y been maintained over me, my literary bloom would
probably have been early nipped; but he passed away into the African
deserts; and the Favonian breezes of Mr. Harrison's praise revived my
drooping ambition.

7. I know not whether most in that ambition, or to please my father, I
now began seriously to cultivate my skill in expression. I had always an
instinct of possessing considerable word-power; and the series of essays
written about this time for the _Architectural Magazine_, under the
signature of Kata Phusin, contain sentences nearly as well put together
as any I have done since. But without Mr. Harrison's ready praise, and
severe punctuation, I should have either tired of my labor, or lost it;
as it was, though I shall always think those early years might have been
better spent, they had their reward. As soon as I had anything really to
say, I was able sufficiently to say it; and under Mr. Harrison's
cheerful auspices, and balmy consolations of my father under adverse
criticism, the first volume of "Modern Painters" established itself in
public opinion, and determined the tenor of my future life.

8. Thus began a friendship, and in no unreal sense, even a family
relationship, between Mr. Harrison, my father and mother, and me, in
which there was no alloy whatsoever of distrust or displeasure on either
side, but which remained faithful and loving, more and more conducive to
every sort of happiness among us, to the day of my father's death.

But the joyfulest days of it for _us_, and chiefly for me, cheered with
concurrent sympathy from other friends--of whom only one now is
left--were in the triumphal Olympiad of years which followed the
publication of the second volume of "Modern Painters," when Turner
himself had given to me his thanks, to my father and mother his true
friendship, and came always for _their_ honor, to keep my birthday with
them; the constant dinner party of the day remaining in its perfect
chaplet from 1844 to 1850,--Turner, Mr. Thomas Richmond, Mr. George
Richmond, Samuel Prout, and Mr. Harrison.

9. Mr. Harrison, as my literary godfather, who had held me at the Font
of the Muses, and was answerable to the company for my moral principles
and my syntax, always made "the speech"; my father used most often to
answer for me in few words, but with wet eyes: (there was a general
understanding that any good or sorrow that might come to me in literary
life were infinitely more his) and the two Mr. R