the slumbers of the night."

Harlech Castle was too sublime for a sketch, but it was painted with
the pen:

"So mighty, so majestic, and so lone;
And all thy music, now, the ocean's murmuring."

And the enthusiasm of mountain glory, a sort of ecstacy of
uncontrollable passion, strives for articulate deliverance in the
climbing song, "I love ye, ye eternal hills."

It was hard to come back to the daily round, the common task, especially
when, in this autumn of 1831, to Dr. Andrews' Latin and Greek, the
French grammar and Euclid were added, under Mr. Rowbotham. And the new
tutor had no funny stories to tell; he was not so engaging a man as the
"dear Doctor," and his memory was not sweet to his wayward pupil. But
the parents had chosen for the work one who was favourably known by his
manuals, and capable of interesting even a budding poet in the
mathematics; for our author tells that at Oxford, and ever after, he
knew his Euclid without the figures, and that he spent all his spare
time in trying to trisect an angle. An old letter from Rowbotham informs
Mr. J.J. Ruskin that an eminent mathematician had seen John's attempt,
and had said that it was the cleverest he knew. In French, too, he
progressed enough to be able to find his way alone in Paris two years
later. And however the saucy boy may have satirized his tutor in the
droll verses on "Bedtime," Mr. Rowbotham always remembered him with
affection, and spoke of him with respect.

In spite of these tedious tutorships, he managed to scribble
energetically all this winter, writing with amazing rapidity, as his
mother notes: attempts at Waverley novels, which never got beyond the
first chapter, imitations of "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan" and scraps
in the style of everybody in turn. No wonder his mother sent him to bed
at nine punctually, and kept him from school, in vain efforts to quiet
his brain. The lack of companions was made up to him in the friendship
of Richard Fall, son of a neighbour on "the Hill," a boy without
affectation or morbidity of disposition whose complementary character
suited him well. An affectionate comradeship sprang up between the two
lads, and lasted, until in middle life they drifted apart, in no
ill-will, but each going on his own course to his own destiny.

Some real advance was made this winter (1831-32) with his Shelleyan
"Sonnet to a Cloud" and his imitations of Byron's "Hebrew Melodies,"
from which he learnt how to concentra