our days he had fallen so desperately in love with the
oldest, Clotilde Adele Domecq, a "graceful blonde" of fifteen, that he
was more than four years in recovering his equilibrium. She laughed at
his protestations of love; but she repeatedly visited his parents, and
he did not give up hope until 1840, when she married a French baron.
His biographer says that the resulting "emotional strain doubtless was
contributory to his breakdown at Oxford" and to his enforced absence
for a recuperative trip on the continent.

His feminine attachments usually showed some definite results in his
writing. Miss Domecq's influence during the long period of his
devotion inspired him to produce much verse, which received such high
praise that his father desired him to become a poet. Although some of
Ruskin's verse was good, he finally had the penetration to see that it
ranked decidedly below the greatest, and he later laid down the
dictum: "with second-rate poetry _in quality_ no one ought to be
allowed to trouble mankind." In 1886, he had the humor to allude as
follows to Miss Domecq and her influence on his rimes, "...her sisters
called her Clotilde, after the queen-saint, and I, Adele, because it
rimed to shell, spell, and knell."

Before he was graduated from Oxford in 1842, he wrote the beautiful
altruistic story, _The King of the Golden River_ (1841) for Euphemia
Gray, the young girl unhappily chosen by his mother to become his
wife. He married her in 1848, but was divorced from her in 1854. In
1855 she was married to the Pre-Raphaelite artist, John Millais.

Another attachment led to his writing some of the finest parts of his
most popular work, _Sesame and Lilies_ (1864). "I wrote Lilies," he
says, "to please one girl." He is here referring to Rose La Touche, a
bright, ardent, religious enthusiast, to whom he began to teach
drawing when she was ten years old. His affection for her grew so
strong that he finally asked her to become his wife. He was then a man
of forty while she was scarcely grown. Her religious scruples kept her
from definitely accepting him, because his belief was not sufficiently
orthodox. The attachment, however, continued until her early death.
She was in some respects a remarkable character, and he seems to have
had her in mind when he wrote in _Sesame and Lilies_ the "pearly"
passage about Shakespeare's heroines.

Although Ruskin's wealth relieved him from earning a living, he was
rarely idle. He studied,