Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/58

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Walks in the Black Country

in the rainbow, and caught and fixed on canvas her sunniest gleams; and they would look so to the life, that a harvest field, flushed with the golden glory of the setting sun, seemed a living smile of her joy at the beauty of her own fair world. David Cox was born in Birmingham in 1793, and died here in 1859. He sleeps under Nature's graceful monuments in Harborne churchyard—the outspreading trees, that stretch forth their long arms and wave them to and fro over his quiet grave, and with the murmur of all their green leaves, now moved to mournful music by the soughs and sighs of the evening's breath, now touched with the thrill of the bell's voices in the old church tower, whisper their requiems over his last resting-place. He was one of the fathers of the water-colour school of art, and for many years his genius enriched and beautified the gallery of the Society in London with paintings that commanded universal admiration. Although the portraiture of Nature's face is different from the portraiture of human faces in this respect, that it changes little from year to year and century to century, whereas the human countenance is soon changed and soon disappears, never to be reproduced, still it is a delight to see the features that a landscape, we know well, presented to the artist half a century ago; to see one of Nature's sweetest smiles fifty years old still gleaming to the life on