458 PRÆTERITA-II

Wallington is in the old Percy country, the broad descent of main valley leading down by Otterburn from the Cheviots. An ugly house enough it was; square set, and somewhat bare walled, looking down a slope of rough wide field to a burn, the Wansbeck, neither bright nor rapid, but with a ledge or two of sandstone to drip over, or lean against in pools; bits of crag in the distance, worth driving to, for sight of the sweeps of moor round them, and breaths of breeze from Carter Fell.

There were no children of its own in Wallington, but Lady Trevelyan’s little niece, Constance Hilliard,¹ nine years old when I first saw her there, glittered about the place in an extremely quaint and witty way; and took to me a little, like her aunt. Afterwards her mother and she, in their little rectory home at Cowley (near Hillingdon²), became important among my feminine friendships, and gave me, of such petting and teasing as women are good for, sometimes more than enough.

227. But the dearness of Wallington was founded, as years went on, more deeply in its having made known to me the best and truest friend of all my life; best for me, because he was of my father’s race, and native town; truest, because he knew always how to help us both, and never made any mistakes in doing so-Dr. John Brown. He was staying at Wallington when I stopped there on my way to give my Edinburgh lectures;³ and we walked together, with little Connie, on the moors: it dawned on me, so, gradually, what manner of man he was.

This, the reader capable of learning at all-(there are few now who can understand a good Scotchman of the old classic breed)-had better learn, straightway, from the record he gave of his own father’s life,* of which I must

* Letter to Rev. John Cairns. Edmonston & Douglas, 1861.

¹ [Afterwards Mrs. W. H. Churchill, the “Connie” of Ruskin’s diaries and letters: see, e.g., Vol. XX. p. xlix., Vol. XXII. p. xxvi., Vol. XXIII. p. 233.]

² [Close to Uxbridge.]

³ [In 1853: see Vol. XII. p. xx.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]