liquid colour. The English look at nature as she is in their country, with the tender love of the man nurtured in cities, and yet with the cool observation of the man of business. The merchant, enveloped the whole day long in the smoke of the city, breathes the more freely of an evening when the steam-engine brings him out into green places. With a sharp practical glance he judges the waving grain, and speculates on the chances of harvest. And this spirit of attentive, familiar observation of nature, which is in no sense romantic, reigns also in the works of the English landscape painters. They did not think of becoming cosmopolitan like their German comrades, and of presenting remarkable points, the more exotic the better, for the instruction of the public. Like Gainsborough, they relied upon the intimate charm of places which they knew and loved. And as a centre Norwich first took the place of Suffolk, which Gainsborough had glorified. [Illustration: CONSTABLE. DEDHAM VALE.] _John Crome_, known as Old Crome, the founder of the powerful Norwich school of landscape, is a healthy and forcible master. Born poor, in a provincial town a hundred miles from London, in 1769, and at first an errand boy to a doctor, whose medicines he delivered to the patients, and then an apprentice to a sign-painter, he lived completely cut off from contemporary England. Norwich was his native town and his life-long home. He did not know the name of Turner, nor anything of Wilson, and perhaps never heard the name of Gainsborough. Thus his pictures are neither influenced by the contemporary nor by the preceding English art. Whatever he became he owed to himself and to the Dutch. Early married, and blessed with a numerous family, he tried to gain his bread by drawing-lessons, given in the great country-houses in the neighbourhood, and in this way had the opportunity of seeing many Dutch pictures. In later life he came to know Paris at a time when all the treasures of the world were collected in the Louvre, and this enthusiasm for the Dutch found fresh nourishment. Even on his deathbed he spoke of Hobbema. "Hobbema," he said, "my dear Hobbema, how I have loved you!" Hobbema is his ancestor, the art of Holland his model. [Illustration: _L'Art._ CONSTABLE. THE ROMANTIC HOUSE.]