SAMUEL COOK, ARTIST. 407 
matter, nothing disturbed us, and we thoroughly enjoyed the fresh 
mountain air, and equally, I think, the Welsh mutton. But go to 
Bettws we positively must; the vivid description given of that 
home of artists by Sir Robert settled us, and we prepared to start. 
A very early rising one fine morning, and a walk across the sands, 
brought us to Barmouth in time for the coach, on which, I need 
not say, we were all outside passengers. 
Passing through Beddgellert, where we stopped for a night, we 
proceeded up to the ‘‘ Penygwryd Inn.” At the head of the Llan- 
beris Pass we began to see and feel the grandeur of Welsh 
mountain scenery. The effects on that particular day happened to 
be most felicitous, and Cook and Mitchell were in ecstacies, the 
clouds partly hiding at times the extreme top of the Snowdon 
range, the whole of which assumed a deep purple such as we had 
never seen before. The immensity of size and space disclosed to 
us was all calculated to impress us, whether artists or amateurs, 
with the grandeur we were entering on. 
At length we drove up to what was then a small roadside 
inn, the well-known “ Royal Oak” of Bettws-y-Coed, made cele- 
brated by that Michael Angelo of water colour art, David Cox, 
who visited it consecutively for forty years, and who painted the 
sign, then nailed to the wall of the house, which sign has recently 
been the subject of so much litigation. We soon found ourselves 
installed in the then only sitting-room, adorned with a landscape 
and a life-size figure, both painted on the wall of the little parlour 
by David Cox. We were all impressed with the artistic atmosphere 
of the place. Here we found other artists, and with ourselves the 
little inn was quite full, Cook occupying a double-bedded room 
with myself; Sir Robert Collier, Harding the artist, Syer, and 
others, located near at hand. The next morning we explored this 
village and its neighbourhood, recognizing at every turn subjects of 
David Cox with which we were all familiar; Cook and Mitchell 
in a seventh heaven, in raptures with the picturesque beauty of 
this most artistic locality. We soon got to work, Cook astonishing 
us all by his grasp of new subjects, and making the resident as 
well as the tourist artists stare with surprise to see what he did 
in out-door sketching. Here was no salt sea wave, no coast, 
nothing but what was new to him; but Cook felt his subjects at 
once. The pastoral meadows, the rocky streams, the bloom on the 
hills peculiar to Wales, all came naturally to him; he saw them, 
