No attempt is made to select the sterner effects of landscape which earlier English painters so persistently affected. With the rough steeps of Hindhead at her door, the artist’s feet have almost invariably turned towards the lowlands and the reposeful forms of the distant South Downs. Cottages, farmsteads, and flower gardens have been her choice in preference to dales, crags, and fells.
And in so selecting, and so delineating, she has certainly catered for the happiness of the greater number.
What does the worker, long in city pent, desire when he cries
’Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven?
And what does the banished Englishman oftenest turn his thoughts to, even although he may be dwelling under aspects of nature which many would think far more beautiful than those of his native land? Browning in his “Home Thoughts from Abroad” gives consummate expression to the homesickness of many an exile:—
Oh! to be in England
Now that April’s there!
And Keats also—
Happy is England! I could be content
To see no other verdure than its own,
To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods, with high romances blent.
These, the poets’ longings, suggested the prefix for which so lengthy an apology has been made, and which, in spite of the artist’s demur, we have pressed upon her acceptance, confident that the public verdict will be an acquittal against any charge either of exaggeration, or that he who excuses himself accuses himself.