III. CUMÆ 291

on comparative safety, when here suddenly, in the gentle morning saunter through the shade, the cough came back-with a little darker stain on the handkerchief than usual. I sat down on a bank by the roadside, and my father’s face was very grave.

We got quietly back to the inn, where he found some sort of light carriole disposable, and set out, himself, to fetch the doctor from Rome.

It has always been one of the great shadows of thought to me, to fancy my father’s feelings as he was driven that day those eighteen miles across the Campagna.

Good Dr. Gloag comforted him, and returned with him. But there was nothing new to be done, nor said. Such chance attack was natural in the spring, he said, only I must be cautious for a while. My mother never lost her courage for an instant. Next day we went on to Rome, and it was the last time the cough ever troubled me.

53. The weather was fine at Easter, and I saw the Benediction, and sate in the open air of twilight opposite the castle of St. Angelo, and saw the dome-lines kindle on St. Peter’s, and the castle veil the sky with flying fire.¹ Bearing with me from that last sight in Rome many thoughts that ripened slowly afterwards, chiefly convincing me how guiltily and meanly dead the Protestant mind was to the whole meaning and end of mediæval Church splendour; and how meanly and guiltily dead the existing Catholic mind was, to the course by which to reach the Italian soul, instead of its eyes.

Re-opening, but a few days since, the book which my Christ Church official tutor, Walter Brown, recommended to me as the most useful code of English religious wisdom, the Natural History of Enthusiasm,² I chanced on this

¹ [For Easter illuminations at Rome, see Vol. I. p. 389 n.]

² [By Isaac Taylor: see Vol. X. p. 452, and compare Vol. XXXII. p. 122 n. Ruskin quotes from p. 48 of the book, omitting a sentence where dots are now inserted.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]