thing in his favour was, that in either case, the very definite, and not
very complex types surrendered themselves readily to artistic
embodiment. "It almost illustrated itself,"--he told an interviewer
concerning _Cranford_; "the characters were so exquisitely and
distinctly realised." Every one has known some like them; and the
delightful Knutsford ladies (for "Cranford" was "Knutsford"), the
"Boz"--loving Captain Brown and Mr. Holbrook, Peter and his father, and
even Martha the maid, with their _mise en scene_ of card-tables and
crackle-china, and pattens and reticules, are part of the memories of
our childhood. The same may be said of _Our Village_, except that the
breath of Nature blows more freely through it than through the quiet
Cheshire market-town; and there is a larger preponderance of those
"charming glimpses of rural life" of which Lady Ritchie speaks
admiringly in her sympathetic preface. And with regard to the "bits of
scenery"--as Mr. Thomson himself calls them--it may be noted that one of
the Manchester papers, speaking of _Cranford_, praised the artist's
intimate knowledge of the locality,--a locality he had never seen. Most
of his backgrounds were from sketches made on Wimbledon Common, near
which--until he moved for a space to the ancient Cinque Port of Seaford
in Sussex--he lived for the first years of his London life.

In strict order of time, Mr. Thomson's next important effort should have
preceded the books of Miss Mitford and Mrs. Gaskell. The novels of Jane
Austen--to which we now come--if not the artist's high-water mark, are
certainly remarkable as a _tour de force_. To contrive some forty page
illustrations for each of Miss Austen's admirable, but--from an
illustrator's standpoint--not very palpitating productions,--with a
scene usually confined to the dining-room or parlour,--with next to no
animals, and with rare opportunities for landscape accessory,--was an
"adventure"--in Cervantic phrase--which might well have given pause to a