was just about to chalk it with a cross, when he read the name of 'John
Constable.' Of course there were lame apologies, and the picture was
taken from the condemned heap and placed with the works of his brother
Academicians. But after work was over Constable took the picture under
his arm, and, despite the remonstrance of his brother colleagues, marched
off with it, saving: 'I can't think of its being hung after it has been
fairly turned out. The work so condemned was the 'Stream bordered in
with Willows,' now in the South Kensington Museum. Leslie once remarked
to Redgrave that he would give any work he had painted for it, so warmly
did he admire it.

'Constable is the best landscape-painter we have,' wrote Frith to his
mother in 1835. 'He is a very merry fellow, and very rich. He told us
an anecdote of a man who came to look at his pictures; he was a gardener.
One day he called him into his painting-room to look at his pictures,
when the man made the usual vulgar remarks, such as, "Did you do all
this, sir?" "Yes." "What, all this?" "Yes." "What, frame and all?"
At last he came to an empty frame that was hung against the wall without
any picture in it, when he said to Constable, "But you don't call this
picture quite finished, do you, sir?" Constable said that quite sickened
him, and he never let any ignoramuses ever see his pictures again, or
frames either.'

Constable's great merits, writes Mr. Frith, were first recognised in
France, with the result upon French landscape art that is felt at the
present time. His advice to Frith was: 'Never do anything without nature
before you if it be possible to have it. See those weeds and the dock
leaves? They are to come into the foreground of this picture. I know
dock leaves pretty well, but I should not attempt to introduce them into
a picture without having them before me.'

Constable died very suddenly in 1837. His fame, now that he is dead, is
greater than when he was alive. His work abides in all its strength.

There is little in East Bergholt to remind one of Constable, where his
reputation remains as that of a genial and kindly-hearted man; but the
landscape in all its essential features remains the same. The house in
which he was born was pulled down in 1841, which is a great pity, as it
is described as a large and handsome mansion. But I never saw a small
village with so many attractive residences, though why anybody should
live in any of them