Something in Müller's imagination, which caused him to love decided colours and sudden contrasts rather than delicate gradations, attracted him to Southern climes. His natural place was in the East, which had not at that time been made the vogue. Here, like Decamps and Marilhat, he found those vivid rather than delicate effects which appealed to his eye. He was twice in the South--the first time in Athens and Egypt in 1838, and once again in Smyrna, Rhodes, and Lycia in 1843-44. In the year during which he had yet to live he collected those Oriental pictures which form his legacy, containing the best that he did. Certain of them, such as "The Amphitheatre at Xanthus," are painted with marvellous verve; they are not the work of a day, but of an hour. All these mountain castles upon abrupt cliffs, these views of the Acropolis and of Egypt, are real masterpieces of broad painting, their colour clear and their light admirable. Not one of the many Frenchmen who were in the South at this time has represented its sunshine and its brilliant atmosphere with such flattering, voluptuous tones. _Peter de Wint_, who was far more true and simple, was, like Constable and Cox, entirely wedded to his own birthplace. At any rate, his sojourn in France lasted only for a short time, and left no traces in his art. From youth to age he was the painter of England in its work-a-day garb--of the low hills of Surrey, of the plains of Lincolnshire, or of the dark canals of the Thames, which he specially portrayed in unsurpassable water-colour paintings. His ancestor in art is Philips de Koning, the pupil of Rembrandt, the master of Dutch plains and wide horizons. [Illustration: _Studio._ BONINGTON. READING ALOUD.]