346 PRÆTERITA-II

attained to any likeness of feeling, but at least knew where I was myself wrong, or cold, in comparison. A little more force was also put on Bible study at this time, because I held myself responsible for George’s¹ tenets as well as my own, and wished to set him a discreet example; he being well-disposed, and given to my guidance, with no harm as yet in any of his ways. So I read my chapter with him morning and evening; and if there were no English church on Sundays, the Morning Service, Litany and all, very reverently;² after which we enjoyed ourselves, each in our own way, in the afternoons, George being always free, and Couttet, if he chose; but he had little taste for the Sunday promenades in a town, and was glad if I would take him with me to gather flowers, or carry stones. I never, until this time, had thought of travelling, climbing, or sketching on the Sunday: the first infringement of this rule by climbing the isolated peak above Gap, with both Couttet and George, after our morning service, remains a weight on my conscience to this day. But it was thirteen years later before I made a sketch on Sunday.³

112. By Gap and Sisteron to Fréjus, along the Riviera to Sestri, where I gave a day to draw the stone-pines now at Oxford;⁴ and so straight to my first fixed aim, Lucca, where I settled myself for ten days,-as I supposed. It turned out forty years.

The town is some thousand paces square; the unbroken rampart walk round may be a short three miles. There are upwards of twenty churches in that space, dating between the sixth and twelfth centuries; a ruined feudal palace and

¹ [“Hobbs, not Herbert,” as Ruskin noted in his copy.]

² [See the Epilogue to Letters to the Clergy, where Ruskin says that for thirty years of his life he used to read the Service through to his servant and himself (Vol. XXXIV. pp. 217-218).]

³ [The event is chronicled in his diary of 1858; it was a drawing of orchises. Similarly, in writing in 1852 to his father, Ruskin excuses himself for alluding to his literary work in a letter on Sunday: see Vol. X. p. 347 n.]

⁴ [No. 22 in the Educational Series (see Vol. XXI. pp. 77, 116). The drawing is reproduced on Plate 12 in Vol. IV. (p. 346).]

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