He set to work at once at Sevenoaks to draw cottages; at Dover and Battle he attempted castles.

It may be that these first sketches are of the pre-Runciman period; but the Ruskins made the round of Kent in 1831, and though the drawings are by no means in the master's style, they show some practice in using the pencil.
The journey was extended by the old route, conditioned by business as before, round the South Coast to the West of England, and then into Wales.

There his powers of drawing failed him; moonlight on Snowdon was too vague a subject for the blacklead point but a hint of it could be conveyed in rhyme: "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.