The dining-room is perhaps the finest room in the house--being 35ft. long and 35ft. high. Its carved oak arched ceiling is superb--and the carved fireplace, round which ivy is trailing, is also a fine sample of this particular art. It was in this apartment that I had the privilege of going through portfolio after portfolio of the daintiest of pencil studies--little artistic efforts which seemed to have life and breath of their own. There are many personal works here--at one end of the room hangs "Scotch Mountains and Sheep," the opposite side being occupied by the largest picture the artist has ever painted--the canvas measures 11ft, by 7ft.--"Pushing Off for Tilbury Fort, on the Thames," painted in 1883, and exhibited in the Academy of the following year. As we stood before this beautiful work--a scene of perfect calmness in the meadows, with a group of cattle lazily lying in the foreground, and a boat full of soldiers being rowed towards the guard-ship, _Ramilies_, in the distance--Mr. Cooper said: "I saw that very scene on my fortieth birthday, when seeing a friend off from Tilbury. Its beauty impressed me in a way few such scenes have done, and I said within myself, 'Should I ever reach my eightieth birthday, I will paint that.' And I did. I started it on September 26, 1883, and it took me exactly forty-nine days to paint." [Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM. _From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry._] There is much of interest in the drawing-room, with its fine statues by P. MacDowell, R.A., its family portraits intermingled with great bowls of winter blossoms and grasses gathered from the adjoining fields, its many artistic treasures--not omitting the tiny canvas which the artist painted at the age of seventy. "I painted it," he said, very quietly, "because I thought I had got to the end!" [Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM. _From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry._] But we only spend a moment or so there, for Mr. Cooper is leading the way to the studio. We cross the great hall, through the library, whose walls are completely hidden by sketches of, surely, every animal that ever enjoyed the green fare provided by the meadows of Britain--the artist opens the door and bids me enter. It is a remarkable studio--and I should say stands alone and distinct amongst those pertaining to Royal Academicians. There are a few studies hanging on the woodwork which surrounds the window--there are the two diplomas, one of which, dated November 3rd, 1845, made its possessor an Associate of the Royal Academy, and the other a Royal Academician on March 23rd, 1867--but otherwise the blue walls are bare, perfectly bare. There may be a reason for this--a very simple one; an honest recollection of the days that have been is not to be forgotten in the comforts and successes of the days that are now! When I left Mr. Cooper, and after I learnt what I did, I could only put these bare walls in the studio at Vernon Holme down to such thoughts as these. [Illustration: THE LIBRARY.