So, after those nine years of work and waiting, he went to Perth to claim his cousin’s hand.  She was for further delay; but with the minister’s help he persuaded her one evening into a prompt marriage in the Scotch fashion, drove off with her next morning to Edinburgh, and on to the home he had prepared in London at 54, Hunter Street, Brunswick Square (February 27, 1818).

The heroine of this little drama was no ordinary bride.  At Edinburgh she had found herself, though well brought up for Croydon, inferior to the society of the Modern Athens.  As the affianced of a man of ability, she felt it her duty to make herself his match in mental culture, as she was already in her own department of practical matters.  Under Dr. Brown’s direction, and stimulated by his notice, she soon became—­not a blue-stocking—­but well-read, well-informed above the average.  She was one of those persons who set themselves a very high standard, and resolve to drag both themselves and their neighbours up to it.  But, as the process is difficult, so it is disappointing.  People became rather shy of Mrs. Ruskin, and she of them, so that her life was solitary and her household quiet.  It was not merely from narrow Puritanism that she made so few friends; her morality and her piety, strict as they were within their own lines, permitted her most of the enjoyments and amusements of life; still less was there any cynicism or misanthropy.  But she devoted herself to her husband and son.  She was too proud to court those above her in worldly rank, and she was not easily approached except by people fully equal to her in strength of character, of whom there could never be many.  The few who made their way to her friendship found her a true and valuable friend.

CHAPTER II

THE FATHER OF THE MAN (1819-1825)

Into this family John Ruskin was born on February 8, 1819, at half-past seven in the morning.  He was baptised on the twentieth by the Rev. Mr. Boyd.

The first account of him in writing is in a letter from his mother when he was six weeks old.  She chronicles—­not without a touch of superstition—­the breaking of a looking-glass, and continues:  “John grows finely; he is just now on my knees sleeping and looking so sweetly; I hope I shall not get proud of him.”  He was a fine healthy baby, and at four months was “beginning to give more decided proofs that he knows what he wants, and will have it if crying and passion will get it.”  At a year his mother resolves that “this will be cured by a good whipping when he can understand what it is,” and we know that she carried out her Spartan resolve.