o be here--and as the church
was dedicated to my father's patron saint (as distinct from mine)
I'm glad to have got it. It is a low arch--with tracery and
niches, which ivy, and the Erba della Madonna, will grow over
beautifully, wherever I rebuild it."

At Abbeville he had with him as usual his valet Crawley; and as before
he sent for Downes the gardener, to give him a holiday, and to enjoy his
raptures over every new sight. C.E. Norton came on a short visit, and
Ruskin followed him to Paris, where he met the poet Longfellow (October
7). At last on Monday, 19th October, he wrote:

"Only a line to-day, for I am getting things together, and am a
little tired, but very well, and glad to come home, though much
mortified at having failed in half my plans, and done nothing
compared to what I expected. But it is better than if I were
displeased with all I _had_ done. It isn't Turner--and it isn't
Correggio--it isn't even Prout--but it isn't bad."

Returning home, he gave an account of his autumn's work in the lecture
at the Royal Institution, January 29th, 1869, on the "Flamboyant
Architecture of the Valley of the Somme." This lecture was not then
published in full: but part of the original text is printed in the third
chapter of the work we have next to notice, "The Queen of the Air."

CHAPTER IX

"THE QUEEN OF THE AIR" (1869)

In spite of a "classical education" and the influence of Aristotle upon
the immature art-theories of his earlier works, Ruskin was known, in his
younger days, as a Goth, and the enemy of the Greeks. When he began
life, his sense of justice made him take the side of Modern Painters
against classical tradition. Later on, when considering the great
questions of education and the aims of life, he entirely set aside the
common routine of Greek and Latin grammar as the all-in-all of culture.
But this was not because he shared Carlyle's contempt for classical
studies.

In "Modern Painters," Vol. III., he had followed out the indications of
nature-worship, and tried to analyse in general terms the attitude of
the Greek spirit towards landscape scenery, as betrayed in Homer and
Aristophanes and the poets usually read. Since that time his interest in
Greek literature had been gradually increasing. He had made efforts to
improve his knowledge of the language; and he had spent many days in
sketching and studying the terra-cottas and vases and coi