Eve's daughters have degenerated into-(Yes, my reverend friend, I can believe in "a fall," very devoutly, I assure you),and breathe the fresh air of this Dorsetshire coast as one might have seen it a thousand years before young ladyism was invented. Mr. Millais has painted her, you see, con amore. He has thrown all his soul into his work. "Is it true that it is a portrait?" It is said that a daughter of Mr. Scott Russell sat to the painter: do you notice that empty oyster shell in the corner? It is a trifle, but suggestive. Is the cliff painted so carefully as it should be ?" Well, I dare say the painter was somewhat hurried. It was toward the end of April, and the weather was unfavourable when he was painting it. " "Widow's Bravo, Toro!" we will look at on our next visit. Prayer," by Mr. Leighton, and his "Helen of Troy," you have noticed, and so you may gladden yourselves with another of Mr. Hughes'. From family groups we may generally turn, but this of Mrs. Leathart and children is an exception. Pure, graceful womanhood, and beautiful, rejoicing childhood, Mr. Hughes' whole soul feels the charm of, and his pictures show it. Those pigeons, too, are alive. "A Hastings Trawler going Out" (No. 314) promises well. How much better that sea is than Mr. Lee's that we noticed before. Constance shall look at "Fact and Fancy" too, if she wishes, when I have left you; but let me now just put you before a very clever picture of Mr. Mark's. Don't turn to the catalogue, but look well at the picture, and tell me what it is all about. You can't? See the marvellous expression there is in every one of the countenances of that group; why you could write the life of each of them. Give it up? Well, then "Hark! hark! the dogs do bark! The beggars are coming to town." And now to the West room. I see the eye goes to No. 359, "Gentle Spring," by F. Sandys. There is something very pleasant in parts of it, but as a whole it is too artificial, a mere literal rendering of the pretty sonnet that is given entire in the catalogue. Let us have Spring by all means, but a symbolic Spring we have got beyond. About "The Lady of the Tooti-Nainch," No. 360, there is too much vulgar voluptuousness to be redeemed by the undoubted skill in colour and treatment which Mr. Prinsep displays. His "Flight of Jane Shore" is better. And, as a pleasant contrast, let us go to Mr. Millais' 391. "O swallow, flying from the golden woods, Fly to her and pipe, and woo her, and make her mine, If a man has no soul, no poetry, and no love in him, he may call this a young lady leaning on a drawing-room chair, with a swallow propping itself by its tail at the window, but I think you will agree that the painter has no need to apologize to the poet for borrowing these lines from "The Princess" as the motto for the picture. Perhaps it is scarcely fair to Mr. Solomon to take you directly to his clever but painful picture (431), with the significant "Habet" as its title in the catalogue; but the inscription on the frame also tells the story. A group of Roman ladies, with attendants, looking at the horrible butchery going on in the arena of the Coliseum. Whether a furious lion is mangling some Christian maiden, or whatever the precise deed of blood may be, which we see not, those faces show great power of expression in the artist. Perhaps the picture is too repulsive for art to honour highly, but if such a lady as that central one is to be painted at all, Mr. Solomon has painted her to the life. Long unrestrained indulgence has made her indolent and sated soul harder than adamant. She is not feasting her eyes on blood, but, with intensest quietness is feeding. As the leech, silently and without a sign, gorges itself, so she. Mr. Solomon is a very young man, but his picture reveals great power; let us wish him a happier subject next year. And now let me take you to a very charming little thing, but without any pretension, Mr. Archer's "Old Maid," No. 452. "Maggie, you're cheating." And when you have sufficiently relished this pretty scene, come into the North room to another of Mr. Millais's. Esther (No.522). Perhaps it is not very obvious why this picture should be so designated, as it is not altogether easy to accept this lady as the high-souled and beautiful Jewess that so deservedly ranks among the foremost heroines of Hebrew history. But the picture is precious chiefly as a bold and successful piece of colouring, while, if you look carefully, you may not improbably, after all, detect in the countenance and the whole bearing of the queenly figure the full consciousness of the critical moment. And the colour and the tenderness will prepare you all the better to feel the force there is in his next, "The Parable of the Tares," with the text, "While men slept his enemy came, and sowed tares among the wheat," No. 528. "What a pity for such a striking and suggestive picture to be mixed up with a crowd of others that can only dissipate the mind; one would like in certain moods to ponder it by one's self." Aye, Mr. M. can paint "the enemy" with a vengeance. Has not he thrown all that was possible of cold-blooded and yet malignant love of mischief and evil into that vile old leering face? What a devilish chuckle over his cunning night-work! And you notice how the various parts of the picture that do not obtrude, yet subtly suggest more than it was desirable to express. The accessories are few but telling-those two horrible worms of the brood of vipers, and the hyæna, kindred to the man, and which you instinctively identify with him, serving to add still other features to his character, or to intensify those that are given. If now you turn back from this to "Esther" again, you will feel the preciousness of the pure colour there is in it-gold and white and purple. And Esther herself grows upon you after contemplating the terrific force of evil in "the enemy.' "What is this white girl that looks as if she were half washed out of life-No. 530 ?" Another of Mr. Whistler's-admired by some of his brother artists, but I question if any of the uninitiated in the technicalities of painting will see much to admire, although it is quite possible that on further acquaintance they may feel there is something pleasing in it, without knowing what that something is. "I have been reading the pretty