Such was the silver and gold whose intrinsic value Ruskin was at this time considering and possessing. He was a pioneer, it will be seen, in the new form of enjoyment which of late years has become popular with many English people, and has given Switzerland a winter season :— "December 15.-There was no rowing to be done, for fear of getting run down by the steamer; and no drawing, for nothing I could be seen. I . . . went out in spite of it-climbed the nearest spur of Pilate, and behold, the fog was only a lake of fog, a thousand feet deep. Dead level, white, unbroken, over a hundred square leagues; above, summer, and the Alps. Not a shadow, nor a breath of air. Purest and entire sunlight, and all the Alps one mighty peaked shore of the great Cloud Sea. It was worth a week's darkness to see it." "Christmas morning. It is darkish to-day, but yesterday was a clear, cloudless frost again, and I have made up my mind that the finest things one can see in summer are nothing, compared to winter scenery among the Alps when the weather is fine. Pilate looked as if it was entirely constructed of frosted silver, like Geneva filigree work-lighted by golden sunshine with long purple shadows; and the entire chain of the Alps rosy beyond. I spent an hour pleasantly enough throwing stones with Couttet, at the great icicles in the ravine. It had all the delight of being allowed to throw stones in the vastest glass and china shop that was ever 'established,' and was very typical to my mind of my work in general." Ruskin during his stay upon the Lake of Lucerne did much drawing, and two of his sketches of the time are here given (Plates I. and II.). He wrote during this year (1861) little or nothing; but he read much:: "At Lucerne," he writes (October 23), "I have got quite into regular days. Morning I get up a little before seven-breakfast at eight, reading Livy; write my letters; read on at Livy till I've had enough; go out and draw till about one or two, taking care not to tire myself-then row, quietly, with little pauses and landings and sketches till five; dress for dinner at six, read Xenophon in evening-the papers at tea, at eight." The nature of his studies and bent of his thoughts appear in the jottings which he sent to his father from the books he was reading: "BONNEVILLE, October 6.-I was pleased with the following passage in Xenophon to-day.1 Socrates is endeavouring to persuade a man of sense and power, who has always avoided public life, to speak in the public assembly. His friend answers that he is ashamed and afraid. 'What!' (answers Socrates), 'in your own house you are neither ashamed before the wise, nor timid before the powerful (you have no reason to be). Are you then ashamed to speak before the most foolish, and the most weak? Of whom are you afraid? Of the leather-cutters? or the brassfounders? or the husbandmen? or the shopkeepers? or of those fellows in the exchange who are always thinking how they may buy cheapest and sell dearest?' What is the use, either of our classical education or our Christianity, if we are at this moment far behind the wisdom which good men had thus reached, 400 years before Christ ?" "(BONNEVILLE, October 12.) . . . I am busy with Livy, whom I have great pleasure in now. He is the Roman Homer, not Virgil. One must take the history as a poem, but it is a grand one. The philosophy of it is less occult than Homer's, and more practically useful for all generations." "(LUCERNE, October 23.)-It is very notable that the first great step of Rome towards her established power should have been by checking a monopoly, and delivering the poor from taxes. 'Salis vendendi arbitrium, quia impenso pretio venibat, [in publicum omni sumptu] ademtum privatis; portoriisque (export and import duties) et tributo plebes liberata, ut divites conferrent, qui oneri ferendo essent (who were able to bear the burden. Confero in sense of contribute); pauperes satis stipendii pendere, si liberos educent (no charity schools). Lib. ii. Chap. 9." "(LUCERNE, October 29.)... How all the great thinkers and great nations agree in the praise of poverty! What is the use of people giving boys Latin books to read at our schools, when they dare not press home one of these lessons? The great Valerius Publicola— 'confessed master of every power and art of peace and war'-four times consul-victorious in every war he undertook-the deliverer (together with Brutus) of Rome from the Tarquins, and so (because of having avenged Lucretia) publicly mourned for at his death by the Roman nations-yet left not money enough to pay his funeral expenses. 'De publico est elatus,' says Livy, quietly-They carried 1 Memorabilia, iii. 7, 5, 6. |