found cousins to play with, especially one, little Jessie, of nearly his
own age; he found a river with deep swirling pools, that impressed him
more than the sea, and he found the mountains. Coming home in the
autumn, he sat for his full-length portrait to James Northcote, R.A.,
and being asked what he would choose for background, he replied, "Blue
hills."

Northcote had painted Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin, and, as they were fond of
artistic company, remained their friend. A certain friendship too, was
struck up between the old Academician, then in his seventy-seventh year,
the acknowledged cynic and satirist, and the little wise boy who asked
shrewd questions, and could sit still to be painted; who, moreover, had
a face worth painting, not unlike the model from whom Northcote's
master, the great Sir Joshua, had painted his famous cherubs. The
painter asked him to come again, and sit as the hero of a fancy picture,
bought at the Academy by the flattered parents. There is a grove, a
flock of toy sheep, drapery in the grand style, a mahogany Satyr taking
a thorn out of the little pink foot of a conventional nudity--poor
survivals of the Titianesque. But the head is an obvious portrait, and a
happy one; far more like the real boy, so tradition says, than the
generalized chubbiness of the commissioned picture.

In the next year (1823) they quitted the town for a suburban home. The
spot they chose was in rural Dulwich, on Herne Hill, a long offshoot of
the Surrey downs; low, and yet commanding green fields and scattered
houses in the foreground, with rich undulating country to the south, and
looking across London toward Windsor and Harrow. It is all built up now;
but their house (later No. 28) must have been as secluded as any in a
country village. There were ample gardens front and rear, well stocked
with fruit and flowers--quite an Eden for a little boy, and all the more