xxviii INTRODUCTION

Ruskin returned from Scotland in October, and the winter of 1847-1848 was spent quietly at Denmark Hill. His only literary production was a second review for the Quarterly-this time of Sir Charles Eastlake’s Materials for a History of Oil Painting.¹ This broke little new ground, though his diaries show that Ruskin read up the subject diligently. For the rest, his months were spent in various branches of study, with a view to the continuation of Modern Painters. The architectural reading was continued; and his note-books show that at this time he made a minute study of Homer, which he afterwards turned to account in the chapter on “Classical Landscape” in Modern Painters, vol. iii. It should be added that his drawing-now, again, mostly devoted to leaves and flowers-was also steadily practised.²

The entries in Ruskin’s diary are at this time few and far between. “My diary has of late,” he says on Dec. 22, 1847, “been in letters to E. C. G.” The initials stand for Euphemia Chalmers Gray. She was the eldest daughter of Mr. George Gray, a lawyer, of Bowerswell, Perth, who was an old friend of Ruskin’s parents. She used to visit them at Herne Hill, and it was for her that Ruskin in 1841 had written The King of the Golden River.³ Ruskin was about ten years her senior in age, and much more so in habits of life and thought. But, for various reasons, a match between Ruskin and her was equally desired by the parents on both sides, and on April 10, 1848, the marriage took place. This was the occasion of the “hurried visit to Scotland in the spring of this year,” mentioned in the Addenda of 1848 to Modern Painters, vol. ii.⁴ After a short time spent in Scotland and the Lakes, Ruskin returned to Denmark Hill, where the proofs of the second edition of Modern Painters, vol. ii., were awaiting him. He afterwards took his wife to Commemoration at Oxford, and in July his father and mother joined them at Salisbury.

“My son,” wrote J. J. Ruskin to Harrison, “occupies himself with the architecture of the Cathedral, a lovely edifice, but I find it very slow.” How hard Ruskin worked is shown by many pages of notes and measurements in his diary. The fruits of his labour are to be seen in many pages of this volume;⁵ but, as he mentions on p. 6, he was overtaken with a feverish attack, and the projected tour to the cathedrals and abbeys of England had to be abandoned. But Ruskin was not to be put off his cathedrals altogether, and as soon as he had recovered, he

¹ Mentioned above in the passage from a diary, on p. xxvi.

² See Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 199.

³ See Vol. I. p. xlviii.

⁴ See Vol. IV. p. 341.

⁵ See pp. 6, 67, 94, 136, 167, 172, 188, 203.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]