V. PARNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON 95

I knew Keswick before I knew Perth, and after the Perth days were ended, my mother and I stayed either there, at the Royal Oak, or at Lowwood Inn, or at Coniston Waterhead, while my father went on his business journeys to Whitehaven, Lancaster, Newcastle, and other northern towns. The inn at Coniston was then actually at the upper end of the lake, the road from Ambleside to the village passing just between it and the water; and the view of the long reach of lake, with its softly wooded lateral hills, had for my father a tender charm which excited the same feeling as that with which he afterwards regarded the lakes of Italy. Lowwood Inn also was then little more than a country cottage,-and Ambleside a rural village; and the absolute peace and bliss which any one who cared for grassy hills and for sweet waters might find at every footstep, and at every turn of crag or bend of bay, was totally unlike anything I ever saw, or read of, elsewhere.

108. My first sight of bolder scenery¹ was in Wales; and I have written,²-more than it would be wise to print, -about the drive from Hereford to Rhaiadyr, and under Plynlimmon to Pont-y-Monach: the joy of a walk with my father in the Sunday afternoon towards Hafod, dashed only with some alarmed sense of the sin of being so happy among the hills, instead of writing out a sermon at home; -my father’s presence and countenance not wholly comforting me, for we both of us had alike a subdued consciousness of being profane and rebellious characters, compared to my mother.

From Pont-y-Monach we went north, gathering pebbles on the beach at Aberystwith, and getting up Cader Idris with help of ponies:-it remained, and rightly, for many a year after, a king of mountains to me. Followed Harlech and its sands, Festiniog, the pass of Aberglaslyn, and

¹ [Bolder, that is, than Skiddaw or Coniston Old Man as seen from below. Ruskin at this time had not seen the grander mountain-crags of the Lake District at close quarters from the Eskdale or Wastdale side. For Ruskin’s early verses of 1831, suggested by the scenery of Wales, see Vol. II. pp. 328, 330, 331.]

² [Not now extant; another notice of the drive will be found below, p. 622.]

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