"Thus it is that the works of the English landscape painters, until within a few years, are worthy of the places to which they are usually consigned; to ascend from the drawing-rooms of the mansions where they once were placed, to the apartments of the servants.. ..Gainsborough's sketches improved the general taste for English landscape composition; he taught the artists and amateurs how to select, and those who, before the appearance of his rude oaks and deep-rutted lanes, his rustic figures and moss-grown cottages and beams, were content to amuse themselves by making landscape compositions from prints, now left their painting-rooms to explore the scenery of their own country and to work from nature."