In an unpublished Praeterita MS, Ruskin remembered 'among my college expenses, very early (I recollect feasting on [it] the first night in my little bedroom at Peckwater,) the cost of Turner's Rivers of France... and the book thenceforward became the criterion of all beauty to me; so early had I got to the understanding of his latest work, in its light and shade' ( Works, 35.626). It is significant, in the light of this remark, that he discusses in detail several of the engravings from The Rivers of France as fine examples of Turner's 'truth of chiaroscuro' ( MP I:180-81).