306 PRÆTERITA-II

more than hearing people gush about particular drawings. He knew it merely meant they could not see the others.¹

Anyhow, he stood silent; the general talk went on as if he had not been there. He wished me good-night kindly, and I did not see him again till I came back from Rome.

If he had but asked me to come and see him the next day! shown me a pencil sketch, and let me see him lay a wash! He would have saved me ten years of life, and would not have been less happy in the close of his own. One can only say, Such things are never to be; every soul of us has to do its fight with the Untoward, and for itself discover the Unseen.

68. So here I was at Leamington, trying to paint twilight at Amboise, and meditating over the Poissons Fossiles, and Michael Angelo.² Set free of the Parade, I went to stay a few days with my college tutor, Walter Brown,³ Rector now of Wendlebury, a village in the flats, eleven miles north of Oxford. Flats, not marshes: wholesome pastoral fields, separated by hedges; here and there a haystack, a gate, or a stile. The village consisted of twelve or fifteen thatched cottages, and the Rectory. The Rectory was a square house, with a garden fifty yards square. The church, close by, about four yards high by twenty yards long, had a square tower at the end, and a weather-cock.

Good Mr. Walter Brown had married an entirely worthy, very plain, somewhat middle-aged wife, and settled himself down, with all his scholarship and good gifts, to promote the spiritual welfare of Wendlebury. He interested himself entirely in that object; dug his garden himself; took a scholar or two to prepare for Oxford examinations, with whom in the mornings he read in the old way; studied

¹ [Compare Vol. VII. p. 434 n.]

² [See for the Poissons Fossiles, above, p. 301; and for Ruskin’s study of Michael Angelo at this time, below, p. 617.]

³ [See above, pp. 185, 200.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]