as one. Here, by the side of
really excellent steel-engravings, portraying languishing ladies in
corkscrew curls, and illustrating literary matter not always unworthy of
the embellishment given to it, we discover Mr. Ruskin's first published
verses--'Salzburg' and some 'Fragments' of a poetical journal, kept on
tour. In the former we seem to detect the influence of Rogers, rather
than that of Scott or Byron. It opens thus:

'On Salza's quiet tide the westering sun
Gleams mildly; and the lengthening shadows dun,
Chequered with ruddy streaks from spire and roof,
Begin to weave fair twilight's mystic woof;
Till the dim tissue, like a gorgeous veil,
Wraps the proud city, in her beauty pale.'

A little further on we read:

'Sweet is the twilight hour by Salza's strand,
Though no Arcadian visions grace the land;
Wakes not a sound that floats not sweetly by,
While day's last beams upon the landscape die;
Low chants the fisher where the waters pour,
And murmuring voices melt along the shore;
The plash of waves comes softly from the side
Of passing barge slow gliding o'er the tide;
And there are sounds from city, field, and hill,
Shore, forest, flood; yet mellow all, and still.'

Herein, it will be seen, is something of the power of description which
the writer was afterwards to exhibit so much more effectively in prose.

Four years later Mr. Ruskin's initials were to be seen appended to a
couple of pieces in verse contributed to 'The Amaranth,' an annual of
much more imposing presence than the 'Offering'--edited by T. K. Hervey,
admirably illustrated, and happy in the practical support of such
literary lights as Horace Smith, Douglas Jerrold, Sheridan Knowles,
Thomas Hood, Praed, and Mrs. Browning. One of the two pieces in question
is 'The Wreck,' in which Mr. Ruskin's poetic capability, such as it is,
is visible in one of its most attractive moods. The last verse runs:

'The voices of the night are mute
Beneath the moon's eclipse;
The silence of the fitful flute
Is in the dying lips!
The silence of my lonely heart
Is kept for ever more
In the lull
Of the waves
Of a low lee shore.'

To the same year belong contributions to the _London Monthly Miscellany_
and the prize poem ('Salsette and Elephanta') before-mentioned. In the
_Miscellany_ appeared some lines which, in certain respects, are a
species of anticipation of the Swinburnian m