274 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
the closely-jointed stones, with large flat surfaces of ornament, the 
symmetrical arrangement of windows and doorways, and an unin- 
teresting skyline. None of the granite masonry was worn or 
crumbling away as he liked ; but all was hard and new, looking as 
though it had only been done a few years ; and then surrounding 
the building was a large extent of straight and elaborate iron rail- 
ing ! At the sight of that iron railing poor Front burst into tears, 
Most young artists would not have cried, but would have used 
angry words at having been lured from their favourite subjects and 
haunts to draw some 200 feet " run " of abominable cast iron rail- 
ings ; but Front was too good and gentle then and throughout life 
to employ strong language even under the greatest provocation. So 
he simply wept. 
The tears of Samuel Prout are about shortly to be avenged by 
the removal of the railings. 
Prout would never, if he could help it, see anything that was 
vulgar or meretricious ; at any rate, he would never paint it. He 
lived in a world of his own, and that not of the nineteenth 
century ; for he was hardly ever known to draw anything that was 
not four hundred years old. His old Devonshire cottages, and mills, 
and bridges all are that. Not so the Probus and Truro buildings 
by-the-by, which, belonging as they do to the " debased Gothic" 
period, possess much of the lifelessness of modern work. 
"I do not know any man," says Euskin in his Two Paths, 
" who had a sublimer instinct in his treatment of things. He had 
immense gifts of composition, and could express with a myste- 
riously effective touch a peculiar delight in broken and old 
buildings. His drawings have a peculiar character which no other 
architectural drawings ever possessed, and which no others ever 
can possess, because all Frout's subjects are being knocked down or 
restored. There will never be any more Prout drawings." 
Prout didn't like restoration, because that word has too often 
stood, not for preservation, but destruction. 
Britton, though so disappointed in the young artist's first efforts, 
would not let him go. He says : " In the month of May, 1802, he 
sent me several sketches of Launceston, Tavistock, Oakhampton 
Castle, and other places, manifesting very considerable improve- 
ment in perspective lines, proportions, and architectural details.* 
* Buskin mentions these sketches as creating at the time a sensation in 
London with lovers of art. 
