like smashing brittle loaf sugar, in comparison—­and cloven into the most noble masses; not grotesque, but majestic and full of harmony with the larger mountain mass of which they formed a part.  Fancy what a place! for a hot afternoon after five, with no wind—­and absolute solitude; no creature—­except a lamb or two—­to mix any ruder sound or voice with the plash of the innumerable streamlets.”

It was during this tour that he looked at a site on the hill above Bowness-on-Windermere, where Mr. T. Richmond, the owner, proposed building him a house.  He liked the view, but found it too near the railway station.

After spending September with his mother at Norwood under the care of Dr. Powell, he was able to return home, prepare “Time and Tide” for publication, and write the preface on Dec. 14th.  On the 19th the book was out, and immediately bought up.  A month later the second edition was issued.

CHAPTER VIII

AGATES, AND ABBEVILLE (1868)

Of less interest to the general reader, though too important a part of Ruskin’s life and work to be passed over without mention, are his studies in Mineralogy.  We have heard of his early interest in spars and ores; of his juvenile dictionary in forgotten hieroglyphics; and of his studies in the field and at the British Museum.  He had made a splendid collection, and knew the various museums of Europe as familiarly as he knew the picture-galleries.  In the “Ethics of the Dust” he had chosen Crystallography as the subject in which to exemplify his method of education; and in 1867, after finishing the letters to Thomas Dixon, he took refuge, as before, among the stones, from the stress of more agitating problems.

In the lecture on the Savoy Alps in 1863 he had referred to a hint of Saussure’s that the contorted beds of the limestones might possibly be due to some sort of internal action, resembling on a large scale that separation into concentric or curved bands which is seen in calcareous deposits.  The contortions of gneiss were similarly analogous, it was suggested, to those of the various forms of silica.  Ruskin did not adopt the theory, but put it by for examination in contrast with the usual explanation of these phenomena, as the simple mechanical thrust of the contracting surface of the earth.

In 1863 and 1866 he had been among the Nagelflueh of Northern Switzerland, studying the puddingstones and breccias.  He saw that the difference between these formations, in their structural aspect, and the hand-specimens in his collection of pisolitic and brecciated minerals was chiefly a matter of size; and that the resemblances in form were very close.  And so he concluded that if the structure of the minerals could be fully understood a clue might be found to the very puzzling question of the origin of mountain structure.

Hence his attempt to analyze the structure of agates and similar banded and brecciated minerals, in the series of papers in the Geological Magazine;[15] an attempt which though it was never properly completed, and fails to come to any general conclusion, is extremely interesting as an account of beautiful and curious natural forms till then little noticed by mineralogists.