400 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
artist. On one occasion the criticism of a London paper having 
exalted him, as he thought unduly, to the disparagement of a 
brother-artist in a comparison of their respective works, Cook felt 
so much distressed that he wrote to him expressing regret at the 
paragraph, and repudiating the pre-eminence, His simple and 
sincere humility was indeed one of his greatest charms. 
Two features in Cook’s uneventful life deserve especial notice. 
One refers to his annual out-door studies from Nature, generally in 
company with other artists and amateurs; and the other to his im- 
portant position in the Society of Artists and Amateurs which 
existed in Plymouth some years since. I will refer to both these 
in the order they have been mentioned. Having been in the habit 
through all his previous art-career to study directly from Nature, it 
was in the year 1850 that he went for the first and only time 
abroad. He then accompanied one of his earliest and best friends, 
the late Mr. William Hicks, of Bodmin, who, with Mrs. Hicks 
and Mr. Oliver, a relative, took a tour in Switzerland. They went 
first to Brussels, visiting Waterloo, then to Antwerp, Cologne, Bonn, 
up the Rhine to Mayence, Basle, Berne, and Interlachen, where 
they made some stay. At Interlachen Cook made some useful 
sketches. They then went to Meirengen over the Brunig Pass, 
thence to Lucerne, where on the lake he made a sketch of Mount 
Pilatus in colour, and home by Ostend. This trip occupied a month, 
but being with tourists, not artists or amateurs, Cook’s sketches 
were all slight and small. Still, he had seen the vastness of Swiss 
mountains, and had grasped with the eye and hand of genius some 
of the difficulties of space and size in transferring them to paper. 
I remember them well, and have never seen before or since such 
immensity expressed in so small a compass and in such light work, 
He made finished drawings from some of these Swiss sketches, the 
best and most important being a view from the Wengern Alp—the 
exact spot from which he made his sketch was at once recognized 
by myself when there some years afterwards. This drawing is in 
the possession of Mr. Whiteford, at Thornhill. 
In the autumn of 1851 a more studious and more earnest sketch- 
ing tour was organized by myself. We consisted of Cook, Mr. 
Mitchell, Mr. Bell, and the late Mr. Talfourd, and we were subse- 
quently joined by Mr. (now Sir Robert) Collier. We were all five 
bedded and boarded at the little road-side inn called ‘‘ The Saracen’s 
Head,” at Two Bridges, about a mile and a half from Princetown, 
