156 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



cow went into the mud to drink, and came out with a 

 splendid Spanish old gold coin of the time of the Armada 

 stuck in her hoof. Nothing more was discovered, but as 

 the river was tidal it was a curious confirmation of the 

 old tradition. On our way South we could not help 

 noticing how far more beautiful Scotland is than Norway. 

 The Heather was unusually fine this year. We stayed a 

 night in Edinburgh, which gave me an opportunity of 

 seeing the pictures in the National Gallery. I wonder if 

 many tourists visit it? The morning I was there I 

 did not see two people in the gallery. Besides the 

 Eaeburns, which are of world- wide fame, several pictures 

 stand out with peculiar interest, especially the life-sized 

 Gainsborough of the young Mrs. Grahame. She sat for 

 this picture as a bride, but before it came home she was 

 dead and her husband had gone to the wars. When he 

 came back, he never had the courage to open the case 

 which contained his young wife's portrait. On his death, 

 many long years after it was painted, it was opened by 

 his heirs, and inside the case was the little white slipper 

 she had left with the painter to help him to finish his 

 picture. The portrait was given to the Edinburgh 

 Gallery, and the slipper was kept by the family. It is 

 worth noting that an oil picture should have remained 

 so long shut up and apparently not deteriorated in any 

 way. There is a lovely Greuze, one of the prettiest I 

 have ever seen, a child of about fourteen crying over a 

 dead canary; an exquisite little Boucher of Mme. de 

 Pompadour; a large picture by the eighteenth-century 

 Venetian painter Tiepolo, whose works are rarely seen 

 out of Venice. The picture gives one more impression of 

 his power and cleverness than it delights one with its 

 beauty. The expression, character, and sex are described 

 by the power of the brush as completely as by the word- 

 painting of a Paul Bourget novel. What added to my 



