thrown far back in Mr. Telford's chariot, so as to give perfectly comfortable room for the legs (if one chose to travel outside on fine days), and to afford beneath it spacious area to the boot, a storehouse of rearward miscellaneous luggage. Over which-with all the rest of forward and superficial luggage-my nurse Anne presided, both as guard and packer; unrivalled, she, in the flatness and precision of her in-laying of dresses, as in turning of pancakes; the fine precision, observe, meaning also the easy wit and invention of her art; for, no more in packing a trunk than commanding a campaign, is precision possible without foresight.

10. Posting, in those days, being universal, so that at the leading inns in every country town, the cry "Horses out!" down the yard, as one drove up, was answered, often instantly, always within five minutes, by the merry trot through the archway of the booted and bright-jacketed rider, with his caparisoned pair, there was no driver's seat in front and the four large, admirably fitting and sliding windows, admitting no drop of rain when they were up, and never sticking as they were let down, formed one large moving oriel, out of which one saw the country round, to the full half of the horizon. My own prospect was more extended still, for my seat was the little box containing my clothes, strongly made, with a cushion on one end of it; set upright in front (and well forward), between my father and mother. I was thus not the least in their way, and my horizon of sight the widest possible. When no object of particular interest presented itself, I trotted, keeping time with the postboy-on my trunk cushion for a saddle, and whipped my father's legs for horses; at first theoretically only, with dexterous motion of wrist; but ultimately in a quite practical and efficient manner, my father having presented me with a silvermounted postillion's whip.2

1 [See Letter 53, § 1 (p. 316).]

2 [§§ 10-12 of this Letter were used by Ruskin, when writing Præterita, where they appear, slightly revised, as §§ 32-34 of vol. i. ch. i. The autobiographical notes are resumed in Letter 63, § 11 (p. 546).]

11. The Midsummer holiday, for better enjoyment of which Mr. Telford provided us with these luxuries, began usually on the fifteenth of May, or thereabouts ;—my father's birthday was the tenth; on that day I was always allowed to gather the gooseberries for his first gooseberry pie of the year, from the tree between the buttresses on the north wall of the Herne Hill garden; so that we could not leave before that festa. The holiday itself consisted in a tour for orders through half the English counties; and a visit (if the counties lay northward) to my aunt in Scotland.

12. The mode of journeying was as fixed as that of our home life. We went from forty to fifty miles a day, starting always early enough in the morning to arrive comfortably to four-o'clock dinner. Generally, therefore, getting off at six o'clock, a stage or two were done before breakfast, with the dew on the grass, and first scent from the hawthorns: if in the course of the mid-day drive there were any gentleman's house to be seen,-or, better still, a lord's-or best of all, a duke's,-my father baited the horses, and took my mother and me reverently through the staterooms; always speaking a little under our breath to the housekeeper, major-domo, or other authority in charge; and gleaning worshipfully what fragmentary illustrations of the history and domestic ways of the family might fall from their lips.

13. My father had a quite infallible natural judgment in painting; and though it had never been cultivated so as to enable him to understand the Italian schools, his sense of the power of the nobler masters in northern work was as true and passionate as the most accomplished artist's. He never, when I was old enough to care for what he himself delighted in, allowed me to look for an instant at a bad picture; and if there were a Reynolds, Velasquez, Vandyck, or Rembrandt in the rooms, he would pay the surliest housekeepers into patience until we had seen it to heart's content; if none of these, I was allowed to look at Guido,

Carlo Dolci-or the more skilful masters of the Dutch school-Cuyp, Teniers, Hobbima, Wouvermans; but never at any second-rate or doubtful examples.

I wonder how many of the lower middle class are now capable of going through a nobleman's house, with judgment of this kind; and yet with entirely unenvious and reverent delight in the splendour of the abode of the supreme and beneficent being who allows them thus to enter his paradise!

14. If there were no nobleman's house to be seen, there was certainly, in the course of the day's journey, some ruined castle or abbey; some celebrated village church, or stately cathedral. We had always unstinted time for these; and if I was at disadvantage because neither my father nor mother could tell me enough history to make the buildings authoritatively interesting, I had at least leisure and liberty to animate them with romance in my own fashion.

