“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 the slumbers of the night.”

Harlech Castle was too sublime for a sketch, but it was painted with the pen: 

    “So mighty, so majestic, and so lone;
    And all thy music, now, the ocean’s murmuring.”

And the enthusiasm of mountain glory, a sort of ecstacy of uncontrollable passion, strives for articulate deliverance in the climbing song, “I love ye, ye eternal hills.”

It was hard to come back to the daily round, the common task, especially when, in this autumn of 1831, to Dr. Andrews’ Latin and Greek, the French grammar and Euclid were added, under Mr. Rowbotham.  And the new tutor had no funny stories to tell; he was not so engaging a man as the “dear Doctor,” and his memory was not sweet to his wayward pupil.  But the parents had chosen for the work one who was favourably known by his manuals, and capable of interesting even a budding poet in the mathematics; for our author tells that at Oxford, and ever after, he knew his Euclid without the figures, and that he spent all his spare time in trying to trisect an angle.  An old letter from Rowbotham informs Mr. J.J.  Ruskin that an eminent mathematician had seen John’s attempt, and had said that it was the cleverest he knew.  In French, too, he progressed enough to be able to find his way alone in Paris two years later.  And however the saucy boy may have satirized his tutor in the droll verses on “Bedtime,” Mr. Rowbotham always remembered him with affection, and spoke of him with respect.

In spite of these tedious tutorships, he managed to scribble energetically all this winter, writing with amazing rapidity, as his mother notes:  attempts at Waverley novels, which never got beyond the first chapter, imitations of “Childe Harold” and “Don Juan” and scraps in the style of everybody in turn.  No wonder his mother sent him to bed at nine punctually, and kept him from school, in vain efforts to quiet his brain.  The lack of companions was made up to him in the friendship of Richard Fall, son of a neighbour on “the Hill,” a boy without affectation or morbidity of disposition whose complementary character suited him well.  An affectionate comradeship sprang up between the two lads, and lasted, until in middle life they drifted apart, in no ill-will, but each going on his own course to his own destiny.

Some real advance was made this winter (1831-32) with his Shelleyan “Sonnet to a Cloud” and his imitations of Byron’s “Hebrew Melodies,” from which he learnt how to concentrate expression, and to use rich vowel-sounds and liquid consonants with rolling effect.  A deeper and more serious turn of thought, that gradually usurped the place of the first boyish effervescence, has been traced by him to the influence of Byron, in whom, while others saw nothing more than wit and passion, Ruskin perceived an earnest mind and a sound judgment.