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I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE 483
10. The events of the ten years 1850-1860, for the most part wasted in useless work, must be arranged first in their main order, before I can give clear account of anything that happened in them. But this breaking down of my Puritan faith, being the matter probably most important to many readers of my later books, shall be traced in this chapter to the sorrowful end. Note first the main facts of the successive years of the decade.
1851. Turner dies, while I am at first main work in Venice, for The Stones of Venice.
1852. Final work in Venice for Stones of Venice. Book finished that winter. Six hundred quarto pages of notes for it, fairly and closely written, now useless. Drawings as many-of a sort; useless too.
1853. Henry Acland in Glenfinlas with me. Drawing of gneiss rock made; now in the school at Oxford.1 Two months’ work in what fair weather could be gleaned out of that time.
1854. With my father and mother at Vevay and Thun. I take up the history of Switzerland, and propose to engrave a series of drawings of the following Swiss towns: Geneva, Fribourg, Basle, Thun, Baden, and Schaffhausen.2 I proceed to make drawings for this work, of which the first attempted (of Thun) takes up the whole of the summer, and is only half done then. Definition of Poetry, for Modern Painters, written at Vevay, looking across lake to Chillon. It leaves out rhythm, which I now consider a defect in said definition;3 otherwise good,-“The arrangement, by imagination, of noble motive for noble emotion.” I forget the exact words, but these others will do as well, perhaps better.
11. 1855. Notes on Royal Academy begun. The spring
1 [No. 89 in the Reference Series (Vol. XXI. p. 34). Reproduced as Plate I. in Vol. XII.]
2 [For particulars of Ruskin’s numerous drawings of these towns, see the catalogue at the end of this edition.]
3 [Compare Elements of Prosody, § 26 (Vol. XXXI. p. 351). The words in Modern Painters (Vol. VI. p. 28) are “the suggestion by the imagination of noble grounds for the noble emotions.”]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
