oking through its
spectacles with an air very _distinguee_--and Mr. Darwin, whom I
had heard read a paper at the Geological Society. He and I got
together, and talked all the evening."

The long vacation of 1837 was passed in a tour through the North, during
which his advanced knowledge of art was shown in a series of admirable
drawings. Their subjects are chiefly architectural, though a few
mountain drawings are found in his sketch-book for that summer.

The interest in ancient and picturesque buildings was no new thing, and
it seems to have been the branch of art-study which was chiefly
encouraged by his father. During this tour among Cumberland cottages and
Yorkshire abbeys, a plan was formed for a series of papers on
architecture, perhaps in answer to an invitation from his friend Mr.
Loudon, who had started an architectural magazine. In the summer he
began to write "The Poetry of Architecture; or, The Architecture of the
Nations of Europe considered in its Association with Natural Scenery and
National Character," and the papers were worked off month by month from
Oxford, or wherever he might be, only terminating with the termination
of the magazine in January, 1839. They parade a good deal of classical
learning and travelled experience; readers of the magazine took their
author for some dilettante Don at Oxford. The editor did not wish the
illusion to be dispelled, so John Ruskin had to choose a _nom de
plume_. He called himself "Kata Phusin" ("according to nature"), for he
had begun to read some Aristotle. No phrase would have better expressed
his point of view, that of commonsense extended by experience, and
confirmed by the appeal to matters of fact, rather than to any
authority, or tradition, or committee of taste, or abstract principles.

While these papers were in process of publication "Kata Phusin" plunged
into his first controversy, as an opponent of "Parsey's Convergence of
Perpendiculars," according to which vertical lines should have a
vanishing point, even though they are assumed to be parallel to the
plane of the picture.

During this controversy, and just before the summer tour of 1838 to
Scotland, John Ruskin was introduced to Miss Charlotte Withers, a young
lady who was as fond of music as he was of drawing. They discussed their
favourite studies with eagerness, and, to settle the matter, he wrote a
long essay on "The Comparative Advantages of the Studies of Music and
Painting,"