With these illustrations of Mrs. Allingham's painting elsewhere than in England our tale is told. We trust that this digression, which appeared to be necessary if a complete survey of the artist's lifework up to the present time was to be portrayed, will not be deemed to have appreciably affected the appropriateness of the title to the volume, nor invalidated the claim that we have made as to her work having most felicitously represented the fairest aspects of English life and landscape--English life, whether of peer, commoner, or peasant, passed under its healthiest and happiest conditions, and English landscape under spring and summer skies and dressed in its most beauteous array of flower and foliage--an England of which we may to-day be as proud as were those who lived when the immortal lines concerning it were penned:-- This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise; This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, Dear for reputation through the world;-- England, bound in with the triumphant sea, Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege Of watery Neptune. THE END _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES: [1] Clayton's _English Female Artists_, 1876. [2] In the Exhibition of 1903, 330 out of 1180, or 28 per cent, were ladies. [3] The first female gold medallist was Miss Louisa Starr (now Madame Canziani), and she was followed by Miss Jessie Macgregor, a niece of Alfred Hunt. [4] The Parish Register shows that the plague reached Chalfont later on. [5] See _Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham_. (London: Fisher Unwin, 1897.) [6] _A Flat Iron for a Farthing, or some Passages in the Life of an Only Son_, by Juliana Horatia Ewing. (George Bell and Sons.) [7] The model was a Mrs. Stewart, who, with her husband, sat to Mrs. Allingham for years. They were well known in art circles, and had charge of the Hogarth Club, Fitzroy Square, when Mrs. Allingham, before her marriage, lived in Southampton Row close by. She introduced the models to Mr. du Maurier, who immediately engaged them, and continued to use them for many years. "Ponsonby de Tompkins" was Stewart, run to seed, and "Mrs. Ponsonby de Tompkins" a very good portrait of Mrs. Stewart. [8] Lord Tennyson quoted this line to Mrs. Allingham one day when, walking with him, they passed ground covered with the fallen flowers of the lime trees.