in every
river--before the supplanter, steam, was even dreamed of. His earliest
recollections were mingled with the busy clatter of wheels, and the
whirr of sails, as they sped round before the wind, was the music of his
boyhood. His father, good man of the world as he was, holding a high
opinion of the solid comforts gained by following his own profitable
calling, placed his son, at the age of seventeen, in charge of a
windmill, hoping thereby to curb his rising enthusiasm for the more
glorious but less substantial pursuit of art. Alas! how little can we
predict the effect of our actions. This one, framed to divert his
purpose in life, was the very means of leading him to study more closely
the ever-varying beauties of the sky, with its matchless combinations of
form and colour, and all the subtle differences of atmosphere, which in
after-life formed a distinctive feature in his work; and, for a
landscape-painter, perhaps no early training could have been better. His
daily occupation by bringing him continually face to face with Nature,
and necessitating a constant observance of all her changing phenomena,
trained his heart and eye to discover her secrets, hidden from the
careless, but revealed to all true lovers of her wisdom.

The effect upon a temperament so artistic as Constable's was as
permanent as it was quickly apparent. In less than a year we find his
father reluctantly converted to his son's views in the choice of a
career, and consenting to his sojourn in London, to learn the principles
and technicalities of his profession, which he soon strove to forget and
subsequently set at defiance. Two years of studio work was sufficient to
convince him that his school was the open air; and in his own country,
amid the scenes of his boyhood, he could shake off the chains of
fashion, which bound the landscape-painter of that day, and go straight
to nature for his inspiration. Concerning this he writes: "For the last
two years I have been running after pictures, and seeing truth at
second-hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same
elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my
performances look like the work of other men; I shall return to
Bergholt, where I shall get a pure and unaffected manner of representing
the scenes which may employ me--there is room for a _natural_ painter;"
a prediction which was hardly fulfilled in his lifetime, for, with the
majority of even intell