son he wrote, February 27, 1832:

"You know the beautiful model drawing that I gave you an account of
in my last. I showed it to Mr. Runciman. He contemplated it for a
moment in silence, and then, turning, asked me if I had copied. I
told him how I had patched it up; but he said that that was not
copying, and although he was not satisfied with the picture, he
said there was something in it that would make him totally change
the method he had hitherto pursued with me. He then asked Mary for
some gray paper, which was produced; then inquired if I had a
colour-box; I produced the one you gave me, and he then told me he
should begin with a few of the simplest colours, in order to teach
me better the effects of light and shade. He should then proceed
to teach me water-colour painting, but the latter only as a basis
for oil; this last, however, to use his own words, all in due
time.... Oh, if I could paint well before we went to Dover! I
should have such sea-pieces...."

In March 1834, Runciman was encouraging him in his oil-painting; but a
year later he wrote to his father:

"I cannot bear to paint in oil,
C. Fielding's tints alone for me!
The other costs me double toil,
And wants some fifty coats to be
Splashed on each spot successively.
Faugh, wie es stinckt! I can't bring out,
With all, a picture fit to see.
My bladders burst; my oils are out--
And then, what's all the work about?"

After a few lessons he could rival Mary when they went for their summer
excursion. He set to work at once at Sevenoaks to draw cottages; at
Dover and Battle he attempted castles. It may be that these first
sketches are of the pre-Runciman period; but the Ruskins made the round
of Kent in 1831, and though the drawings are by no means in the master's
style, they show some practice in using the pencil.

The journey was extended by the old route, conditioned by business as
before, round the South Coast to the West of England, and then into
Wales. There his powers of drawing failed him; moonlight on Snowdon was
too vague a subject for the blacklead point but a hint of it could be
conveyed in rhyme:

"Folding like an airy vest,
The very clouds had sunk to rest;
Light gilds the rugged mountain's breast,
Calmly as they lay below;
Every hill seemed topped with snow,
As the flowing tide of light
Broke