49 



better house. The landscape is here pleasing, 

 though not grand nor striking. To the south-east 

 the view is hounded "by a hilly ridge, well covered 

 with wood, between which and the river lies a tract 

 of low flat pasture, verdant even during tha long 

 droughts of summer, when the sward in upland 

 places is parched and brown. The Lea is indeed 

 particularly distinguished by similar tracts of pas- 

 ture and low meadow-land, extending from a quarter 

 to half a mile in breadth, in nearly the whole of 

 its course between Hertford and the Thames. 

 On a fine summer evening, when there is a 

 mellow ambery light in the sky, a group of the 

 numerous cattle which are fed in these pastures 

 some drinking, others looking vacantly round them 

 at the river side, where a few low stunted willows 

 or alders overhang the water, frequently present a 

 scene of calm repose, without glare and without dark- 

 ness, which Cuyp alone has succeeded in truly repre- 

 senting on canvass. Cooper and Edwin Landseer 

 are at the head of their profession as animal 

 painters, and we should like much to see some of 

 their greater works combats on horseback, and 

 scenes in the Highlands occasionally relieved by a 

 cattle piece, on the banks of the Lea, somewhere be- 

 tween Broxbourn and Amwell 



The extent of the water at the Rye-house is 

 about a mile and a half, from the Black Pool to the 

 Tumbling Bay, and is free to gentlemen frequenting 

 the inn. The subscription to others is two guineas 



H 



