bout. And so he was left to new associates, for he
could not live without some one to love,--that was the nature of the
man, however lonely in his work and wanderings.

The new friends of this period were, at first, Americans; as the chief
new friends of his latest period (the Alexanders) were American, too.
Charles Eliot Norton, after being introduced to him in London in 1855,
met him again by accident on the Lake of Geneva--the story is prettily
told in "Praeterita." Ruskin adds:

"Norton saw all my weaknesses, measured all my narrownesses, and,
from the first, took serenely, and as it seemed of necessity, a
kind of paternal authority over me, and a right of guidance.... I
was entirely conscious of his rectorial power, and affectionately
submissive to it, so that he might have done anything with me, but
for the unhappy difference in our innate, and unchangeable,
political faiths."

So, after all, he stood alone.

Another friend about this time was Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe, to whom he
wrote on June 18th, 1860, from Geneva:

"It takes a great deal, when I am at Geneva, to make me wish myself
anywhere else, and, of all places else, in London; nevertheless, I
very heartily wish at this moment that I were looking out on the
Norwood Hills, and were expecting you and the children to breakfast
to-morrow.

"I had very serious thoughts, when I received your note, of running
home; but I expected that very day an American friend, Mr.
Stillman, who, I thought, would miss me more here than you in
London, so I stayed.

"What a dreadful thing it is that people should have to go to
America again, after coming to Europe! It seems to me an inversion
of the order of nature. I think America is a sort of 'United'
States of Probation, out of which all wise people, being once
delivered, and having obtained entrance into this better world,
should never be expected to return (sentence irremediably
ungrammatical), particularly when they have been making themselves
cruelly pleasant to friends here. My friend Norton, whom I met
first on this very blue lake water, had no business to go back to
Boston again, any more than you....

"So you have been seeing the Pope and all his Easter performances!
I congratulate you, for I suppose it is something like 'Positively
the last appearance on any stage.