xxiv INTRODUCTION

opportunity, when at Amiens and Dijon, of making minute studies of the architecture in those cities. An occasional passage in his miscellaneous reading shows that the Stones of Venice, and their lessons, were still before his mind. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he notes after reading her letters,¹ “does not say a word of the buildings, or beauty or history of the place,” but much of its gaieties and pageants; of the heavy play carried on far into the night; of the easy morals and gorgeous spectacles of that “centre of pleasure.” “There is something bitterly melancholy to me,” he adds, “in reading the short sentences which tell so much of pomp, pride and thoughtlessness of what was to come upon them. I had no idea that the magnificence of Venice had endured so long.”

Ruskin had no sooner returned to England with his parents after their Alpine journey than he set out again with his wife, bound for Venice. He showed her Chamouni on the way, and they went slowly through North Italy, arriving in November in Venice, where they established themselves at the Hotel Danieli for the winter.² This sojourn lasted from November to March, and like another sojourn two years later (Sept. 1, 1851-June 29, 1852), was a period of unremitting toil. Ruskin said at a later time that he “gave three years’ close and incessant labour to the examination of the chronology of the architecture of Venice,” and spent “two long winters in the drawing of details on the spot.”³ That this is no exaggeration, his diaries, note-books, sketches, and other graphic memoranda abundantly testify. The labour was fourfold; he read, he observed, he noted and measured, and he drew. He had already gone through, as he elsewhere says,⁴ a “steady course of historical reading”-in Sismondi, Alison, Daru, among other authors-in preparation for The Stones of Venice. At Venice itself he delved, with guiding help from Rawdon Brown,⁵ into the archives of the city and into the works of sundry local writers on its art and topography. Such reading may have given him a ground plan, and furnished him with hypotheses pour servir; but the conflict of authorities on the chronology of the Ducal Palace, and the absence of trustworthy data or established conclusions in the case of

¹ See Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, edited by Lord Wharn cliffe, 3 vols., 1837. She was at Venice at various times between 1739 and 1761.

² The itinerary of the tour of 1849-1850 was as follows: Dijon (Oct. 6), Chamouni (Oct. 17), Milan (Oct. 27), Monza, Lecco (Nov. 1), Verona (Nov. 7), Venice (Nov. 1849-March 1850), Padua (March 7), Vicenza, Verona (March 11), Pavia, Cremona, Genoa, Avignon (March 31), Orange, Valence, Vienne, Lyons, Bourges (April 10). The dates are those which happen to be given in the diary.

³ A Joy for Ever, § 141 n.

⁴ Præterita, iii. ch. i. § 7.

⁵ For whom see below, p. 420 n.

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