John doubtless liked counting-house work even less than he had done the study of windmills and weather in his father's fields. He was a most persistent fellow, however, and finally he returned to London, to study again the art he loved, this time in the Royal Academy, which meant that he had made some progress. His father gave him very little aid to do the things he longed to do, but after his father's death he found that a little money was coming to him from the estate--£4,000. He had already triumphed over his difficulties by painting his first fine pictures; he now knew that he was to become a successful artist, and be able to take care of himself and a wife. Though in love, he had hitherto been too poor to marry. His first splendid work was "Dedham Vale." Though things were going very well with him, it was not until Paris discovered him that he achieved great success. In 1824 he painted two large pictures which he took to Paris, and there he found fame. The best landscape painting in France dates from the time when Constable's works were hung in the Louvre, to become the delight of all art-lovers. He received a gold medal from Charles X., and became more honoured abroad than he had ever been at home. Constable had many enemies, and made many more after he became an Academician. Some artists, who would have liked that honour and who could not gain it for themselves, declared that Constable painted "with a palette knife," though it certainly would not have mattered if he had, since he made great pictures. He painted things exactly as he saw them, and was not a popular artist. Most of all, he loved to paint the scenes that he had known so well in his youth, and he did them over and over again, as if the subject was one in which he wished to reach perfection. When he died he left a picture, "Arundel Castle and Mill," standing with its paint wet upon his easel for he passed away very suddenly, on April 1st, leaving behind him many unsold paintings. He was a sensitive chap, and throughout his youth was greatly distressed by the differences of opinion between himself and his father. He was torn asunder between a sense of duty and his own wish to be an artist; and his greatest consolation in this situation was in the friendship he had formed for a plumber, who, like himself, dearly loved art. The plumber's name was John Dunthorne, and the two men wandered about the country, when not employed at their regular work, and together, by streams and in fields, painted the same scenes. At one time they hired a little room in the neighbouring village which they made into a studio. Constable was a handsome fellow in his youth and was known to all as the "handsome miller." His father, the yeoman farmer with the windmills, was also a miller.