he
pin-factory at Birmingham; we have a complete guide-book to Blenheim and
Warwick Castle, to Haddon and Chatsworth, and the full itinerary of
Derbyshire. "Matlock Bath," we read, "is a most delightful place"; but
after an enthusiastic description of High Tor, John reacts into bathos
with a minute description of wetting their shoes in a puddle. The cavern
with a Bengal light was fairyland to him, and among the minerals he was
quite at home.

Then they hurried north to Windermere. Once at Lowwood, the excitement
thickens, with storms and rainbows, mountains and waterfalls, boats on
the lake and coaching on the steep roads. This journey through Lakeland
is described in the galloping anapaests of the "Iteriad," which was
simply the prose journal versified on his return, one of the few
enterprises of the sort which were really completed.

To readers who know the country it is interesting as giving a detailed
account in the days when this "nook of English ground" was "secure from
rash assault." One learns that, even then, there were jarring sights at
Bowness Bay and along Derwentwater shore, elements unkind and bills
exorbitant. Coniston especially was dreary with rain, and its inn--the
old Waterhead, now destroyed--extravagantly dear; "_but_," says John,
with his eye for mineral specimens, "it contains several rich
coppermines." An interesting touch is the hero-worship with which they
went reverently to peep at Southey and Wordsworth in church; too humble
to dream of an introduction, and too polite to besiege the poets in
their homes, but independent enough to form their own opinions on the
personality of the heroes. They did not like the look of Wordsworth at
all; Southey they adored. The dominant note of the tour is, however, an
ecstatic delight in the mountain scenery; on Skiddaw and Helvellyn all
the gamut of admiration is lavished.

On returning home, John began Greek under Dr. Andrews, and was soon
versifying Anacreontics in his notebooks. He began to read Byron for
himself, with what result we shall see before long; but the most
important new departure was the attempt to copy Cruikshank's etchings to
Grimm's fairy tales, his real beginning at art. From this practice he
learnt the value of the pure, clean line that expresses form. It is a
good instance of the authority of these early years over Ruskin's whole
life and teaching that in his "Elements of Drawing" he advised young
artists to begin with Cruikshank, as