which sing out with two groups of his sketches, significant moments seen in Nature. That beach and sea; the rain-storm streaming down the canvas; those floating clouds, only the clouds and the sky visible; that boat with the red sail labouring in the heavy water--they are essential Constable. And what an object lesson in the making of a landscape painter is provided by the hall of drawings, pictures, and sketches at the Victoria and Albert Museum. They are a standing refutation of Ruskin's words--"I have never seen any work of his in which there were signs of his being able to draw, and hence the most necessary details are painted by him insufficiently." Constable was not an inspired draughtsman; but that he worked hard at drawing, and that he achieved considerable mastery with his pencil is abundantly testified by the many examples at South Kensington, notably, "The Study of Trees at Hampstead," the "Windsor Castle from the River," the "Cart and Horses," and above all the magnificent and minute "Stem of an Elm Tree," none of which, as has already been noted, Ruskin had ever seen. These are all interesting, almost meticulously conscientious, but for John Constable in more daring mood, carried away by the riot of the scene, we must turn to such sketches as the chaotic cloud forms of "Weymouth Bay," and the splashy, opulent splendour of the oil sketch called "View on the Stour." Or to the sketches that emerge, modestly but clamantly, from the large works on the wall devoted to his achievement at the National Gallery, which contains no fewer than twenty-two examples by Constable. One of them, "A Country Lane," illustrated in these pages, served as a motive for his picture of "The Cornfield." The sobriety and somewhat heavy handling of this oil sketch places it in a category between the careful construction of the Exhibition pictures, and the impetuosity of most of the sketches. But the atmospheric "Salisbury" that hangs below, to the left of "A Country Lane," which is a preliminary study without the rainbow for the picture of "Salisbury from the Meadows," has all the quick, almost feverish informality of his best sketches. It is larger than the sketches, but shows no anxiety. The hand following the eye stopped when the vision of the eye was recorded, when all the hurry of the wet glitter of the scene had been stated in broken pigment. As a contrast, examine "A Cornfield with Figures," a tranquilly beautiful suggestion of late summer--fifteen and a half inches by nine and a half--thinly painted rain-clouds floating past, the heat haze hovering in the field of corn partly reaped and stocked. The vivid, "Summer Afternoon after a Shower," hanging near by has an interest apart from its spontaneity and vigour. It is precisely what it looks, the recollection of a summer shower, noted in an ecstatic moment, and recorded at a sitting. The story is told by Leslie--how Constable was travelling by coach either