Page:Pre-Raphaelitism.djvu/88

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Pre-Raphaelitism

powers in their strongest training, and after the total change in his feelings and principles which I have endeavored to describe, he undertook the series of "England and Wales," and in that series introduced the subject of Llanthony Abbey. And behold, he went back to his boy's sketch, and boy's thought. He kept the very bushes in their places, but brought the fisherman to the other side of the river, and put him, in somewhat less courtly dress, under their shelter, instead of himself. And then he set all his gained strength and new knowledge at work on the well-remembered shower of rain, that had fallen thirty years before, to do it better. The resultant drawing[1] is one of the very noblest of his second period.

Another of the drawings of the England series, "Ulleswater," is the repetition of one in Mr. Fawkes' collection, which, by the method of its execution, I should conjecture to have been executed about the year 1808 or 1810: at all events, it is a very quiet

  1. Vide "Modern Painters," Part II., Sect, III., Chap. IV., § 14.