lxxiv INTRODUCTION

Fors, and all that was left to him was to tend her in her sickness. Rosie died in May, 1875. Before a tragedy such as this, silence is best. A French writer has said enough: “Il faut s’incliner bien bas devant ces deux âmes, assez fortes pour sacrifier, l’une sa vie, l’autre son bonheur, à la sincérité absolue. Le grande Corneille les aurait trouvées dignes de ses héros.”¹

Men do not die of broken hearts, and Ruskin sought comfort, not in vain regrets, but in earnest duty. The spirit in which he faced the final loss on earth was that which had animated him during the long years of trial. He records it once in his diary:-

“(July 1, 1873.)-Yesterday, after reading Romance of Rose, thought much of the destruction of all my higher power of sentiment by late sorrow; and considered how far it might be possible to make love, though hopeless, still a guide and strength.”

But the death of Rose La Touche was, as he wrote,² “the seal of a great fountain of sadness which can now never ebb away.” He wonders in Præterita (p. 228) what at an earlier stage in his life might have happened to him if, “instead of the distracting and useless pain,” he “had had the joy of approved love. It seems to me,” he adds, “such things are not allowed in this world. The men capable of the highest imaginative passion are always tossed on fiery waves by it.” Upon those fiery waves Ruskin was now flung. We have traced already how he sought distraction in work, and comfort in communications with the unseen world.³ The mistress of his heart was identified, in his imagination, now with St. Ursula of Venice, and now, more definitely than before, with the Beatrice of Dante.⁴ The 2nd of February-the day on which Rose had fixed his period of probation-became a sacred day with him:-

“(VENICE, 1877.)-Eleven years, then, to-day, I have waited. How wonderful, the slow sadness! yet so fast! How weary the three seemed, half over; the eleven, what a dream! ... Dreaming of

¹ Jacques Bardoux, John Ruskin, p. 139. The story has been told that at the end “Ruskin begged to see her once more. She sent to ask whether he could yet say that he loved God better than he loved her; and when he said ‘No,’ her door closed upon him for ever” (W. G. Collingwood’s Life and Work of John Ruskin, p. 299). Mrs. La Touche, on seeing the story in print, wrote to a friend that “nothing like the incident ever occurred at all.” If, unknown to her, something like it did ever occur, it was not at the end.

² To Dr. John Brown: see Vol. XXIV. p. xx.

³ See Vol. XXIV. p. xxiv.

⁴ See Deucalion, i. ch. x. § 9 (Vol. XXVI. p. 225)-a passage written in 1876, which acquires its full significance when read in connexion with the death of Rose.

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