something other than this; but this also is a great thing done. It is a chapter of history written in colours; a study which may remind us of Meinhold's great romances, though the author of "Sidonia the Sorceress " may stand higher as a writer than Leys as a painter. All the realistic detail is here, but not the vital bloom and breath of action which Meinhold had to give. Rigour of judicial accuracy might refuse to this work the praise of a noble picture; for to that the final imprint and seal of beauty is requisite; and this beauty, if a man's hand be but there to bestow it, may be wrought out of homely or heavenly faces, out of rare things or common, out of Titian's women or Rembrandt's. It is not the lack of prettiness which lowers the level of a picture. Here for imagination we have but intellect, for charm of form we have but force of thought. Too much also is matter of mere memory; thus the clerk writing is but a bastard brother of Holbein's Erasmus. Form and colour are vigorous, if hard also and heavy; and when all is said it must in the end be still accepted as a work of high and rare power after its own kind, and that no common kind, nor unworthy of studious admiration and grave thanksgiving.

I have compared Albert Moore to Théophile Gautier; I am tempted to compare Mr. Leslie to Hégésippe Moreau. The low melodious notes of his painting have the soft reserve of tone and still sweetness of touch which belong to the idyllic poet of the Voulzie. Sometimes he almost attains the gentle grace of the other's best versethough I hardly remember a picture of his as exquisite for music and meaning as the "Étrennes à la Fermière." His work of this year has much of tender beauty, especi

ally the picture called "Home News;" his portraits have always a pleasant and genuine quality of their own; and in the picture called "The Empty Sleeve," though trenching somewhat nearly on the obvious and facile ground of family feeling and domestic exhibition, there is enough of truth and grace visible to keep it up on the proper level of art.

The "Evening Hymn" of Mr. Mason is in my mind the finest I have seen of his works, admirable beyond all where all are admirable. A row of girls, broken in rank here and there, stand and sing on a rough green rise of broken ground; behind them is a wild spare copse, beyond it a sunset of steady and sombre fire stains red with its sunken rays the long low space of sky; above this broad band of heavy colour the light is fitful and pale. The raised faces and opening mouths of the singers are as graceful as those carved by Della Robbia or Donatello in their choral groups; nothing visible of gape or strain, yet the action of song is made sensible. Their fine features are not over fine; they have all an air of the fields and the common country, which is confirmed in the figures, cast in a somewhat ruder mould, of the two young peasants who stand listening. One girl stands off a little from the rest, conning the text with eyes set fast upon her open book; the rest sing freely at large; the middle group of three girls is most noble and exquisite. Rich at once and grave in the colour, stately and sweet in the composition, this picture is a model of happy and majestic temperance.

Mr.Walker's picture of "Vagrants" has more of actual beauty than his "Bathers" of last year; more of brilliant

skill and swift sharp talent it can hardly have. The low marsh with its cold lights of grey glittering waters here and there; the stunted brushwood, the late and pale sky; the figures gathering about the kindling fire, sad and wild and worn and untameable; the one stately shape of a girl standing erect, her passionate beautiful face seen across the smoke of the scant fuel; all these are wrought with such appearance of ease and security and speed of touch, that the whole seems almost a feat of mere skill rather than a grave sample of work; but in effect it is no such slight thing.

In Mr. Armstrong's "Daffodils" there is a still sobriety of beauty, a quiet justice and a fine gravity of manner, far unlike the flash and flare of obtrusive cleverness which vexes us so often in English work of this kind. The sombre sweetness of a coming twilight is poured upon hill and field; only the yellow flowers wreathed about the child's hat or held by the boy kneeling on the stile relieve the tender tone of sunless daylight with soft and tempered colour. The action of the figures has all the grace of simple truth and childlike nature.

"The Exiled Jacobite" of Mr. Lidderdale is full of the noble sadness of the subject, excellent also as a genuine picture, a work of composed harmony. The noble worn face of the old man, stamped with the sacred seal of patience and pain, looks seaward over the discoloured stonework of the low wall, beyond the dull grey roofs of a low-lying town that slope to the foreign shore. His eyes are not upon the dusky down sweeping up behind, the rough quaint houses and deep hollow, veiled all and blue with the misty late air; they are set, sad and strong,

upon things they shall never see indeed again. From the whole figure the spirit of the old song speaks:

"Now all is done that man can do,

And all is done in vain."

The pathos of the picture is masculine and plain as truth; the painter might have written under it the simple first words of the same most noble song:

"It was a' for our rightful king."

Mr. Poynter's picture of "The Catapult" has an admirable energy of thought and handiwork; the force and weight of faculty shown in it would be worthy remark if the result were less excellent. Excellent of its kind it is, but not delightful; surprise and esteem it provokes, but not the glad gratitude with which we should welcome all great work. The labouring figures and the monstrous engine are worthy of wonder and praise; but there is a want on the whole of beauty, a want in detail of interest. The painter's "Israel in Egypt" had more of both qualities, though there is this year a visible growth of power; it left upon our eyes a keen impression of gorgeous light and cruelty and splendour and suffering ; it had more room for the rival effects at once of fine art and of casual sentiment.

The two pictures of Mr. Hughes show all his inevitable grace and tender way of work; they are full of gentle colour and soft significance. The smaller is to me the sweeter sample; but both are noticeable for their clear soft purity and bright delicacy of thought and touch. In the larger picture the bird singing on the sill, delicious as it would be anywhere, has here a double charm.

There is a genuine force and a quaint beauty in Mr. Houghton's picture-portrait it can hardly be called -of a gentleman in his laboratory. His other picture, of a boy lifting up a younger child to smell a rose on the tree, while a kitten bounds at his feet, is admirable for its plain direct grace of manner.

The head of a priest by Mr. Burgess has a clear air of truth and strength; its Spanish manner recalls the style of Phillip, whom the painter, it seems, has sought to emulate. Among the few portraits worth a look or a word, is that of Mrs. Birket Foster by Mr. Orchardson; though the showy simplicity be something of a knack, and the painting of woodwork and drapery rather a trick of trade acquired than a test of accomplished power, the work is so well done and the action so plain and good as to bear and to reward a second look.

The show of this year is noticeably barren in landscape. Nothing is here of Inchbold, nothing of Anthony. The time which can bring forth but two such men should have also brought forth men capable to judge them and to enjoy. Even here however the field is not all sterile : there are two studies of sea by Mr. H. Moore, worthy to redeem the whole waste of a year. One of these shows an ebbing tide before the squall comes up; the soft low tumult of washing waves, not yet beaten into storm and foam, but weltering and whitening under cloud and wind, will soon gather power and passion; as yet there is some broken and pallid sunlight flung over it by faint flashes, which serve but to show the deepening trouble and quickening turmoil of reluctant waters. The shifting and subtle colours of the surging sea and grey blowing sky

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