44 PRÆTERITA-I

improving sentence, that I might watch a wasp on the window pane,¹ or a bird in the cherry tree; and I had never seen any grief.

49. Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had received the perfect understanding of the natures of Obedience and Faith. I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother, simply as a ship her helm; not only without idea of resistance, but receiving the direction as a part of my own life and force, and helpful law, as necessary to me in every moral action as the law of gravity in leaping. And my practice in Faith was soon complete: nothing was ever promised me that was not given; nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, and nothing ever told me that was not true.

Peace, obedience, faith; these three for chief good; next to these, the habit of fixed attention with both eyes and mind-on which I will not further enlarge at this moment, this being the main practical faculty of my life, causing Mazzini to say of me, in conversation authentically reported, a year or two before his death, that I had “the most analytic mind in Europe.” An opinion in which, so far as I am acquainted with Europe, I am myself entirely disposed to concur.²

Lastly, an extreme perfection in palate and all other bodily senses, given by the utter prohibition of cake, wine, comfits, or, except in carefullest restriction, fruit; and by fine preparation of what food was given me. Such I esteem the main blessings of my childhood;-next, let me count the equally dominant calamities.

50. First, that I had nothing to love.

My parents were-in a sort-visible powers of nature to me, no more loved than the sun and the moon: only I should have been annoyed and puzzled if either of them

¹ [Here in his copy of Fors, Ruskin wrote:-

“I used to watch flies drowning in the ink-bottle with complacence, but saved them if they fell into the milk!!”]

² [For Ruskin’s MS. note on this passage, see Fors, Letter 54, § 14 (Vol. XXVIII. p. 350 n.).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]