IV. FONTAINEBLEAU 317

sherry with more room for their legs. And, now that I was of age and B.A. and so on-did not I also want a larger house?

No, good reader; but ever since first I could drive a spade, I had wanted to dig a canal, and make locks on it, like Harry in Harry and Lucy.¹ And in the field at the back of the Denmark Hill house, now, in this hour of all our weaknesses, offered in temptation, I saw my way to a canal with any number of locks down towards Dulwich.²

It is very wonderful to me, looking back, to remember this, and how entirely boyish-and very young-boyish, too-I was still, in all instincts of personal delight: while yet, looking out of myself, I saw farther than Kings of Naples or Cardinals of Rome.

80. Yet there was much, and very closely balanced, debate, before the house was taken. My mother wisely, though sadly, said it was too late for her; she could not now manage a large garden: and my father, feeling his vanity had more than a word in the matter, besides all that might rightly be alleged of what was now convenient and becoming, hesitated painfully, as he had done about his first Copley Fielding.

But at last the lease of the larger house was bought: and everybody said how wise and proper; and my mother did like arranging the rows of pots in the big greenhouse; and the view from the breakfast-room into the field was really very lovely. And we bought three cows, and skimmed our own cream, and churned our own butter. And there was a stable, and a farmyard, and a haystack, and a pigstye,

¹ [See vol. iii. pp. 20 seq. of Harry and Lucy Concluded; being the Last Part of Early Lessons, 1825.]

² [For the house, see Plate XXVII. (p. 380); for the field, Plate XXVIII. (p. 402). In the following sentence, the reference is more particularly to Ruskin’s plans and thoughts in regard to “The Streams of Italy”: see Vol. XVII. Ruskin’s interest in such matters never left him: see the account of his stream at Brantwood, Vol. XXV. p. xxxvii.; the note on his water-supply at Fulking, Vol. XXXIV. p. 719. Mr. Wedderburn recalls a visit to Brantwood, when “we went to Langdale, where there are water-works, with sluices occasionally opened, found out the day, and went over to the Inn there for a night, so as to get up early and see the water come down.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]