went to Westminster, bribed the carpenters, climbed the structure, and reported all safe to stand a century, “though,” said he, “the gold and scarlet of the decorations appeared very paltry compared with the Wengern Alp.”  But he could not find No. 447, and wrote to the Heralds’ Office to know if it was a place from which a good view could be got.  Blue-mantle replied that it was a very good place, and Lord Brownlow had just taken tickets for his sons close by.  Then there was the great question of dress.  He went to Owen’s and ordered a white satin waistcoat with gold sprigs, and a high dress-coat with bright buttons, and asked his wife to see about white gloves at Oxford—­a Court white neck-cloth or a black satin would do.

Picture, then, the young Ruskin in those dressy days.  A portrait was once sent to Brantwood of a dandy in a green coat of wonderful cut, supposed to represent him in his youth, but suggesting Lord Lytton’s “Pelham” rather than the homespun-suited seer of Coniston.  “Did you ever wear a coat like that?” I asked.  “I’m not so sure that I didn’t,” said he.

After that, they went to Scotland and the North of England for the summer, and more fine sketches were made, some of which hang now in his drawing-room, and compare not unfavourably with the Prouts beside them.  In firmness of line and fulness of insight they are masterly, and mark a rapid progress, all the more astonishing when it is recollected how little time could have been spared for practice.  The subjects are chiefly architectural—­castles and churches and Gothic details—­and one is not surprised to find him soon concerned with the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture.  “They were all reverends,” says a letter of the time, “and wanted somebody to rouse them.”

Science, too, progressed this year.  We read of geological excursions to Shotover with Lord Carew and Lord Kildare—­one carrying the hammer and another the umbrella—­and actual discoveries of saurian remains; and many a merry meeting at Dr. Buckland’s, in which, at intervals of scientific talk, John romped with the youngsters of the family.  After a while the Dean took the opportunity of a walk through Oxford to the Clarendon to warn him not to spend too much time on science.  It did not pay in the Schools nor in the Church, and he had too many irons in the fire.

Drawing, and science, and the prose essays mentioned in the last chapter, and poetry, all these were his by-play.  Of the poetry, the Newdigate was but a little part.  In “Friendship’s Offering” this autumn he published “Remembrance,” one of many poems to Adele, “Christ Church,” and the “Scythian Grave.”  In this last he gave free rein to the morbid imaginations to which his unhappy affaire de coeur and the mental excitement of the period predisposed him.  Harrison, his literary Mentor, approved these poems, and inserted them in “Friendship’s Offering,” along with love-songs and other exercises in verse.  One had a great success and was freely copied—­the sincerest flattery—­and the preface to the annual for 1840 publicly thanked the “gifted writer” for his “valuable aid.”