I am speaking, however, now, of matters relating to a more advanced age than that to which I have yet brought myself:-age in which all these sights were only a pleasant amazement to me, and panoramic apocalypse of a lovely world.

Up to that age, at least, I cannot but hope that my readers will agree with me in thinking the tenour of my life happy, and the modes of my education, on the whole, salutary.

15. Admitting them to have been so, I would now question farther; and, I imagine, such question cannot but occur to my readers' mind, also,-how far education, and felicities, of the same kind, may be attainable for young people in general.

Let us consider, then, how many conditions must meet; and how much labour must have been gone through, both by servile and noble persons, before this little jaunty figure, seated on its box of clothes, can trot through its peaceful day of mental development.

(I.) A certain number of labourers in Spain, living

on dry bread and onions, must have pruned and trodden grapes-cask-makers, cellarmen, and other functionaries attending on them.

(II.) Rough sailors must have brought the wine into the London Docks.

(III.) My father and his clerks must have done a great deal of arithmetical and epistolary work, before my father could have profit enough from the wine to pay for our horses, and our dinner.

(IV.) The tailor must have given his life to the dull business of making clothes-the wheelwright and carriagemaker to their woodwork-the smith to his buckles and springs-the postillion to his riding-the horse-breeder and breaker to the cattle in his field and stable,-before I could make progress in this pleasant manner, even for a single stage.

(V.) Sundry English Kings and Barons must have passed their lives in military exercises, and gone to their deaths in military practices, to provide me with my forenoons' entertainments in ruined castles; or founded the great families whose servants were to be my hosts.

(VI.) Vandyck and Velasquez, and many a painter before them, must have spent their lives in learning and practising their laborious businesses.

(VII.) Various monks and abbots must have passed their lives in pain, with fasting and prayer; and a large company of stonemasons occupied themselves in their continual service, in order to provide me, in defect of castles and noblemen's seats, with amusement in the way of abbeys and cathedrals.

16. How far, then, it remains to be asked, supposing my education in any wise exemplary, can all these advantages be supplied by the modern school board, to every little boy born in the prosperous England of this day? And much more in that glorious England of the future; in which there will be no abbeys (all having been shaken down, as my own sweet Furness is fast being, by the

luggage trains1); no castles, except such as may have been spared to be turned into gaols, like that of "time-honoured Lancaster,"2 also in my own neighbourhood; no parks, because Lord Derby's patent steam agriculture will have cut down all the trees; no lords, nor dukes, because modern civilization won't be Lorded over, nor Led anywhere; no gentlemen's seats, except in the Kirkby Lonsdale style; and no roads anywhere, except trams and rails?

3

5

17. Before, however, entering into debate as to the methods of education to be adopted in these coming times, let me examine a little, in next letter, with help from my readers of aristocratic tendencies, what the real product of this olden method of education was intended to be; and whether it was worth the cost.

For the impression on the aristocratic mind of the day was always (especially supposing I had been a squire's or a lord's son, instead of a merchant's) that such little jaunty figure, trotting in its easy chariot, was, as it were, a living diamond, without which the watch of the world could not possibly go; or even, that the diminutive darling was a kind of Almighty Providence in its first breeches, by whose tiny hands and infant fiat the blessings of food and raiment were continually provided for God's Spanish labourers in His literal vineyard; for God's English sailors, seeing His wonders in the deep; for God's tailors' men, sitting in attitude of Chinese Josh for ever; for the divinely appointed wheelwrights, carpenters, horses and riders, hostlers and Gaius-mine-hosts,' necessary to my triumphal progress; and for my nurse behind in the dickey. And it never once entered the head of any aristocratic person, nor would ever

6

[For other references to Furness Abbey (not far from Ruskin's home in the Lakes), see Letter 11, § 3 (Vol. XXVII. p. 182); Vol. XXV. p. 130; and General Index.

2 [King Richard II., Act i. sc. 1. The title to this Letter.]

3 [See Letter 10, § 1 (Vol. XXVII. p. 166).]

See Letter 52, § 8 (p. 300).]

5 [See below, pp. 404 seq.]

6 [Psalms cvii. 24.]

7 Romans xvi. 23.]