I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 29

edition of Rogers’s Italy.¹ This book was the first means I had of looking carefully at Turner’s work: and I might, not without some appearance of reason, attribute to the gift the entire direction of my life’s energies. But it is the great error of thoughtless biographers to attribute to the accident which introduces some new phase of character, all the circumstances of character which gave the accident importance. The essential point to be noted, and accounted for, was that I could understand Turner’s work, when I saw it;-not by what chance, or in what year, it was first seen. Poor Mr. Telford, nevertheless, was always held by papa and mamma primarily responsible for my Turner insanities.

29. In a more direct, though less intended way, his help to me was important. For, before my father thought it right to hire a carriage for the above-mentioned Midsummer holiday, Mr. Telford always lent us his own travelling chariot.

Now the old English chariot is the most luxurious of travelling carriages, for two persons, or even for two persons and so much of third personage as I possessed at three years old. The one in question was hung high, so that we could see well over stone dykes and average hedges out of it; such elevation being attained by the old-fashioned folding steps, with a lovely padded cushion fitting into the recess of the door,-steps which it was one of my chief travelling delights to see the hostlers fold up and down; though my delight was painfully alloyed by envious ambition to be allowed to do it myself:-but I never was,-lest I should pinch my fingers.

30. The “dickey,”-(to think that I should never till this moment have asked myself the derivation of that word, and now be unable to get at it!)²-being, typically, that

¹ [See further, on this gift, below, p. 79. The book (1830) is preserved at Brantwood. It bears the inscription, “J. Ruskin, Junr., from his esteemed friend Henry Telford, Esq.”; and then (in Ruskin’s hand), “My Father’s writing-dateless, unusually with him (Brantwood, April 1887).” A copy of Rogers’s Poems (1834) is inscribed, “To John Ruskin, Esq., with the sincere regard of the author.”]

² [For the derivation, see Dilecta, § 22; below, p. 585.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]