OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY. SECOND SERIES.-No. 46. JOHN LINNELL, SEN. THE tired townsman who is fortunate enough to spend a day in Linnell-land will probably emerge thence feeling much as if he had escaped awhile out of this tiresome nineteenth century, and had taken a refreshing bath in the atmosphere of a simple and idyllic life. John Linnell, who is known as one of our great and most distinctive landscape painters, is there to be found leading the life of a veritable patriarch. He is the soul and centre of the little colony which he has formed in the very heart of some of the most glorious scenery in England. His house (a fine building, the erection of which he superintended entirely) stands upon a hill which is clothed up to the very windows with beautiful woodland, save where a clearing here and there opens a grand prospect of the distant country. Each window frames a glorious picture; and the lovers of Mr. Linnell's landscape may find pleasure in imagining the veteran artist possessing continually before his eyes the wonderful new phases of beauty in earth and sky which every hour presents in that lovely spot, and never growing sated with the everlasting feast. Nature is Mr. Linnell's most intimate friend; it is his incessant and faithful study of her which makes his work of so high an order; and yet, when the wild spring wind comes rudely tossing through his woodland, and he exclaims, "Look! how the trees are enjoying themselves!" with positive sympathy for their delight in his voice and face, you cannot imagine for a moment but that Nature is as fresh to him as she ever was. He was born Mr. Linnell is not a child of the nineteenth century. near the British Museum, on the 16th June, 1792; and consequently, |