“The Descent” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—Ruskin lists this title in his Plan for Continuation of the Account of a Tour on the Continent on the back endpapers of MS VIII. The positioning of this poem in the Plan (presumably as part of a projected composite section to be entitled “The Descent”) reflects the influence of the poet, Samuel Rogers (1763–1855). Ruskinʼs borrowings from Rogersʼs Italy are especially prominent in treating the trope of mountain crossing. See, in the apparatus for the “Account”, The Influence of Rogersʼs Poetry on Ruskinʼs Planned Extension of the Composite‐Genre Travelogue to Italy and Switzerland; and see also the contextual glosses for “Passing the Alps”.

In Ruskinʼs Plan, the title “The Descent” is the fifth in what can be interpreted as a definable cluster, which constructs the experience of crossing the Alps:

• “Passing the Alps”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS IA, g.2, “Passing the Alps”;
• “Via Mala”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS VIII, “Via Mala”;
• “Splugen”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS VIII, “Splugen”;
• “The Summit”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS VIII, “The Summit”;
• “The Descent”, corresponding to the poem drafted in MS VIII, “The Descent”;
• “Italia, Italia”, for which the untitled poem about arrival in Chiavenna, “Oh softly blew the morning breeze” [“Chiavenna”], may have been intended as beginning draft.

While Ruskin did not subdivide his Plan into clusters of titles, his intention is evident in his drafting poems, with titles corresponding to those in the Plan, as an identically ordered sequence in MS VIII. The poem corresponding to the first title in this conjectural cluster, “Passing the Alps”, was drafted elsewhere, in MS IA, g.2, probably prior to the drafts of the other poems in MS VIII; and Ruskin based this poem on Rogersʼs “The Alps” in Italy, applying themes and structure in Rogersʼs poem to his own cluster.

“A fearful mountain wall whose sweep / At one sheer plunge six thousand feet” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—Ruskinʼs cousin, Mary Richardson, likewise noted in her diary that the Splügen Pass reaches 6000 feet above sea level; John Murray III cites 6500 feet (Diary of Mary Richardson, 1833, 41; Murray, Hand‐book for Travellers in Switzerland, 209). Murray goes on to remark that, at the summit, travelers crossed the boundary line between Switzerland and Lombardy; and that only travelers with an Austrian officialʼs signature on their passport were allowed to cross the frontier. At the bottom of the descent, travelers reached another Austrian custom house, where they submitted their passports and luggage to additional scrutiny (ibid.). The Ruskins obtained the Austrian ambassadorʼs signature in Frankfurt am Main; see the gloss to Ruskinʼs planned (and then rejected) section on “Francfurt” in Plan for Continuation of the Account of a Tour on the Continent.

“And all along that hills steep breast / With snakelike coilings, wound our way” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—Switchbacks were characteristic of the new mountain carriage roads, but William Brockedon particularly admired the view of the serpentine bends in the Splügen road, and Ruskin intended to copy Brockedonʼs plate of this scene in Illustrations of the Passes of the Alps to illustrate “The Descent”; see List of Proposed Additional Contents for the “Account”.

“At length looked up to the white snow, / From the deep valley, it would seem, / Incredible, a very dream / That we had scaled a ridge so high / . . . / And we wound on, beside the course / Of a roaring torrents flashing force” (MS VIII; Poems [1891]; Works [1903])—John Murray III describes the scene looking up from the Austrian custom house at the bottom of the descent: “The custom‐house stands at one end of a sort of oval basin, surrounded by lofty mountain peaks, among which, on the rt. [right] of the road, rises that of the Splügen, and the glaciers which feed the rivers running towards Italy. It is a scene of extreme desolation; not a shrub of any kind grows here; no vegetation is seen but lichen, mosses, and a little coarse grass. The snow often reaches up to the windows of the first story of the houses” (Murray, Hand‐book for Travellers in Switzerland, 209–10). See also Ruskinʼs plan to illustrate with a drawing of a “cascade”, possibly the Cascada di Pianazzo (List of Proposed Additional Contents for the “Account”).