It was here that all his years of youth were spent.

Here, under his parents' roof, he wrote his earlier works, as far as vol.i.of "Modern Painters." To the adjoining house, as his own separate home, he returned for a period of his middle life; and in the old home, handed over to his adopted daughter, he still used to find his own rooms ready when he cared to visit London.
So he was brought up almost as a country boy, though near enough to town to get the benefit of it, and far enough from the more exciting scenes of landscape nature to find them ever fresh, when summer after summer he revisited the river scenery of the West or the mountains of the North.
For by a neat arrangement, and one fortunate for his education, the summer tours were continued yearly.

Mr.John James Ruskin still travelled for the business, then greatly extending.

"Strange," he writes on one occasion, "that Watson [his right-hand man] went this journey without getting one order, and everyone gives me an order directly." In return for these services to the firm, Mr.Telford, the capitalist partner, took the vacant chair at the office, and even lent his carriage for the journeys.

There was room for two, so Mrs.Ruskin accompanied her husband, whose indifferent health gave her and his friends constant anxiety during long separations.