ance and saleable. Simple studies of landscape may, however, be made with perfect accuracy, and are so done occasionally for special purposes. The best examples of such accurate landscape design to which we are able to refer the reader are the engraved studies of Mr Ruskin. Fine examples of artistic landscape design, in which natural scenery is well interpreted but not literally copied, are infinitely more numerous. The Liber Veritatis of Claude, and the Liber Studiorum of Turner, abound in fine examples of composed landscape, and a great number of illustrated works have been published during the present
century, in which the student may find endless instruction.
Landscape design is usually taught to amateurs by drawing masters, because it is thought to be easier than that of the figure ; but the choice of landscape for elementary instruction is unfortunate, because a beginner requires simpler and more definite material than is to be found in landscape nature. It is wiser for all beginners in art to study for a long time the most simple and definite objects which can easily be entirely detached from other objects and thoroughly studied by themselves. This was the true early classic manner of drawing, and the student who follows it in the present day will always be rewarded by an earlier insight into the qualities of form than can be attained by any other method. The truth of this is more fully recognized wherever drawing is taught seriously ; but those who teach water-colour to amateurs too often encourage them in a confused way of looking at nature which, at the best, only results in a feeble imitation of fifth-rate water-colour landscapes, in which there is nothing worthy to be called drawing at all, nor any real rendering of form. It is of the utmost importance to amateurs that they should not misapply the little time which they can usually give to practical art, and yet they often do misapply it in many ways. A very common cause of loss of time, in their case, is false finish, arid labour thrown away by the employment of methods which take more time than other methods for an inferior result, as, for example, when painful pen hatching is employed for shading where the chalk and stump, or charcoal, or the brush, would give a shade of far better quality in a twentieth part of the time. All truly great artists, though prodigal of labour when their purposes required it, have economized it whenever the economy was not artistically an evil, and this is often best seen in their sketches, which give rapidity, not by hurrying the hand, but by using the most summary means of expression. This art of summary expression in drawing is of great use to figure-painters, but it is still more important in landscape, because the effects of nature pass so rapidly that they do not permit any slow method of interpretation. Many of the fine sketches by great men have been done, without hurry, in a few minutes. Tinted papers are often used to economize time, because they supply a middle tint on which lights can be noted in white, and darks in chalk, charcoal, or a wash of water-colour. Good examples of sketches and studies by the greatest artists are now quite easily accessible through the photographic processes, and by their help a student at a distance from the national collections may easily learn for himself how they used the pen by itself, or the pen for line with a wash for shadow, or the lead pencil point, or chalks (white and black) on grey paper, or sanguine, getting a shade more quickly by one method, a line more precisely by another. Original drawings by great masters may be seen in all the capitals of Europe, in the public collections. Of late years drawings by modern artists have attracted more of the public attention than they did formerly, and " black-and-white " exhibitions have been successfully established in London, Paris, and New York. Through the influence of the South Kensington Museum and its affiliated schools of design the knowledge of drawing is now becoming much more general in Great Britain than it has ever been before. The preliminary difficulties of the art can scarcely be overcome without the assistance of a master, but in his absence the student may obtain useful help from books.
The student should thoroughly master and remember Burnet a Essay on the Education of the Eye, which is most concise, and con tains nothing doubtful or disputable. Mr Harding s works, and Mr Ruskin s Elements of Drawing, are also useful books for amateurs, especially if taken together. There are also various little treatises on elementary technical practice, usually written by artists, and published by the colour-makers, from which good practical hints may be obtained as to the use of instruments and materials. It is not generally known in England that there is a magnificent national collection of drawings by the old masters in the British Museum, to which access may easily be obtained on compli ance with a simple formality. The student is earnestly recom mended to avail himself of these treasures, which are generally strangely neglected. A handbook to the Department of Prints and Drawings, with an introduction and notices of the various schools (Italian, German, Dutch and Flemish, Spanish, French, and Eng lish) has been lately compiled by Mr Fagan, of the Museum, and published by Messrs Bell & Sons. A selection of drawings by the Italian masters in the British Museum has been been lately pub lished in autotype by Messrs Chatto & Windns, with notes by Mr Comyns Carr, which, it is to be hoped, will be followed by selec tions from other schools. It is much to be regretted that some portion, at least, of these national treasures should not be made readily accessible to the general public by framing them and exhi biting them under glass iu a gallery, according to the plan adopted in the Louvre. Their very existence is not so much as suspected by the great majority even of cultivated Englishmen.
born at Hartshill, near Atherston, in Warwickshire, in 1563. Even in childhood it was his great ambition to excel in writing verses. At the age of ten he was sent as page into some great family, and a little later he is supposed to have studied for some time at Oxford. Sir Henry Goodere became his patron, and introduced him to the countess of Bedford, and for several years he was supported by Sir Walter Aston. How the early part of his life was spent, however, we possess no means of ascertaining. It has been surmised that he served in the army abroad. In 1590 he seems to have come up to London, and to have settled there. In 1591 he produced his first book, The Harmony of the Church, a volume of spiritual poems, dedicated to Lady Devereux. The best piece in this is a version of the Song of Solomon, executed with considerable richness of expression. A singular and now incomprehen sible fate befell the book ; with the exception of forty copies seized by the archbishop of Canterbury, the whole edition was destroyed by public order. It is probable that he had come up to town laden with poetic writings, for he pub lished a vast amount within the next few years. In 1593 appeared Idea : The Shepherd s Garland, a collection of pastorals, in which he celebrated his own love-sorrows under the poetic name of Rowland. The circumstances of this passion appear more distinctly in the cycle of 64 sonnets, published in 1594, under the title of Idea s Mirror, by which we learn that the lady lived by the river Anker, in Warwickshire. It appears that he failed to win his "Idea," and lived and died a bachelor. The same year, 1594, saw the publication of Matilda, an epical poem in rhyme royal, the first of his studies from English history. It was about this time, too, that he brought out Endimion and Phoebe, a volume which he never republished, but which contains some interesting autobiographical matter, and acknowledgments of literary help from Lodge, if not from Spenser and Daniel also. In his Fig for Momus, Lodge has reciprocated these friendly courtesies. In 1596 Drayton published his long and important poem of Mortimeriados, which deals with the Wars of the Roses, and is a very serious production in ottava rima. He after wards enlarged and modified this poem, and republished it
in 1603 under the title of The Zarons Wars. In 1596,