CHAPTER X VERONA AND OXFORD (1869-1870) The main object of this journey was, however, not to study mythology, but to continue the revision of old estimates of architecture, and after seventeen years to look with a fresh eye at the subjects of "Stones of Venice." The churches and monuments of Verona had been less thoroughly studied than those of Venice, and now they were threatened with imminent restoration. On May 25th he wrote:--"It is very strange that I have just been in time--after 17 years' delay--to get the remainder of what I wanted from the red tomb of which my old drawing hangs in the passage"--(the Castelbarco monument). "To-morrow they put up scaffolding to retouch, and I doubt not, spoil it for evermore." He succeeded in getting a delay of ten days, to enable him to paint the tomb in its original state; but before he went home it "had its new white cap on and looked like a Venetian gentleman in a pantaloon's mask." He brought away one of the actual stones of the old roof. On June 3 he wrote: "I am getting on well with all my own work; and much pleased with some that Mr. Bunney is doing for me; so that really I expect to carry off a great deal of Verona.... The only mischief of the place is its being too rich. Stones, flowers, mountains--all equally asking one to look at them; a history to every foot of ground, and a picture on every foot of wall; frescoes fading away in the neglected streets--like the colours of the dolphin." As assistants in this enterprise of recording the monuments of Venice and Verona, and of recording them more fully and in a more interesting way than by photography, he took with him Arthur Burgess and John Bunney, his former pupils. Mr. Burgess was the subject of a memoir by Ruskin in the _Century Guild Hobby Horse_ (April, 1887), appreciating his talents and lamenting his loss. Mr. Bunney, who had travelled with Ruskin in Switzerland in 1863, and had lately lived near Florence, thenceforward settled in Venice, where he died in 1882, after completing his great work, the St. Mark's now in the Ruskin Museum at Sheffield. A memoir of him by Mr. Wedderburn appeared in the catalogue of the Venice Exhibition, at the Fine Art Society's Gallery in November, 1882. At Venice Ruskin had met his old friend Rawdon Brown[17], and Count Giberto Borromeo, whom he visited at Milan on his way home, with deep interest in the Luinis and in the authentic bust of St. Carlo; so closely resembling Ruskin himself. Another noteworthy encounter is recorded in a letter of May 4th.[18] [Footnote 17: Whose book on the English in Italy (from Venetian documents) was shortly to be published, with funds supplied by Ruskin.] [Footnote 18: This date ought to be "June 4th," as Mr. E.T. Cook notices (Library Edn. XIX., p. liv.).]