architectural scraps, he urged him to devote himself especially to that line, and not to cultivate landscape and figure drawing. Boats Samuel ever delighted in, and sketched them excellently.
"Thenceforth," to quote Ruskin, "Prout devoted himself to ivy-mantled bridges, mossy water-mills, and rock-built cottages."
But he knew nothing of perspective, and his drawings were sadly inaccurate in this respect. He himself wrote in after years, as the result of his own experience: "Perspective is generally considered a dry and distasteful study, and a prejudice exists with many against everything like geometrical drawings; but without a knowledge of its rules no object can be properly delineated, and their application alone prevents absurdities and secures symmetry and truth."
The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe took notice of the intelligent, sensitive boy, and detected that there was talent in him. He invited him to Mount Edgcumbe House to see and examine for himself the paintings and pictures there; and the Earl became so interested in the young artist, and would have him so frequently with him, that Samuel at last acquired the nickname of "the Earl's puppy dog."
Samuel Prout was also passionately fond of music, and learned to play on the organ, the piano, and the flute. In early days, when not out sketching by himself or with Dr. Bidlake or Haydon, he would steal to St. Andrew's to play the organ, at that time the only organ in the town.
Meanwhile, on every sunny day, when the soft south wind breathed, Samuel, pencil and sketch-book in hand, strayed about the villages round Plymouth, and made his sketches, not of bold architectural structures, but of cottages and little bits of street scenery. He
