ssion of graceful rusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty
of component lines.

In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens; a rustic garden
is in every way beautiful. If you have time, draw all the rows of
cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken fences, and wandering eglantines,
and bossy roses; you cannot have better practice, nor be kept by
anything in purer thoughts.

Make intimate friends with all the brooks in your neighborhood, and
study them ripple by ripple.

Village churches in England are not often good subjects; there is a
peculiar meanness about most of them and awkwardness of line. Old
manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and
cathedrals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathedral in
England from which it is possible to obtain _one_ subject for an
impressive drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring
vergerism about them.

125. If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger is
redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to draw a piece
of rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its
complete roundings, and all the patterns of the lichen in true local
color. Till you can do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching
among hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant
hills will be comparatively easy.

126. When you have practiced for a little time from such of these
subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly find
difficulties arising which will make you wish more than ever for a
master's help: these difficulties will vary according to the character
of your own mind (one question occurring to one person, and one to
another), so that it is impossible to anticipate them all; and it would
make this too large a book if I answered all that I _can_ anticipate;
you must be content to work on, in good hope that Nature will, in her
own time, interpret to you much for herself; that farther experience on
your own part will make some difficulties disappear; and that others
will be removed by the occasional observation of such artists' work as
may come in your way. Nevertheless, I will not close this letter without
a few general remarks, such as may be useful to you after you are
somewhat advanced in power; and these remarks may, I think, be
conveniently arranged under three heads, having reference to the drawing
of vegetation, water, and skies.

127. A