canvas, as fresh as if it were mirrored in this very morning's dew; it is pleasant to see the wheatfield reaped in our childhood with half its golden grain waving before the bent reapers, and happy children among the sheaves behind, and happy birds on wing above, and all the scenery of the harvest, all but the voices of the men and birds, alive again as they lived on the extremest verge of our quickened memory. David Cox made truth poetical in the portraits of these rural sceneries of the seasons and of the rich and picturesque suburban farms, dells, and lanes of Harborne and other Birmingham vicinities. It was this truthfulness in poetry that distinguishes his best pieces, which none appreciated more highly than his nearest neighbours. Indeed, he was their Turner, and in many of their houses his local landscapes are valued as the works of one of the most eminent artists of the country. He was also the founder of a local school of artists, and had pupils among his neighbours. One of these a merchant, of assiduous business life up to eighty years of age, found time to cultivate and exercise a genius developed under the instruction of the great painter, and he made it a dying request to be buried as near as possible to his master: and their graves lie side by side under the shade of the same tree. Another pupil, resident at Harborne, Mr. Charles Burt, has attained to an eminence as an artist almost equal to that of Cox himself.
