So that it was not Rogers' "Italy" that sent the family off to the Alps that summer; but, fortunately for John, his father's eye was caught by the romantic architecture of Prout's "Sketches in Flanders and Germany," when it came out in April, 1853, and his mother proposed to make both of them happy in a tour on the Continent.

The business-round was abandoned, but they could see Mr.Domecq on their way back through Paris, and not wholly lose the time.
They waited to keep papa's birthday on May 10, and early next morning drove off--father and mother, John and Mary, Nurse Anne, and the courier Salvador.

They crossed to Calais, and posted, as people did in the old times, slowly from point to point; starting betimes, halting at the roadside inns, where John tried to snatch a sketch, reaching their destination early enough to investigate the cathedral or the citadel, monuments of antiquity or achievements of modern civilisation, with impartial eagerness; and before bedtime John would write up his journal and work up his sketches just as if he were at home.
So they went through Flanders and Germany, following Prout's lead by the castles of the Rhine; but at last, at Schaffhausen one Sunday evening--"suddenly--behold--beyond!"-- they had seen the Alps.
Thenceforward Turner was their guide as they crossed the Spluegen, sailed the Italian lakes, wondered at Milan Cathedral, and the Mediterranean at Genoa, and then roamed through the Oberland and back to Chamouni.

All this while a great plan shaped itself in the boy's head, no less than to make a Rogers' "Italy" for himself, just as he tried to make a "Harry and Lucy" or a "Dictionary of Minerals." On every place they passed he would write verses and prose sketches, to give respectively the romance and the reality or ridicule; for he saw the comic side of it all, keenly; and he would illustrate the series with Turneresque vignettes, drawn with the finest crowquill pen, to imitate the delicate engravings.
By this he learnt more drawing in two or three years than most amateur students do in seven.

For the first year he had the "Watchtower of Andernach" and the "Jungfrau from Interlaken" to show, with others of similar style, and thenceforward alternated between Turner and Prout, until he settled into something different from either.
But Turner and Prout were not the only artists he knew; at Paris he found his way into the Louvre, and got leave from the directors, though he was under the age required, to copy.