484 PRÆTERITA-III

is so cold that the hawthorns are only in bud on the 5th of June. I get cough, which lasts for two months, till I go down to Tunbridge Wells to my doctor cousin, William Richardson,¹ who puts me to bed, gives me some syrup, cures me in three days, and calls me a fool for not coming to him before, with some rather angry warnings that I had better not keep a cough for two months again. Third volume of Modern Painters got done with, somehow, but didn’t know what to call it, so called it “Of Many Things.” But none of these were “done with,” as I found afterwards, to my cost.

1856. With my father and mother to Geneva and Fribourg. Two drawings at Fribourg took up the working summer. My father begins to tire of the proposed work on Swiss towns, and to inquire whether the rest of Modern Painters will ever be done.

1857. My mother wants me to see the Bay of Cromarty and the Falls of Kilmorock. I consent sulkily to be taken to Scotland with that object. Papa and mamma, wistfully watching the effect on my mind, show their Scotland to me. I see, on my own quest, Craig-Ellachie,² and the Lachin-y-Gair forests, and finally reach the Bay of Cromarty and Falls of Kilmorock, doubtless now the extreme point of my northern discoveries on the round earth. I admit, generously, the Bay of Cromarty and the Falls to be worth coming all that way to see; but beg papa and mamma to observe that it is twenty miles’ walk, in bogs, to the top of Ben Wyvis, that the town of Dingwall is not like Milan or Venice,-and that I think we have seen enough of Scotland.

12. 1858. Accordingly, after arranging, mounting, framing, and cabinetting, with good help from Richard Williams of Messrs. Foord’s, the Turner drawings now in the catacombs of the National Gallery, I determine to add two

¹ [See above, p. 412.]

² [The journey is referred to, and Craig-Ellachie, introduced, in the first lecture of The Two Paths: see Vol. XVI. pp. 259, 267.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]