A SPRING SHOWER IN HYDE PARK.

OTTEN Row in Spring and early Summer is, for several

hours of the day at least, a kind of magnet which attracts to itself all kinds of celebrities from far and near, and is given to mixing them up in a rather incongruous way with all sorts of uncelebrities. We have seen on this spot all grades of society, from an emperor down to a dealer in small wares, or a travelling bagman; we have seen dukes and earls, and foreign potentates, and Oriental pashas, and Indian rajahs, and Japanese notables, all mingling pell-mell with the English crowd; which crowd, by the way, whether it consist of the mob of hard toilers, or, like this of Rotten Row, of a "mob of gentlemen at ease," is never better pleased than when such visitors come among them.

But lo! while we are speculating on what we see and have seen, yon black cloud has blotted out the Summer sun, and the big drops come pattering down upon us in a style that promises a speedy drenching. There is a sudden stir in the gay crowd, and a sensation more marked than would be occasioned by the approach of any crowned head in Europe. Elderly gentlemen put spurs to flank and gallop off, apprehensive of cold chills and rheumatism; weather-wise grooms unfold the mackintoshes from saddle-bows, and throw them over their masters' shoulders; pedestrians hoist their umbrellas, if they have any, and dash off for the nearest refuge. As for the young ladies, they don't seem to care much for it; their hats are not accounted damageable by wet, and their riding-habits are to a certain degree waterproof, and will shield off a good shower. They laugh and shake their heads, and look up to the sky, and then ride with their attendant beaux to the shelter of the nearest tree, which is broad and spreading enough to afford a refuge for a dozen equestrians at least. Down comes the rain in right earnest,

and sends little rills of water along the sides of the road, and wets the shining gravel-stones until they reflect the sky like a mirror; but it does not intend to last-it is too violent for that and see, yonder is a rainbow with one of its prismatic feet plump down among a flock of sheep feeding on the other side of the Serpentine-a sure sign that the sudden squall is coming to an end.

When the rain is over, Rotten Row is all the pleasanter for it. The shower has laid the dust, and has washed the foliage of the trees, which was almost of a gravelly hue, to a bright green. The riders leave their shelter and dash once more along the road, and by degrees the long promenade fills again, new faces constantly arriving as others

draw off.

Whoever would see Rotten Row in its glory should visit it during the height of the London season, some time between the first week in May and the second week in July; and he should time his visit between the hours of five and seven in the evening. Then it is that this famous "ride" is most crowded with the fashionable world of London, and in fact it is only then that the mile and a half of road seems hardly sufficient space for their accommodation. As seven o'clock approaches, the assembly visibly thins, and before a quarter past seven has struck it may be said to have dispersed entirely. The equestrians cannot stay later; they have to ride home, and to dress for dinner at eight.

Such are some of the features of life in Rotten Row during the height of the London season. But about the time when sweltering July gets into its teens, there are certain symptoms observable which denote a speedy and complete stop to all out-of-door demonstrations of the kind on the part of the " upper ten thousand," about to vanish from London's West-end. There is no end of packing portmanteaus and wardrobes: the mountains of luggage, the family carriages, the ladies' maids, the cooks, the Jeameses and the Abigails, are despatched along the iron roads back into the country, leaving the town house to the burly porter and a gossip or two on board wages. lady-riders are off to the sea-side; and the dashing young horsemen are scouring the moors for grouse, stalking the deer in the Highlands, trolling for salmon in the lochs of Scotland or the fiords of Norway, clambering over Alpine glaciers and snowy peaks, or doing the Pyramids of Egypt, the deserts of Syria, or the steppes of Tartary; while Rotten Row languishes in comparative obscurity, a mere highway through the Park.

The gay

"QUT AFTER NATURE."

Ho at this season of the year but is glad to exchange the dusty city for the sea-side, or the cool glades of the country? Artists especially make up their minds to bid a temporary farewell to their studios, and "go out after Nature," as they sometimes phrase it. They know well enough that it is only by facing the facts and ever-changing phenomena of Nature that they can keep up that close acquaintance with her which is indispensable to their success, and derive those fresh stores of knowledge by means of which alone they can add increasing value to their works. The artist must never go back; it is a necessity of his being to go forward, and to be ever learning; and he learns most and best amidst the subjects which he paints, and so long as he is abroad among them is ever gathering new thoughts and ideas.

Agreeable as holidays are to all workers, they seem to be enjoyed by the artist in a special and peculiar manner; and we invariably find him, on these expeditions, in high spirits, and ready for a joke or a frolic, and rarely, if ever, oppressed with that ennui and tedium which most other holiday-makers are apt at times to experience. The reason, doubtless, is that he carries his work with him, the work that he loves, and finds all the recreation he needs in the change of scene, and the welcome substitution of the charms of earth, sea, and sky for the plague of dealers, and the unsolicited, wearisome criticism of connoisseurs and dilettanti patrons. British artists, for a reason sufficiently obvious, for the most part prefer British scenery to work upon. In the first place, it pays best; grand and striking as are the scenes of the Continent, the Norway fiords, fells, and forests, the German rocks and rivers, the Swiss mountains, etc., the patrons of art in England do not care so much about them, and will seldom pay a high price for them; foreign scenes do not come home to their feelings and sympathies with half the force that a home scene does, and therefore it is that

the English landscape is most in demand among English buyers. In England, Wales, and Scotland there is a whole world of the picturesque lying ever at hand for the painter's use. There is really no country in the world that is half so rich in manageable colour as our own island; while, if the wilder varieties of form which some painters. desiderate have to be sought for, they need never be long sought for in vain. The lakes of Cumberland and of Scotland, the coast everywhere in the island, the rich wealds of cultivation, the moors and heaths, and the mountainous districts, especially those of North Wales-these it is which form the quarry whence the painters derive their richest stores; and even, independent of these, the whole land is abounding in the picturesque, and spreads its untold wealth before the trained and disciplined eye.

It is interesting to note the characteristic choice which certain of our most famous painters have made amidst the diversified scenery open to their selection-how some of them have, as it were, appropriated and made almost exclusively their own a definite class of subjects, or perpetuated the scenery of their favourite localities. Thus Pyne, a few years ago, in a series of pictures which most of us can recall, made prize of the Cumberland lakes; the Linnels, father and sons, have done the same by well-known portions of Surrey and Kent; Creswick, from his earliest youth, had his mind saturated with the contour, the hue, and the accessories of the rock-ribbed water-courses which abound in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, his native town. The late David Cox made a second home of the little hamlet of Bettws-y-Coed, in North Wales, and there, within hail, as it were, of Snowdon and Cader Idris, he set up his easel year after year, and enriched a hundred collections with the unrivalled productions of his hand. Another artist, who has also passed away, found the most fertile source of his inspiration in the broad and limitless sheep-fed downs of the southern counties, which he delineated with a magic power, and with a delicacy and tenderness not merely unrivalled, but which no painter, before or since, ever approached. We might go farther back, and point out what were the peculiar haunts of Constable and Crome, of Wilson and Gainsborough, and others who laid the foundation of our English school, each of whom preferred through life some special tract of country which, more than any other, harmonised with his feelings and ideas.

It need not be supposed that, because the artist's out-door labours are of the tranquil and reflective kind, they are, therefore, barren of adventures, even amid home scenes. The reverse is very much the