Mr. Colman’s large and solid and sober drawing of ‘Durham’ (it has these qualities, and yet is, somehow, without charm) reminds me of an early Girtin; while a Girtin of the finer sort, just as simple, just as straightforward, yet with something of the later magic of the hand, is recalled by Mr. Reeve’s ‘Bridge over the Greta.’ A quiet realism; a sense of the picturesque, entertained but yet subdued; a composition, ordered, yet not seemingly artificial; a breadth that was never thereafter for a moment departed from--these are, perhaps, the characteristics of the mature and noble drawings of the earlier period, such as ‘St. Luke’s Chapel,’ ‘Bishopgate Bridge,’ and ‘Mousehold Heath.’ Wherever there is opportunity for it--as, in my ‘Bishopgate Bridge,’ in the yew-tree to the left and the slope of the bank to the river--there comes in Cotman’s sense of grace, his appreciation of style and of dignity, his avoidance of mere topography; but it is in Mr. Reeve’s ‘Twickenham’--thanks to the occasion of which the scene itself is lavish--that that sense of grace dominates, and the stately trees throw their shadows over the lawn by the water. In 1812, Cotman removed to South Town, Yarmouth; Dawson Turner being, presumably, at the bottom of the change. The painter’s association with the interesting antiquary became more and more intimate. Purely architectural, or, as one might say, monumental, draughtsmanship was at this time a good deal occupying him. He was issuing at the moment the first part of the _Antiquities of Norfolk_. In the year 1817, he paid, on the advice of Dawson Turner, a first visit to Normandy. He went there again in 1819 and 1820; and, two years after the third visit, his _Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_ saw the light. It was not until 1838 that he produced the book which best represents the characteristics of his style--the book in which, fettered by no established task, his sense of elegance, his genius for composition in line and in light and shade, had free play--I mean, of course, his _Liber Studiorum_: soft ground-etchings of unquestioned force and charm. But at Yarmouth he had much to engage him. His range of subjects increased. There it was that he acquired the close knowledge of coast ‘effects’ and of marine architecture which made him, in addition to all his other capacities, so excellent a painter of the shore and sea.