I. THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE 491

The new worlds which every leaf of this book opened to me, and the joy I had, counting their letters and unravelling their arabesques as if they had all been of beaten gold,-as many of them indeed were,-cannot be told, any more than-everything else, of good, that I wanted to tell.¹ Not that the worlds thus opening were themselves new, but only the possession of any part in them; for long and long ago I had gazed at the illuminated missals in noble-men’s houses (see above, § 6, vol. i.), with a wonder and sympathy deeper than I can give now; my love of toil, and of treasure, alike getting their thirst gratified in them. For again and again I must repeat it, my nature is a worker’s and a miser’s;² and I rejoiced, and rejoice still, in the mere quantity of chiselling in marble, and stitches in embroidery; and was never tired of numbering sacks of gold and caskets of jewels in the Arabian Nights: and though I am generous too, and love giving, yet my notion of charity is not at all dividing my last crust with a beggar, but riding through a town like a Commander of the Faithful, having any quantity of sequins and ducats in saddle-bags (where cavalry officers have holsters for their pistols), and throwing them round in radiant showers and hailing handfuls; with more bags to brace on when those were empty.

19. But now that I had a missal of my own, and could touch its leaves and turn, and even here and there understand the Latin of it, no girl of seven years old with a new doll is prouder or happier: but the feeling was something between the girl’s with her doll, and Aladdin’s in a new Spirit-slave to build palaces for him with jewel windows. For truly a well-illuminated missal is a fairy cathedral full of painted windows, bound together to carry in one’s pocket, with the music and the blessing of all its prayers besides.

¹ [For Ruskin’s subsequent interest in and acquisition of illuminated MSS., see Vol. XII. pp. lxvii. seq.]

² [For his nature as “a worker,” compare above, p. 217, and below, p. 623; as “a miser,” p. 310.]

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