Rosa Bonheur is an indefatigable worker. She rises at six, and paints until dusk, when she lays aside her blouse, puts on a bonnet and shawl of most unfashionable appearance, and takes a turn through the neighboring streets alone, or accompanied only by a favorite dog. Absorbed in her own thoughts, and unconscious of every thing around her, the first conception of a picture is often struck out by her in these rapid, solitary walks in the twilight. Living solely for her art, she has gladly resigned the cares of her outward existence to an old and devoted friend, Madame Micas, a widow lady, who, with her daughter, resides with her. Mademoiselle Micas is an artist, and her beautiful groups of birds are well known in England. She has been for many years Rosa’s most intimate companion. Every summer the two artists repair to some mountain district to sketch. Arrived at the regions inhabited only by the chamois, they exchange their feminine habiliments for masculine attire, and spend a couple of months in exploring the wildest recesses of the hills, courting the acquaintance of their shy and swift-footed tenants, and harvesting “effects” of storm, rain, and vapor as assiduously as those of sunshine. Though Rosa is alive to the beauties of wood and meadow, mountain scenery is her especial delight. Having explored the French chains and the Pyrenees, in the autumn of 1856 she visited Scotland, and made numerous sketches in the neighborhood of Glenfallock, Glencoe, and Ballaculish. Struck by the beauty of the Highland cattle, she selected some choice specimens of these, which she had sent down to Wexham Rectory, near Windsor, where she resided, and spent two months in making numerous studies, from which she produced two pictures: “The Denizens of the Mountains” and “Morning in the Highlands.” Her preference for the stern, the abrupt, and the majestic over the soft, the smiling, and the fair, makes Italy, with all its glories, less attractive to her than the ruder magnificence of the Pyrenees and the north.