This book makes a wider appeal, written as it is by a woman whose career, apart from her art, has been varied and adventurous, who has traveled widely and associated, not only with the masters of her craft but with the great and eminent in many fields…In this age of insistent ugliness, when the term “realism” is used to cloak every form of grossness and degeneracy, it is a privilege to commune with one who speaks of her “experiences of the world's loveliness” and describes herself as “full of interest in mankind.” These two phrases, taken at random from the opening pages of “From Sketch Book and Diary,” seem to me eminently characteristic of Lady Butler and her work. She is a worshipper of Beauty in its spiritual as well as its concrete form, and all her life she has envisaged mankind in its nobler aspect.
