xxii INTRODUCTION

The leading ideas in the author’s mind were, then, the same in both books. The same also was the impulse which led to the production of the one close upon the other. We have seen¹ how he hurried himself into The Seven Lamps, under pressure of the destructive forces of Neglect and “Restoration”; and so now it was his feeling that the charm of Venice was evanescent, his sight of the daily mouldering or rending of its walls, that drove him to postpone the completion of Modern Painters once more, until he had deciphered and imparted the lessons of the Stones of Venice. The title-as was often the case with Ruskin-had a double meaning. He hoped to make those Stones touchstones²-tests of the good and the bad in all architecture; crucial examples, too, of the connection between national feeling and national architecture. And, secondly, it was from a city fast falling into ruin that his teaching was to be drawn: “Thy servants think upon their stones, and it pitieth them to see her in the dust.”³ The prophet had no time to lose in uttering his message, for the waves were gaining fast against the STONES OF VENICE.⁴

There was destined, however-as not unusually with Ruskin’s eager undertakings-to be some delay. The Seven Lamps was published in May 1849; The Stones of Venice was not completed till October 1853. The principal cause of the delay was the unexpected difficulty and complexity of the task, as explained in the Preface to this Volume,⁵ to which may be added, as we shall see, the conscientious minuteness of the author’s studies. At the outset, however, Ruskin felt the need of a holiday, after the strain of finishing The Seven Lamps. On the completion of that book, he went abroad, as we have seen,⁶ with his parents. As he had turned to architecture in relief from studies on Modern Painters, so now he sought relaxation from architecture for a while in resuming studies in painting and natural scenery. He went accordingly on his old road by Champagnole and Geneva to the Alps. At Chamouni he felt once more at home, and the sense of rest and relief was strong within him, as this extract from his diary shows:-

August 15.-... I never saw the valley look so lovely as it did to-night, with its noble quiet slopes of deep, deep green and grey; and above them the rich orange of the Aiguilles. I know not where else [one sees]

¹ Introduction to Vol. VIII. p. xx.

² See below, ch. i. § 49, p. 57.

³ Quoted in Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. v. (added in the “Travellers’ Edition”).

⁴ See below, ch. i. § 1, p. 17.

⁵ See below, p. 3.

⁶ Vol. VIII. p. xxxv.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]