_George H. Boughton_ was one of the most graceful and refined amongst Walker's followers. By birth and descent a countryman of Crome and Cotman, he passed his youth in America, worked several years in Paris from 1853, and in 1863 settled in London, where he was exceedingly active as a draughtsman, a writer, and a painter. His charming illustrations for _Harper's Magazine_, where he also published his delicate story _The Return of the Mayflower_, are well known. As a painter, too, his brush was only occupied by pleasant things, whether belonging to the past or the present. There is something in him both of the delicacy of Gainsborough and of the poetry of Memlinc. He delights in the murmur of brooks and the rustle of leaves, in fresh children and pretty young women in æesthetically fantastic costume; he loves everything delicate, quiet, and fragrant. And for this reason he also takes delight in old legends entwined with blossoms, and attains a most harmonious effect when he places shepherds and kings' daughters of story, and steel-clad knights and squires in his charming and entirely modern landscapes. Almost always it is autumn, winter, or at most the early spring in his pictures. The boughs of the trees are generally bare, though sometimes a tender pointed yellowish verdure is budding upon them. At times the mist of November hovers over the country like a delicate veil; at times the snowflakes fall softly, or the October sun gleams through the leafless branches. [Illustration: FRANK HOLL.] Moreover, a feeling for the articulation of lines, for a balance of composition, unforced, and yet giving a character of distinction, is peculiar to him in a high degree. In 1877 he had in the Royal Academy the charming picture "A Breath of Wind." Amid a soft landscape with slender trees move the thoroughly Grecian figures of the shapely English peasants, whilst the tender evening light is shed over the gently rising hills. His picture of 1878 he named "Green Leaves among the Sere": a group of children, in the midst of whom the young mother herself looks like a child, are seated amid an autumn landscape, where the leaves fall, and the sky is shrouded in wintry grey. In the picture "Snow in Spring" may be seen a party of charming girls--little modern Tanagra figures--whom the sun has tempted into the air to search for the earliest woodland snowdrops under the guidance of a damsel still in her 'teens. Having just reached a secret corner of the wood, they are standing with their flowers in their hands surrounded by tremulous boughs, when a sudden snowstorm overtakes them. Thick white flakes alight upon the slender boughs, and combine with the light green leaves and pale reddish dresses of the children in making a delicate harmony of colour. Among his legendary pictures the poetic "Love Conquers all Things," in particular is known in Germany: a wild shepherd's daughter sits near her flock, and the son of a king gazes into her eyes lost in dream.