James's Park upon a portly
personage with a star, taking an alfresco pinch of snuff after that
leisurely style in which a pinch of snuff should be taken, so as not to
endanger a lace cravat or a canary-coloured vest; where you may seat
yourself on a bench by Rosamond's Pond in company with a tremulous mask
who is evidently expecting the arrival of a "pretty fellow"; or happen
suddenly, in a secluded side-walk, upon a damsel in muslin and a dark
hat, who is hurriedly scrawling a _poulet_, not without obvious signs of
perturbation. But whatever the denizens of this country are doing, they
are always elegant and always graceful, always appropriately grouped
against their fitting background of high-ceiled rooms and striped
hangings, or among the urns and fish-tanks of their sombre-shrubbed
gardens. This is the land of STOTHARD.
In the adjoining country there is a larger sense of colour--a fuller
pulse of life. This is the region of delightful dogs and horses and
domestic animals of all sorts; of crimson-faced hosts and buxom
ale-wives; of the most winsome and black-eyed milkmaids and the most
devoted lovers and their lasses; of the most headlong and horn-blowing
huntsmen--a land where Madam Blaize forgathers with the impeccable
worthy who caused the death of the Mad Dog; where John Gilpin takes the
Babes in the Wood _en croupe_; and the bewitchingest Queen of Hearts
coquets the Great Panjandrum himself "with the little round button at
top"--a land, in short, of the most kindly and light-hearted fancies, of
the freshest and breeziest and healthiest types--which is the land of
CALDECOTT.
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