ays copying
Angelico and annotating Ghirlandajo, fevered with the sun of Italy at
its strongest, and with the rapture of discovery, "which turns the
unaccustomed head like Chianti wine."

Coutet got him away, at last, to the Alps; worn out and in despondent
reaction after all this excitement. He spent a month at Macugnaga,
reading Shakespeare and trying to draw boulders; drifting gradually back
into strength enough to attack the next piece of work, the study of
Turner sites on the St. Gothard, where he made the drawings afterwards
engraved in "Modern Painters." In August, J.D. Harding was going to
Venice, and arranged for a meeting at Baveno, on the Lago Maggiore.
Gossip had credited him with a share in "Modern Painters"; now the
tables were turned, and Griffith, the picture-dealer, wanted to know if
it was true that John Ruskin had helped Harding with his new book, just
out. They sketched together, Ruskin perhaps emulating his friend's
slap-dash style in the "Sunset" reproduced in his "Poems," and
illustrating his own in the "Water-mill." And so they drove together to
Verona and thence to Venice.

At Venice they stayed in Danieli's Hotel, on the Riva dei Schiavoni, and
began by studying picturesque canal-life. Mr. Boxall, R.A., and Mrs.
Jameson, the historian of Sacred and Legendary Art, were their
companions. Another old friend, Joseph Severn, had in 1843 gained one of
the prizes at the Westminster Hall Cartoons Competition; and a letter
from Ruskin, referring to the work there, shows how he still pondered on
the subject that had been haunting him in the Alps:

"With your hopes for the elevation of English art by means of
fresco I cannot sympathize.... It is not the material nor the space
that can give us thoughts, passions, or power. I see on our Academy
walls nothing but what is ignoble in small pictures, and would be
disgusting in large ones.... It is not the love of fresco that we
want; it is the love of God and His creatures; it is humility, and
charity, and self-denial, and fasting, and prayer; it is a total
change of character. We want more faith and less reasoning, less
strength and more trust. You want neither walls, nor plaster, nor
colours--_ca ne fait rien a l'affaire_; it is Giotto, and
Ghirlandajo, and Angelico that you want, and that you will and must
want until this disgusting nineteenth century has--I can't say
breathed, but steamed