IV. JOANNA’S CARE 557

magnitude of timber which began in Evelyn’s Sylva,¹ and now is endlessly measuring, whether Californian pines or Parisian towers,-of which, though they could darken continents, and hide the stars, the entire substance, cost, and pleasure are not worth one gleam of leafage in Kelvin Grove, or glow of rowan tree by the banks of Earn, or branch of wild rose of Hazeldean;-but I may forget, unless I speak of it here, a walk in Scott’s own haunt of Rhymer’s Glen,* where the brook is narrowest in its sandstone bed, and Mary Ker stopped to gather a wild rose for me.² Her brother, then the youngest captain in the English navy, afterwards gave his pure soul up to his Captain, Christ,- not like banished Norfolk,³ but becoming a monk in the Jesuits’ College, Hampton.

84. And still I have not room enough to say what I should like of Joanie’s rarest, if not chiefest merit, her beautiful dancing. Real dancing, not jumping, or whirling, or trotting, or jigging, but dancing,-like Green Mantle’s in Redgauntlet,⁴ winning applause from men and gods,

* “Captain Adam Ferguson, who had written, from the lines of Torres Vedras, his hopes of finding, when the war should be over, some sheltering cottage upon the Tweed, within a walk of Abbotsford, was delighted to see his dreams realized; and the family took up their residence next spring at the new house of Toftfield, on which Scott then bestowed, at the ladies’ request, the name of Huntley Burn;-this more harmonious designation being taken from the mountain brook which passes through its grounds and garden,-the same famous in tradition as the scene of Thomas the Rhymer’s interviews with the Queen of Fairy.

“On completing this purchase, Scott writes to John Ballantyne:-’Dear John,-I have closed with Usher for his beautiful patrimony, which makes me a great laird. I am afraid the people will take me up for coining. Indeed these novels, while their attractions last, are something like it. I am very glad of your good prospects. Still I cry, Prudence! Prudence! Yours truly, W. S.’”-Lockhart’s “Life,” vol. iv. page 82 [ed. 1, 1837].

¹ [The book is referred to, in much the same connexion, above, pp. 244-245 n. For “magnitude of timber,” see Vol. XXV. pp. 505 n., 507. The point here made by Ruskin is rather implied than expressly enforced in such passages as Vol. VII. p. 19, Vol. XXVII. pp. 491-492, and Vol. XXX. p. 18.]

² [Ruskin had already mentioned this incident in Pleasures of England, § 67 (Vol. XXXIII. p. 462). The walk is mentioned by Ruskin in a letter to his mother of July 4, 1867 (Vol. XXXVI.).]

³ [For the reference to Shakespeare, see Fors Clavigera, Letter 25 (Vol. XXVII. p. 459).]

⁴ [See Letter xii.]

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