he began, and that he wrote
appreciatively both of the stories and the etchings so many decades
afterwards in the preface to a reprint by J.C. Hotten.

His cousin-sister Mary had been sent to a day-school when Mrs. Ruskin's
lessons were superseded by Dr. Andrews, and she had learnt enough
drawing to attempt a view of the hotel at Matlock, a thing which John
could not do. So, now that he too showed some power of neat
draughtsmanship, it was felt that he ought to have her advantages. They
got Mr. Runciman the drawing-master, chosen, it may be, as a relative of
the well-known Edinburgh artist of the same name, to give him lessons,
in the early part of 1831. His teaching was of the kind which preceded
the Hardingesque: it aimed at a bold use of the soft pencil, with a
certain roundness of composition and richness of texture, a conventional
"right way" of drawing anything. This was hardly what John wanted; but,
not to be beaten, he facsimiled the master's freehand in a sort of
engraver's stipple, which his habitual neatness helped him to do in
perfection. Runciman soon put a stop to that, and took pains with a
pupil who took such pains with himself--taught him, at any rate, the
principles of perspective, and remained his only drawing-master for
several years.

A sample of John Ruskin's early lessons in drawing, described by him in
letters to his father, may be not without interest. On February 20,
1832, he writes:

"... You saw the two models that were last sent, before you went
away. Well, I took my paper, and I fixed my points, and I drew my
perspective, and then, as Mr. Runciman told me, I began to invent a
scene. You remember the cottage that we saw as we went to Rhaidyr
Dhu (_sic_), near Maentwrog, where the old woman lived whose
grandson went with us to the fall, so very silently? I thought my
model resembled that; so I drew a tree--such a tree, such an
enormous fellow--and I sketched the waterfall, with its dark rocks,
and its luxuriant wood, and its high mountains; and then I examined
one of Mary's pictures to see how the rocks were done, and another
to see how the woods were done, and another to see how the
mountains were done, and another to see how the cottages were done,
and I patched them all together, and I made such a lovely
scene--oh, I should get such a scold from Mr. Runciman (that is, if
he ever scolded)!"

After the next les