434 PRÆTERITA-II

close to the ground, yet yellow and warm with stubble; half, laden with sheaves; the vines in massy green above, with Indian corn, and the rich brown and white cottages (in midst of them).

“July 13th.-I walked with my father last night up to the vine-covered cottages under the Aiguille de Varens.

“July 15th, SAMOENS.-We had a stony road to traverse in chars from St. Martin’s yesterday, and a hot walk this morning over the ground between this (Samoens) and Sixt. As I passed through the corn-fields, I found they gave me a pleasant feeling by reminding me of Leamington.”

“We” in this entry means only my father and mother and I; poor Mary was with us no more. She had got married, as girls always will,-the foolish creatures!-however happy they might be at home, or abroad, with their own people.

Mary heartily loved her aunt and uncle, by this time, and was sorry to leave them: yet she must needs marry her brother’s brother-in-law,¹ a good, quiet London solicitor, and was now deep in household cares in a dull street, Pimlico way, when she might have been gaily helping me to sweep the stairs at Samoens, and gather bluets* in those Leamington-like cornfields.

205. The sentence about “noon-wind” refers to a character of the great valleys on the north of the main Alpine chain, which curiously separates them from those of the Italian side. These great northern valleys are, in the main, four,-those of the Rhine (the Grisons), of the Reuss (Canton Uri), of the Rhone (Canton Valais), and the Arve (Faucigny),-all of them in ordinarily fine summer weather

* The blue centaury-like five gentians in a level cluster. Among the corn, it teaches, like the poppy, that everything isn’t meant to be eaten.

¹ [Ruskin inadvertently wrote “her brother-in-law.” Dr. William Richardson married as his second wife a Miss Bolding, whose brother, Mr. Parker Bolding, became the husband of Mary Richardson. She died in 1849 (see below, p. 456).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]