INTRODUCTION xxxv

entitled “Thirty Years Since,” and at Milan the notes on Carpaccio and Luini which are printed in St. Mark’s Rest (§ 195). He reached Venice on September 7, being met by his old friend Rawdon Brown, and on the very next morning set to work on the new edition of Stones of Venice, as appears from a letter to Mrs. Arthur Severn:-

“CA’ FERRO, VENICE,

“Thursday evening, 7th Sept. 1876.

“I got here just at eight this evening, and caught dear old Rawdon by the arm, as he was rushing up and down wistfully on the platform.

“He brought me away through the sweet shadows, hiding all loss, to his own rooms, strangely in the very palace I drew so eagerly when a boy, in the sketch that Prout copied.¹

“It is on the Grand Canal, exactly opposite the Salute, with very white marble shafts, and a luxurious balcony. The waning moon is still large enough to be lovely, and the scene is singularly quiet-a piece of the Venice of old, infinitely more beautiful to me than ever.”

“Friday morning.

“Such intense moonlight there has been, all night, over the Salute, and the piece of canal seen from here is yet entirely unimpaired.

“I have been correcting my Stones for printer, and find it mostly all right, but the advance of my mind since I wrote it!-it is like editing a volume of baby talk, without any fun in it.

“I am amazed to find myself so happy in the old places. Looking up from my letter and seeing the water through marble shafts is such a good to me!”

Ruskin stayed on in rooms at the Ca’ Ferro (the Grand Hotel)² till February, when he moved to the Calcina, on the Zattere, opposite the Giudecca. This little café, with its connected lodgings and vineclad restaurant, well known to many literary and artistic visitors to Venice, is now (1905) being rebuilt, and Ruskin’s sojourn there is to

¹ The sketch (now No. 65 in the Reference Series at Oxford) is given as Plate 2 in Vol. III. (p. 212). Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 72, § 1.

² His rooms are described in a note to Mrs. Severn, printed in W. G. Collingwood’s Life and Work of John Ruskin, 1900, p. 324: “December 3.-I’m having nasty foggy weather just now,-but it’s better fog than in London,-and I’m really resting a little, and trying not to be so jealous of the flying days. I’ve a most comfy room-I’ve gone out of the very expensive one, and only pay twelve francs a day; and I’ve two windows, one with open balcony, and the other covered in with glass. It spoils the look of window dreadfully, but gives me a view right away to Lido, and of the whole sunrise. Then the bed is curtained off from rest of room like that [sketch], with fine flourishing white and gold pillars-and the black place is where one goes out of the room beside the bed.”

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