His Royal Highness Prince Albert, who has occasionally displayed a
knowledge and much liking for the Fine Arts, some time since expressed an
intimation to display his ability in sketching landscape from nature. The
Royal Academicians immediately assembled _en masse_; and as they wisely
imagined that it would be impolitic in them to let an opportunity slip of
not being the very foremost in the direction of matters connected with
royalty and their profession, offered, or rather thrust forward, their
services to arrange the landscape according to the established rules of art
laid down by this self-elected body of the professors of the beauties of
nature. St. James's-park, within the enclosure, having been hinted as the
nearest and most suitable spot for the royal essay, the Academicians were
in active service at an early hour of the appointed day: some busied
themselves in making foreground objects, by pulling down trees and heaping
stones together from the neighbouring macadamized stores; others were most
fancifully spotting the trees with whitewash and other mixtures, in
imitation of moss and lichens. The classical Howard was awfully industrious
in grouping some swans, together with several kind-hearted ladies from the
adjoining purlieus of Tothill-street, who had been most willingly secured
as models for water-nymphs. The most rabidly-engaged gentleman was Turner,
who, despite the remonstrances of his colleagues upon the expense attendant
upon his whimsical notions, would persist in making the grass more natural
by emptying large buckets of treacle and mustard about the ground. Another
old gentleman, whose name we cannot at this moment call to recollection,
spent the whole of his time in placing "a little man a-fishing," that
having been for many years his fixed belief as the only illustration of the
pastoral and picturesque. In the meantime, to their utter disappointment,
however, his Royal Highness quietly strolled with his sketch-book into
another quarter.
* * * * *