A portrait was once sent to Brantwood of a dandy in a green coat of wonderful cut, supposed to represent him in his youth, but suggesting Lord Lytton's "Pelham" rather than the homespun-suited seer of Coniston.

"Did you ever wear a coat like that ?" I asked.

"I'm not so sure that I didn't," said he.
After that, they went to Scotland and the North of England for the summer, and more fine sketches were made, some of which hang now in his drawing-room, and compare not unfavourably with the Prouts beside them.
In firmness of line and fulness of insight they are masterly, and mark a rapid progress, all the more astonishing when it is recollected how little time could have been spared for practice.

The subjects are chiefly architectural--castles and churches and Gothic details--and one is not surprised to find him soon concerned with the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture.

"They were all reverends," says a letter of the time, "and wanted somebody to rouse them." Science, too, progressed this year.