lines that are given as the explanation, but I confess, when I turn from them to the picture, the painter seems less expressive than the poet." " Well, then, come away, and look in passing at Mr. Poynter's Faithful unto Death" (542), and then, if you will, at those "Angels at the Sepulchre ;" but do not stay, for my time is nearly up, and I want you to admire another of Arthur Hughes's, "The Mower," No. 554. There now, is not that a beautiful thing? Earth and sky, and grass and flowers, and man and child, yield up their most precious influences and breathe into him their own peculiar inspiration. If, now, you wanted to present me with a memorial of this morning's visit I should say you could not do better than cause this Mower to be transferred to But you see it is sold; the price was 350 guineas. Here is another of Mr. Whistler's, 569, "The Scarf." Observe it by all means. And though you have enjoyed all Hook's, yet by all means, stop a little at his "Seaweed Gatherer" again. He is truth itself, and this with him is something deeper than conscientiousness, it is his nature. He loves truth. What space there is there. Here is another of Mr. Mark's, 591, "Francis Feeble,-woman's tailor;" clever, and that of course; but I really must leave you, and can only beg you not to omit "Elijah's Sacrifice," No. 615. It is a very able picture-very able indeed; only I confess to just a little fear lest those bowed-down worshippers should ge caught by the flames. I wish I could push them a little further back; but this is a small matter. I am glad the picture is sold. An artist recommended it to the purchaser, who gives £150 for it. Well now, there is still Mr. Leslie's "Defence of Lathom House," No. 616, and you may assuredly congratulate the painter on having done justice to that noble lady who was the soul of the action. "Twas then they raised, 'mid sap and siege, At their she-captain's call; Who, miracle of womankind, And so, farewell. We have looked at all the best pictures here, I think-but only looked at them, remember; and, as you intend coming a second time, and a third even, you say, I will venture to hope that this morning may prove a preparation for the subsequent instruction and enjoyment. SIX HOURS WITH THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS. THE rowdy population of the quondam Confederate States include among their peculiur institutions a mode of fighting out “a difficulty" which may be regarded as the reductio ad absurdam of duelling. The combatants, armed with loaded revolvers, are placed in a room from which all light has been excluded. Being in total darkness, they are unable to aim with certainty, and can only fire at random. They hence run no small risk of shooting friends instead of foes, or, by the rebound of their own bullet from a blank wall, may commit suicide when they mean to commit murder. The Anthropologists are undoubtedly regarded as rowdies and rebels by the other learned and scientific societies of the day, and their adjourned debate on Missions was an admirable specimen of fighting a duel in, the dark. Each disputant, with the exception of the Rev. W. Arthur, with the best intention to hit somebody, either fired into the air, wounded a friend, or committed logical felo-de-se. Dr. Colenso, who was expected to discourse on Missions, read a paper two hours long, the greater part of which was an attack on Canon McNiele, the Record, and the Bishop of Capetown. Mr. Winwood Reade congratulated the meeting and the Bishop of Natal that for the first time in their experience a clergyman had attended the meeting of a scientific society and spoken the truth. Mr. Dunbar Heath, until recently a beneficed clergyman in the Isle of Wight, prophesied the advent of an anthropological millennium, in which the inferior races would either have been exterminated, or by marriage and Darwinian development would have become assimilated to Europeans; so that there would no longer be black or white, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, but all would be one-in a sense not that which the Apostle intended. Dr. Irons expounded High Church doctrines, maintaining that Missions to the Heathen had failed, and must fail, so long as they based their proceedings on a book instead of on the true Church, and translated the Bible instead of administering the sacraments. Mr. Bendyshe agreed with Dr. Irons that Missions to the Heathen had failed, but differed from him as to the cause of failure, which he held to be the publicity in which modern missionaries lived: so many eyes were upon them that they could not tell lies and invent fictions as the Apostles and all successful missionaries have done! To this heterogeneous jumble of arguments add the constant interruptions of speakers by those who had preceded them, complaining of misrepresentation, the loudly expressed assent or dissent of the very crowded meeting, the vain attempts of the Chairman to maintain order and compel the disputants to come to the point at issue or to keep to it, and it may readily be believed that our illustration of a rowdy duel in Alabama is no exaggeration. Dr. Colenso's lengthened address claims special attention. It was expected that a prelate who had enjoyed such admirable opportunities of testing the value of missionary labour would have stated facts which had an important bearing upon the question at issue. This, however, he shirked. The specific object of the meeting, which was to enquire whether Missions to the Heathen had been beneficial or the reverse, he almost entirely evaded. In a few sentences he assumed that they had been successful, and then addressed himself firstly, to prove that his orthodox assailants were bad theologians and worse logicians, and secondly to give reasons why the success of Missions had been so infinitessimally small. Of these points the first was of course entirely irrelevant. Whatever clap-trap Dr. McNeile may have talked at Exeter Hall, what gall and bitterness the Record may have infused into its articles, what tyranny Dr. Gray may have attempted at Capetown and Natal, how far the Athanasian Creed is incredible and mischievous, might be very fair questions to discuss at fitting times and places, but what had the Anthropologists to do with them? Of course the Christian people present |