VIII. THE STATE OF DENMARK 381

within bookcases, that the rest of the floor virtually was only a passage round it. I always wrote on the flat of the table,-a bad habit, enforced partly by the frequent need of laying drawings or books for reference beside me. Two windows, forming the sides of a bow blank in the middle, gave me, though rather awkwardly crossed, all the light I needed: partly through laziness and make-shiftiness, partly in respect for external symmetry,-for the house had really something of an architectural air at the back,-I never opened the midmost blank wall, though it considerably fretted me: the single window of my bed-room above, looking straight south-east, gave, through the first ten or twelve winters at Denmark Hill, command of the morning clouds, inestimable for its aid in all healthy thought. Papa and mamma took possession of the quiet western rooms, which looked merely into the branches of the cedar on the front lawn.

151. In such stateliness of civic domicile, the industry of mid life now began for me, little disturbed by the murmur of London beyond the bridges, and in no wise by any enlargement of neighbourly circle on the Hill itself; one family alone excepted,¹ whose affection has not failed me from then till now,-having begun in earlier times, out of which I must yet gather a gleam or two of the tremulous memory.

In speaking of Mr. Dale’s school, I named only my younger companions there;² of whom Willoughby had gone to Cambridge, and was by this time beyond my ken; but Edward Matson sometimes came yet to dine with us at Denmark Hill, and sometimes carried me down to Woolwich, to spend a day amidst its military displays and arts, with his father, and mother, and two sweet younger sisters. Where I saw, in Major Matson, such calm type of truth, gentleness, and simplicity, as I have myself found in soldiers

¹ [The Oldfields; a Miss Oldfield married Dr. Oldham, and their daughter, Miss Constance Oldham, was Ruskin’s god-child.]

² [See above, i. § 91 (p. 82).]

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