180 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



the bloom, the artist's pencil has sketched the en- 

 circling boundary of each nameless grace; which, 

 too, the uncompromising apparatus of the photo- 

 grapher prints off all too sternly to please, until 

 tinted down to softness by the hand again. These 

 landmarks of the studio Byron probably referred 

 to, when he wrote in that exquisite passage on 

 Greece : 



" Ere Decay's effacing fingers 

 Have swept the lines where Beauty lingers." 



It is well known that, after death, when the first 

 swollen effect has passed, the features recover their 

 repose, and the shell of the departed looks life-like 

 again. He is just as though he slept ! they say. But 

 the painter will inform you that it is but an illusion. 

 The lines — the type of feature — have fallen. There 

 are few, even accomplished portrait painters, who 

 can take a satisfactory likeness after death, even 

 from the most life-like remains. 



So will Landseer, Herring, Cooper, Rosa Bonheur 

 unerringly hit off the lines of beauty — characteristic 

 features — in an Alderney or Arab. They have learnt 

 it by long practice ; and most minute, nay almost in- 

 credible, anatomical study of each point, feature, 

 muscle, bone. 



See then, again, in the partner picture, the grand 

 repose of that massive, elephantine animal in the 

 blocked-up dray — so intelligent, so docile, so patient, 

 so all but human, as the aproned lusty carter in 

 attendance. The type there again but the fewest 

 touches have brought out. Rapid as lightning the 



