n, he directed the
growers out in Spain, and gradually built up a great business, paid off
his father's creditors, and secured his own competence.

This was not done without sacrifice of health, which he never recovered,
nor without forming habits of over-anxiety and toilsome minuteness which
lasted his life long. But his business cares were relieved by cultured
tastes. He loved art, painted in water-colours in the old style, and
knew a good picture when he saw it. He loved literature, and read aloud
finely all the old standard authors, though he was not too old-fashioned
to admire "Pickwick" and the "Noctes Ambrosianae" when they appeared. He
loved the scenery and architecture among which he had travelled in
Scotland and Spain; but he could find interest in almost any place and
any subject; an alert man, in whom practical judgment was joined to a
romantic temperament, strong feelings and opinions to extended
sympathies. His letters, of which there are many preserved, bear witness
to his character, taste, and intellect, curiously anticipating, on some
points, those of his son. His portraits give the idea of an expressive
face, sensitive, refined, every feature a gentleman's.

So, after those nine years of work and waiting, he went to Perth to
claim his cousin's hand. She was for further delay; but with the
minister's help he persuaded her one evening into a prompt marriage in
the Scotch fashion, drove off with her next morning to Edinburgh, and on
to the home he had prepared in London at 54, Hunter Street, Brunswick
Square (February 27, 1818).

The heroine of this little drama was no ordinary bride. At Edinburgh she
had found herself, though well brought up for Croydon, inferior to the
society of the Modern Athens. As the affianced of a man of ability, she
felt it her duty to make herself his match in mental culture, as she was
already in her own department of practical matters. Under Dr. Brown's
direction, and stimulated by his notice, she soon became--not a
blue-stocking--but well-read, well-informed above the average. She was
one of those persons who set themselves a very high standard, and
resolve to drag both themselves and their neighbours up to it. But, as
the process is difficult, so it is disappointing. People became rather
shy of Mrs. Ruskin, and she of them, so that her life was solitary and
her household quiet. It was not merely from narrow Puritanism that she
made so few friends; her morality and her piet