,
and took a lion's share of the writing in the _Magazine of
Architecture_. Meanwhile he had been introduced to another editor, and
to the publishers with whom he did business for many a year to come. The
acquaintance was made in a curious, accidental manner. His cousin
Charles Richardson, clerk to Smith, Elder, and Co., had the opportunity
of mentioning the young poet's name to Thomas Pringle, editor of the
"Friendship's Offering" which John had admired and imitated. Mr. Pringle
came out to Herne Hill, and was hospitably entertained as a brother
Scot, as not only an editor, but a poet himself--not _only_ a poet, but
a man of respectability and piety, who had been a missionary in South
Africa. In return for this hospitality he gave a good report of John's
verses, and, after getting him to re-write two of the best passages in
the last tour, carried them off for insertion in his forthcoming number.
He did more: he carried John to see the actual Samuel Rogers, whose
verses had been adorned by the great Turner's vignettes.

After the pleurisy of April, 1835, his parents took him abroad again,
and he made great preparations to use the opportunity to the utmost. He
would study geology in the field, and took Saussure in his trunk he
would note meteorology: he made a cyanometer--a scale of blue to measure
the depth of tone, the colour whether of Rhine-water or of Alpine skies.
He would sketch. By now he had abandoned the desire to make MS. albums,
after seeing himself in print, and so chose rather to imitate the
imitable, and to follow Prout, this time with careful outlines on the
spot, than to idealize his notes in mimic Turnerism. He kept a prose
journal, chiefly of geology and scenery, as well as a versified
description, written in a metre imitated from "Don Juan," but more
elaborate, and somewhat of a _tour de force_ in rhyming. But that
poetical journal was dropped after he had carried it through France,
across the Jura, and to Chamouni. The drawing crowded it out, and for
the first time he found himself as ready with his pencil as he had been
with his pen.

His route is marked by the drawings of that year, from Chamouni to the
St. Bernard and Aosta, back to the Oberland and up the St. Gothard; then
back again to Lucerne and round by the Stelvio to Venice and Verona, and
finally through the Tyrol and Germany homewards. The ascent of the St.
Bernard was told in a dramatic sketch of great humour and power of
characterizati