3-070-550 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Happy Days, 1881. 'Will not these girls say so, when they look back through the years of womanhood to which they are but now looking forward, and remember the summer holiday they spent on the river, at the farther side of the Park, where two sisters, with a cousin who was their guest and bosom friend, were permitted by the Earl, their father, to rove about in playful freedom? There is no fear of their light weights upsetting the solid old punt; and if such mischance could befall them, it is well known that these young ladies have learnt to swim, like many of their sex, nowadays, in the upper classes of English society. The artist has contrived, by their respective attitudes, one with the punting-pole, another reaching the spray of hazel rather above her head, and the third, taking the sprig just plucked off, as she sits in unstudied repose, to show their graceful and healthy figures with a very natural and agreeable effect. The happiness of youth, and the loveliness of youth also, here meet our view'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.