“...  You saw the two models that were last sent, before you went away.  Well, I took my paper, and I fixed my points, and I drew my perspective, and then, as Mr. Runciman told me, I began to invent a scene.  You remember the cottage that we saw as we went to Rhaidyr Dhu (sic), near Maentwrog, where the old woman lived whose grandson went with us to the fall, so very silently?  I thought my model resembled that; so I drew a tree—­such a tree, such an enormous fellow—­and I sketched the waterfall, with its dark rocks, and its luxuriant wood, and its high mountains; and then I examined one of Mary’s pictures to see how the rocks were done, and another to see how the woods were done, and another to see how the mountains were done, and another to see how the cottages were done, and I patched them all together, and I made such a lovely scene—­oh, I should get such a scold from Mr. Runciman (that is, if he ever scolded)!”

After the next lesson 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: