rawn carefully, provided they are not modern rows of pattern
cottages; or villas with Ionic and Doric porticos. Any old English
village, or cluster of farm-houses, drawn with all its ins and outs, and
haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a French one.
French landscape is generally as much superior to English as Swiss
landscape is to French; in some respects, the French is incomparable.
Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have recommended you to
buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their expression 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 of all the brooks in your neighbourhood, 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.

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
colour. 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.

When you have practised 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