hollow with another village on the hill opposite, a most elegant and finished group of church tower and roof, descending by delicate upright sprigs* of tree into a dark rich-toned depth of ravine, out of which rose nearer, and clear against its shade, a grey wall of rock, an absolute miracle for blending of bright lichenous colour.”

With a few sentences more, to similar effect, and then a bit of Pontine marsh description, dwelling much on the moving points of the “black cattle, white gulls, black, bristly high-bred swine, and birds of all sorts, waders and dippers innumerable.” It is very interesting, at least to myself, to find how, so early as this, while I never drew anything but in pencil outline, I saw everything first in colour, as it ought to be seen.²

49. I must give room to the detail of the day from Mola to Naples, because it shows, to proof enough, the constant watchfulness upon which the statements in Modern Painters were afterwards founded, though neither that nor any other book had yet been dreamed of, and I wrote only to keep memory of things seen, for what good might come of the memory anyhow.

“NAPLES, January 9th (1841).-Dressed yesterday at Mola by a window commanding a misty sunrise over

* I have substituted this word for a sketch like the end of a broom, which would convey no idea to anybody but myself.

¹ [See in this edition Vol. III. pp. 279, 280.]

² [Compare Elements of Drawing, § 5 (Vol. XV. p. 27).]

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