April — Constable. 103 



purple background, with such variations of sunshine that 

 his singing, not naturally of the strongest, is made to 

 seem quite powerful for the time. All the streams, too, 

 are in a season of prosperity ; for although they are 

 rather swollen by frequent showers, they run plentifully 

 but not foully as they did in winter, and all their little 

 islets are like emeralds with the new grass that the clear 

 water refreshes as it flows past them. 



It is impossible to watch the effects of April without 

 thinking of a painter who loved and understood them 

 better than any other, and who painted them in all 

 their freshness at a time when the connoisseurship ot 

 all Europe was in the brown stage of art-criticism, and 

 liked nothing so much as thickly-varnished old canvases, 

 so obscure that it was not always easy to distinguish 

 what the artist had intended to represent. Constable 

 said that he preferred spring to autumn, in which I find 

 it difficult to agree with him ; but as he loved the spring 

 pre-eminently he studied it earnestly, which landscape- 

 painters who pass the season in great cities have few 

 opportunities for doing. There is a description of an 

 engraving from one of Constable's pictures of Spring, 

 written by the artist himself, which is well worth quoting 

 for its truth of observation about clouds. ' It may per- 

 haps/ he says, 'give some idea of one of those bright 

 and silvery days in the spring, when at noon large 

 garish clouds, surcharged with hail or sleet, sweep with 

 their broad shadows the fields, woods, and hills ; and 

 by their depths enhance the value of the vivid greens 

 and yellows so peculiar to the season. The natural 



