During the later years of Mr. Linton's ownership, Brantwood was taken for the summer by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin, now Dean of Durham. In 1871, however, Mr. Linton sold the house to Prof. Ruskin. Ruskin as a child often visited Coniston, and in 1830 at the age of eleven made his first written mention of the place in a MS. journal now in the Museum. In his _Iteriad_, a rhymed description of the tour of that date, he gave the first hint of his wish to live in the Lake District, and in the winter of 1832-33, at the age of nearly fourteen, he wrote the well-known verses which stood first in the earliest collection of his poems:-- I weary for the torrent foaming, For shady holm and hill; My mind is on the mountain roaming, My spirit's voice is still. The crags are lone on Coniston ... remembering first and foremost, not Snowdon or Scotland, but Coniston. In 1837, as an Oxford man, he was here again, making notes for his earliest prose work, _The Poetry of Architecture_; and one of the illustrations was a sketch of the Old Hall from the water, the view which became so familiar afterwards from his windows at Brantwood. Then for a while his interests turned to the cathedrals of France, the palaces and pictures of Italy, and to the loftier scenery of the Alps; but curiously enough he did not like the Matterhorn at first--it was too unlike "Cumberland," he said. In 1847, already a well-known author, he was looking out for a house in the Lake District, and staying at Ambleside. But the March weather was dull, and he had many causes for depression. As he rowed on Windermere he pined for the light and colour of southern skies. "The lake," he wrote home, "when it is quite calm, is wonderfully sad and quiet; no bright colour, no snowy peaks. Black water, as still as death; lonely, rocky islets; leafless woods, or worse than leafless; the brown oak foliage hanging dead upon them; gray sky; far-off, wild, dark, dismal moorlands; no sound except the rustling of the boat among the reeds." Next year he revisited the lakes in spring, and wrote soon after about a wild place he had found:--"Ever since I passed Shap Fells, when a child, I have had an excessive love for this kind of desolation." It was not, however, until 1867 that he revisited the Lakes. He came to Coniston on August 10th and went up the Old Man, delighted with the ascent. We have already quoted his description of the view. At last (it was in 1871, at the age of 52, being then Slade Professor at Oxford) he fell into a dangerous illness, and lay between life and death at Matlock. He was heard to say and repeat:--"If only I could lie down beneath the crags of Coniston!"