524 PRÆTERITA-III

air,-the life of Scotland, England, France, and Italy. I name Scotland first, for reasons which will be told in next Præterita,-“Joanna’s Care.”

50. Meantime, here is the last letter I have from Norton, showing how we have held hands since that first day on Geneva lake:-

“SHADY HILL, April 9th, 1887.

“It is very good of you, my dearest Ruskin, to send me such a long, pleasant letter, not punishing me for my silence, but trusting to-

‘My thought, whose love for you,

Though words come hindmost, holds his rank before.’

You are doing too much, and your letter gives me a fear lest, out of care for me, you added a half-hour of effort to the work of a too busy day. How long it is since I first began to preach prudence to you! and my preaching has availed about as much as the sermons in stones avail to convert the hard-hearted. Well, we are glad to take each other as we are, you ever imprudent, I ever-(I leave the word to your mercy).

“The last number of Præterita¹ pleased me greatly. There was a sweet tone in it, such as becomes the retrospect of a wise man as he summons the scenes of past life before his eyes; the clearness, the sharpcut outline of your memories is a wonder, and their fulness of light and colour. My own are very different. I find the outlines of many of them blurred, and their colours faint. The loss that came to me fifteen years ago included the loss of vividness of memory of much of my youth.

“The winter has been long and hard with us. Even yet there are snowbanks in shady places, and not yet is there a sign of a leaf. Even the snowdrops are hardly venturing out of the earth. But the birds have come back, and to-day I hear the woodpeckers knocking at the doors of the old trees to find a shelter and home for the summer. We have had the usual winter pleasures, and all my children have been well, though Lily is always too delicate, and ten days hence I part with her that she may go to England and try there to escape her summer cold. She goes out under Lowell’s charge, and will be with her mother’s sister and cousins in England. My three girls have just come to beg me to go out with them for a walk. So, good-bye. I will write soon again. Don’t you write to me when you are tired. I let my eyes rest for an instant on Turner’s sunset, and your sunrise from Herne Hill, which hang before me; and with a heart full of loving thanks to you,-I am ever your affectionate

“C. E. N.

“My best love to Joan,-to whom I mean to write.”

Somewhat more of Joan (and Charles also) I have to tell, as I said, in next Præterita.

51. I cannot go on, here, to tell the further tale of our

¹ [Chapter x. of vol. ii.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]