ictures) as far as
Harwich; and as I lingered by the Stour--the river which divides Essex
and Suffolk--East Bergholt, clothed with woods and crowned with a church,
in which there is a stained-glass window put up in honour of Constable,
and a baptismal font, the gift of Constable's brother, unfolded to my
wondering eye all her rural charms. There are people who love to climb
hills; I hate to do so. It is all vanity and vexation of spirit; when
you get to the top of one hill the chances are all you see is another
hill, to the top of which you will have to climb. Give me a country
lane, with its luxuriant hedges, its shady trees, its flowers, its
richness of greensward, its pigs and poultry and farmyard; there is
poetry in such nooks and corners of the earth, as Burns and Bloomfield
and Gerald Massey found. No wonder the place made Constable an artist,
and an artist whose name will not speedily pass away. My dear sir or
madam, the next time you are on your way from London to Ipswich, don't
rush along at express speed; get out at Ardleigh, make your way to the
Vale of Dedham, then walk along the Stour, and cross it by a couple of
rustic bridges, and you are at East Bergholt, in Suffolk, where Constable
was born, and if you do so you will bless me evermore. Then, if you
like, rejoin the train at Manningtree, and resume your journey. Few East
Anglians even are aware of the wealth of beauty in that quiet corner.
'The beauty of the surrounding scenery,' writes Constable's biographer,
'its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadows, flats sprinkled with
flocks and herds, its well-cultivated Uplands, its woods and rivers, with
mansions scattered, and churches, farms, and picturesque cottages--all
impart to this spot an amenity and elegance hardly anywhere else to be
found.'

The Constables have been long in the district. The grandfather was a
farmer at a village close by. The father, who was well-to-do, purchased
a water-mill at Dedham and two windmills at East Bergholt, where he
lived. The great artist, his son John, was born in the last century, and
was educated at Lavenham and the Dedham Grammar School, and when the lad
had reached sixteen or seventeen became addicted to painting, his studio
being in the house of a Mr. John Dunthorne, a painter and glazier, with
whom he remained on terms of the greatest intimacy for many years. The
father would fain have made the son a farmer. He preferred to be a
miller, and in his