shers.

"I congratulate you on the approaching publication of Mr. Ruskin's new
work. If 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture' resemble their predecessor,
'Modern Painters,' they will be no lamps at all, but a new
constellation,--seven bright stars, for whose rising the reading world
ought to be anxiously agape."

The book was announced for his father's birthday, May 10, 1849, and it
appeared while they were among the Alps. The earlier part of this tour
is pretty fully described in "Praeterita," II. xi., and "Fors," letter
xc., and so the visit of Richard Fall, the meeting with Sibylla Dowie,
and the death of cousin Mary need not be dwelt on here. From the letters
that passed between father and son we find that Mr. John had been given
a month's leave from July 26 to explore the Higher Alps, with Coutet his
guide and George his valet. The old people stayed at the Hotel des
Bergues, and thought of little else but their son and his affairs,
looking eagerly from day to day for the last news, both of him and of
his book.

Mr. Ruskin, senior, writes from Geneva on July 29:

"Miss Tweddale says your book _has made a great sensation._" On
August 4: "The _Spectator_, which Smith sets great value on, has an
elaborate favourable notice on 'Seven Lamps,' only ascribing an
_infirmity_ of temper, quoting railroad passage in proof. Anne was
told by American family servant that you were in American Paper,
and got it for us, the _New York Tribune_ of July 13; first article
is your book. They say they are willing to be learners from, rather
than critics of, such a book, etc. The _Daily News_ (some of the
_Punch_ people's paper) has a capital notice. It begins: 'This is a
masked battery of seven pieces, which blaze away to the total
extinction of the small architectural lights we may boast of, etc.,
etc.'" On August 5: "I have, at a shameful charge of ten francs,
got August magazine and Dickens, quite a prohibition for parcels
from England. In _British Quarterly_, under aesthetics of Gothic
architecture they take four works, you first.... As a critic they
almost rank you with Goethe and Coleridge, and in style with Jeremy
Taylor."

The qualified encouragement of these remarks was further qualified with
detailed advice about health; and warnings against the perils of the
way, to which Mr. John used to answer on this wise:

"CORMAYEUR, _Sunday af