II. HERNE-HILL ALMOND BLOSSOMS 41

was already known; and, with the chapters thus gradually possessed from the first word to the last, I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound.

It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child’s mind, chiefly repulsive- the 119th Psalm-has now become of all the most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God, in opposition to the abuse of it by modern preachers of what they imagine to be His gospel.¹

47. But it is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise,-toil on both sides equal-by which, year after year, my mother forced me to learn these paraphrases, and chapters, (the eighth of 1st Kings being one-try it, good reader, in a leisure hour!) allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced; while every sentence was required to be said over and over again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect a struggle between us of about three weeks, concerning the accent of the “of” in the lines

“Shall any following spring revive

The ashes of the urn?”-²

I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true instinct for rhythm, (being wholly careless on the subject both of urns and their contents,) on reciting it with an accented of. It was not, I say, till after three weeks’ labour, that my mother got the accent lightened on the “of” and laid on the ashes, to her mind. But had it taken three years she would have done it, having once

¹ [Compare Fors, Letters 53 and 70 (Vol. XXVIII. pp. 319, 719); and for Ruskin’s numerous references to the Psalm, see the General Index.]

² [John Logan in one of the Scottish Church Paraphrases: see the note in Vol. XXVII. p. 617.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]