where he made many exquisite
sketches, brimful of humour and playful observation.
John Webber, R.A., in 1776, accompanied
Captain Cook on his third and last voyage, and
made a drawing of Cook's death, which Byrne and
Bartolozzi engraved. Two other Royal Academicians,
Thomas and William Daniell, made India
their sketching-ground, and in their great work on
"Oriental Scenery," published in 1808, they devoted
six volumes to a subject as fascinating as it was
unhackneyed. Many other artists, too, travelled
and made sketches for books, ranging from Girtin's
Paris Views to Turner's "Rivers of France," and
from Sir David Wilkie's Eastern sketches, reproduced
in lithography by Nash, to the familiar work of
Prout, Harding, J. F. Lewis, R.A., and Louis Haghe.

But these books on foreign travel, admirable
as they were, did not eclipse the many volumes on
British scenery and landscape antiquities. All
the ablest men among the earlier water-colour
painters--Hearne, Malton, Dayes, Girtin, Turner,
Francia, Havell, De Wint, David Cox, Cotman--made
topographical sketches for illustrations, and
lucky is he who "finds" their earliest efforts.
To-day, happily, there are signs of renewed life in
the old taste for picture books on the beauty and
romance of our own country. It is a taste that
invigorates, storing the mind with tonic memories
and filling the eyes with beautiful scenes and
colours; and we may be sure that it needs for its
gratification books which are easy to carry and to
read. The great folio of other days, as heavy
almost as a country squire, is rightly treasured in
the British Museum, like the remains of the Neolithic
Man discovered in Egypt.

The subject of the present book--the Border
Country--should set us thinking, not of one holiday,
but of many; and he who has once tasted the
Border's keen rich air will long to return both to
it and to the traditions that dwell among the vast
landscapes and in the ruined castles. The distinguished
connoisseur and painter whose sketches are here
reproduced, has gone back to the Border Country a
dozen times and more, always to find there a renewal
of his first pleasure and a host of fresh subjects,
that form a delightful connecting-link between each
to-day and the armoured epochs of the long ago.

And if the Border Country, with its enchanted
places and memories, delights a landscape-painter,
it is equally attractive to students of architecture,
to lovers of folk-lore and