262 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
fame ; as one at least of these families subsequently did (as we 
shall hereafter see) for Samuel Prout. Outside that small circle, 
however, the local encouragement artists received was somewhat 
meagre. Yet they all lived on here — Reynolds, Haydon, Prout, 
and others — for some years at any rate, until presumably they had 
exhausted the neighbourhood, and had possibly themselves become 
exhausted in the effort of extraction. 
One can understand indeed the particular attraction which 
Plymouth possessed for the greatest of our portrait painters. Who, 
with any knowledge of Southern Devon, that has visited the 
exhibition of Old Masters at Burlington House this winter, or on 
previous occasions, but must have recognized in the matchless 
colouring in the majority of Reynolds' female portraits, that perfect 
loveliness of complexion which the great artist saw, and which is 
still seen, in the neighbourhood where he first painted. To apply 
the words of Shakespeare : 
"Fair, lovely maiden, young and affable ; 
More clear of hue, and far more beautiful 
Than precious sardonyx or purple rocks." 
"'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white 
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on : 
Lady, you are the cruel' st she alive, 
If you will lead these graces to the grave, 
And leave the world no copy." 
But Reynolds made the copy, and immortalized .Devonshire 
beauty. 
Pleasing as is the scenery even in the immediate neighbourhood 
of Plymouth, it presents, perhaps, fewer striking pictorial effects for 
the landscape artist's study and delineation than more distant parts 
of the western counties. The coast is tamer, and the contiguous 
country less varied and wooded. 
But what sort of a place was Plymouth for the development of 
the special genius of young Prout, who should one day make 
gleanings of the picturesque in all directions, and paint every lovely 
street of Europe % Well. Plymouth was not a remarkably 
picturesque town, even seventy or eighty years ago, although it was 
much more so than it is now. It was inferior in this respect to 
Exeter, Dartmouth, and Salisbury, and not to be compared of course 
with Chester. The fact is the town had been so frightfully 
