INTRODUCTION xxvii

then put steam on and went away, where I’ve drawn him big, and got safe off afterwards.

“I ought, if I had had room, to have given him a much wider sweep from B at first, else we should not have been in time to see him cross.

“Dawtrey says it is very rare to see a fox that way. He got away at last into a big wood, so full of hares that the huntsman, the last time he went in, said, ‘The hares got all together, and drove the dogs out!’

“It was all very lovely, every creature enjoying itself; I’m not sure that even the fox wasn’t laughing all the time. The horses were scampering in pure delight on the soft grass; Dawtrey quite wild; I had Lucy to pull up a bit of steep hill, and just at the top came on one of the riders! the son of my old Dean Gaisford of Christ Church, who was one of the merriest at my first Freshman’s college supper!

“There has just been the most glorious vermilion sunset I’ve seen for many years.”

A diversion which gave Ruskin some pleasure at this time was that of posting tours to Derbyshire and Yorkshire with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn as companions.¹ These expeditions, on which Ruskin and Mr. Severn sketched together, must have been wholly good for Ruskin if they were as breezy as the account of one of them given by Mr. Severn:-

“The Professor said to us, ‘I will take you in a carriage and with horses, and we will ride the whole way from London to the north of England.’ He further said, ‘I will not only do it, but I will do the best in my power to get a postilion to ride, and we will go in the old-fashioned way, stopping at Sheffield for a few days.’ Mrs. Severn was delighted when she heard of this beautiful scheme, for what woman is there who can resist a postilion? The Professor went so far that he actually built a carriage for the drive. It was a regular posting carriage, with good strong wheels, a place behind for the luggage, and cunning drawers inside for all kinds of things we might want on the journey. The Professor took a portable chessboard, and over some long, and, to him, rather wearisome

¹ At the end of January 1875 he drove by himself through Brantwood to Yorkshire and Derbyshire (see Fors Clavigera, Letter 50, § 16, and Letter 52, §§ 6, 9, 10), returning to London. Letters written from Bolton and Castleton may be read in Hortus Inclusus (reprinted in a later volume of this edition). In July 1875 he drove again, this time with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn, through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and thence to Brantwood. And again in April 1876 from London to Sheffield, and thence to Brantwood (see Fors Clavigera, Letter 66, Notes and Correspondence).

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