Afterwards comes Low Bank Ground,
which is only a short distance from Brantwood. The situation, as one may
see from the drawing given opposite, is one of great natural advantages,
while the house is quite unassuming; its simple white walls, however,
give one the sense of a comfortable if unpretending home. The interior
has been described as giving an impression "of solid, old-fashioned
furniture, of amber-coloured damask curtains and coverings." There were
Turner's and other water-colours in curly frames upon the drawing-room
walls.
Writing of his earliest recollections of Coniston, in _Praeterita_,
Ruskin says: "The inn at Coniston was then actually at the upper end of
the lake, the road from Ambleside to the village passing just between it
and the water, and the view of the long reach of lake, with its
softly-wooded, lateral hills, had for my father a tender charm, which
excited the same feeling as that with which he afterward regarded the
lakes of Italy." Ruskin's death in 1900 took place at Brantwood. George
Eliot, in speaking of him, said, "I venerate Ruskin as one of the
greatest teachers of the age. He teaches with the inspiration of a
Hebrew prophet."
Ruskin was the son of a wealthy wine merchant, and was born in London in
1819. He studied at Oxford, where he gained the Newdigate prize for
English poetry in 1839. After taking his degree, in the following year
appeared his first volume of _Modern Painters_, the design of which was
to prove the great superiority of modern landscape-painters,
particularly Turner, over the old masters.
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