XI. L’HOTEL DU MONT BLANC 437

at once as within those six-feet thick of cemented rock,)-I abandoned also the idea of this gloomy magnificence, and remained fancy-free till 1870, when I again was about to enter into treaty for a farm two thousand feet above Martigny, on the ridge separating the Forclaz from the glen of the Trient, and commanding view of the whole valley of the Rhone, westward to Sierre, and northward to Bex.¹ Design ended by my illness at Matlock,² and following sorrow; of which in their due time.

Up to the year with which I am now concerned, however, 1849, when I was just thirty, no plans of this sort had dawned on me: but the journeying of the year, mostly alone, by the Allée Blanche and Col de Ferret round Mont Blanc and then to Zermatt, for the work chiefly necessary to the fourth volume of Modern Painters,³ gave me the melancholy knowledge of the agricultural condition of the great Alpine chain which was the origin of the design of St. George’s Guild; and that walk with my father at St. Martin’s⁴ virtually closed the days of youthful happiness, and began my true work in the world-for what it is worth.

208. An entry or two from the beginning of the year may be permitted, connecting old times with new:-

“April 15th, Wednesday.-Left home, stayed at Folkestone, happy, but with bad cough, and slight feverish feeling, till Monday. Crossed to Boulogne, with desperate cold coming on. Wrote half letter to Miss Wedderburn,” (afterwards Mrs. Blackburn,⁵) “in carriage, going over:” the carriages, of course, in old times being lashed on the deck, one sat inside, either for dignity or shelter.

¹ [For the “Alpine plans,” much in Ruskin’s mind in 1869-1870, see Vol. XIX. p. lv.]

² [In 1871: see Vol. XXII. p. xviii. The “following sorrow” was not reached in Præterita: see the Introduction, pp. lxvi.-lxxvi.]

³ [For the itinerary of the tour of 1849, with extracts from letters and diaries, see Vol. V. pp. xvii.-xxxi.]

⁴ [July 13, 1849; above, p. 434.]

⁵ [See a review of a book by her in Arrows of the Chace, Vol. XXXIV. p. 483. The letter here referred to is given in Vol. XXXVI.]

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