“Your MS. arrived duly and in safety on Saturday; but I was so
occupied all the day that I had not a moment to spare even to write a line to you. I
went out early to take a glimpse of the Horticultural Garden Show, and paid half-a-crown
to see it in a gradual state of demolition: all that was best already gone, and the rest
in a state of removal. The ‘pitcher tree’ (do you know it?) was the only
thing curious that I had not seen a good specimen of before. That is eminently curious.
But the con-
| 256 | PAINTINGS BY REINSTADT. |
“After walking till I was tired, and abusing what remained of
the Exhibition, because there was so little left to look at, I went to a shop in the
Haymarket, next door to the theatre, to see a very beautiful landscape which had been
sent over from America. It is a large view of a scene in the Rocky Mountains, and is
well nigh the finest landscape I have ever seen. I wish you had been with me! It is by a
man named Reinstadt. He’s a German, living and educated in
America; and if he can paint more as good pictures as this is, he is the first
landscape-painter of our time. My hand is swollen, but free from pain, and I still have
no power of voice. So
| RULES FOR HEALTH. | 257 |
“Have you read ‘the Spanish Gipsy’—a poem by the author of ‘Adam Bede?’ If you have not, do! It is really very good; and considering that it is a nineteenth century production, almost intelligible throughout. I have read nothing so like English for many a day.”
