The second volume of Modern Painters was published in April, 1846; the third and fourth volumes appeared in the early part of 1856. The story of Ruskin's life and work during the intervening decade is told in the Introductions to Vols. VIII. to XII. We have now to pick up the thread of the interrupted book, and as the third and fourth volumes were written and published much at the same time, it will be convenient to treat them together here.

We left Ruskin, with The Stones of Venice and much occasional work well off his hands, setting out once more with his parents for Switzerland (Vol. XII. p. xxxvii.). His father, as we have said (ibid., p. xxvii.), was impatient to see the great book continued. The good-humoured chaff of friends pointed the author in the same direction. “Modern Painters, I tell him,” wrote Rossetti, “will be old masters before the work is ended.” He needed change of thought and scene, and amid the stillness of the Alpine meadows, and the solemn silence of the hills, he resumed his interrupted work.

In his final epilogue to Modern Painters, Ruskin (as already mentioned) speaks of the whole book as inspired by the beauty and guided by the strength of the snows of Chamouni. We have seen that this was the case with the first volume (Vol. III. p. xxv.), which was written after a Swiss tour in 1842.