her sake, he says, rather than for the honour of writing in the
famous _Quarterly_, that he undertook to review Lord Lindsay's
"Christian Art."

He was known to be a suitor for Miss Lockhart's hand. His father, in
view of the success he desired, had been in February looking out for a
house in the Lake District; hoping, no doubt, to see him settled there
as a sort of successor to Wordsworth and Christopher North. In March,
John Ruskin betook himself to the Salutation at Ambleside, with his
constant attendant and amanuensis George, for quiet after a tiring
winter in London society, and for his new labour of reviewing. But he
did not find himself so fond of the Lakes as of old. He wrote to his
mother (Sunday, March 28, 1847):

"I finished--and sealed up--and addressed--my last bit of work,
last night by ten o'clock--ready to send by to-day's post--so that
my father should receive it with this. I could not at all have done
it had I stayed at home: for even with all the quiet here, I have
had no more time than was necessary. For exercise, I find the
rowing very useful, though it makes me melancholy with thinking of
1838,--and the lake, when it is quite calm, is wonderfully sad and
quiet:--no bright colours--no snowy peaks. Black water--as still as
death;--lonely, rocky islets--leafless woods,--or worse than
leafless--the brown oak foliage hanging dead upon them; gray
sky;--far-off, wild, dark, dismal moorlands; no sound except the
rustling of the boat among the reeds.

"_One o'clock._--I have your kind note and my father's, and am very
thankful that you like what I have written, for I did not at all
know myself whether it were good or bad."

In the early summer he went to Oxford, for a meeting of the British
Association. He said (June 27, 1847):

"I am not able to write a full account of all I see, to amuse you,
for I find it necessary to keep as quiet as I can, and I fear it
would only annoy you to be told of all the invitations I refuse,
and all the interesting matters in which I take no part. There is
nothing for it but throwing one's self into the stream, and going
down with one's arms under water, ready to be carried anywhere, or
do anything. My friends are all busy, and tired to death. All the
members of my section, but especially (Edward) Forbes, Sedgwick,
Murchison, and Lord Northampton--a