iled to sustain him between the
recurrences even of his most acute suffering; and the pursuit of his
most beloved Art became every year more determined and independent. The
first beginnings in landscape study were made in happy truant
excursions, now fondly remembered, with the painter Haydon, then also a
youth. This companionship was probably rather cemented by the energy
than the delicacy of Haydon's sympathies. The two boys were directly
opposed in their habits of application and modes of study. Prout
unremitting in diligence, patient in observation, devoted in copying
what he loved in nature, never working except with his model before
him; Haydon restless, ambitious, and fiery; exceedingly imaginative,
never captivated with simple truth, nor using his pencil on the spot,
but trusting always to his powers of memory. The fates of the two youths
were inevitably fixed by their opposite characters. The humble student
became the originator of a new School of Art, and one of the most
popular painters of his age. The self-trust of the wanderer in the
wilderness of his fancy betrayed him into the extravagances, and
deserted him in the suffering, with which his name must remain sadly,
but not unjustly, associated.

140. There was, however, little in the sketches made by Prout at this
period to indicate the presence of dormant power. Common prints, at a
period when engraving was in the lowest state of decline, were the only
guides which the youth could obtain; and his style, in endeavoring to
copy these, became cramped and mannered; but the unremitting sketching
from nature saved him. Whole days, from dawn till night, were devoted to
the study of the peculiar objects of his early interest, the ivy-mantled
bridges, mossy water-mills, and rock-built cottages, which characterize
the valley scenery of Devon. In spite of every disadvantage, the strong
love of truth, and the instinctive perception of the chief points of
shade and characters of form on which his favorite effects mainly
depended, enabled him not only to obtain an accumulated store of
memoranda, afterwards valuable, but to publish several elementary works
which obtained extensive and deserved circulation, and to which many
artists, now high in reputation, have kindly and frankly confessed their
early obligations.

141. At that period the art of water-color drawing was little understood
at Plymouth, and practiced only by Payne, then an engineer in the
citadel. Though