[159] See the Standard (Dec. 3, 1879). M. Meduna was the architect who carried out the “restoration” of the South façade of the Cathedral.
[160] The Reader of October 15 contained an article “On the Conformation of the Alps,” to which in the following issue of the journal (October 22) Sir Roderick Murchison replied in a letter dated “Torquay, 16th October,” and entitled “On the Excavation of Lake Basins in solid rocks by Glaciers,” the possibility of which he altogether denied.
[161] “On the Forms of the Stratified Alps of Savoy,” delivered on June 5, 1863. The subject was treated under three heads. 1. The material of the Savoy Alps. 2. The mode of their formation. 3. The mode of their subsequent sculpture. (See the report of the lecture in the “Proceedings of the Royal Institution,” 1863, vol. iv., p. 142. It was also printed by the Institution in a separate form, p. 4.)
[162] In reply to this letter, the Reader of November 19, 1864, published one from a Scottish correspondent, signed “Tain Caimbeul,” the writer of which declared that, whilst he looked on Mr. Ruskin “as a thoroughly reliable guide in all that relates to the external aspects of the Alps,” he could not “accept his leadership in questions of political economy or the mechanics of glacier motion.”
[163] See below, “Forbes: his real greatness,” pp. 187 seqq., and the references given in the notes there.
[164] Even in lower Apennine, “Dat sonitum saxis, et torto vertice torrens.”{*}
{*} Virgil, Æneid, vii. 567.
[165] See “Deucalion,” vol. i. p. 93.
There twice a day the Severn fills;
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.
Tennyson, “In Memoriam,” xix.