always a mistake to try to create an opportunity to thrust yourself into any controversy in the hope that you can make an eloquent speech. The one fact which young Gladstone soon impressed upon the House of Commons was the fact that he would not intervene in a debate unless he had something to say. Thus from the very outset he made himself sure of the ear of the House. Everybody knew that he would not get up to talk for the sake of talking, and that when he had said all that he wanted to say he would wind up with a few effective sentences and then sit down. We have to take Mr. Gladstone's speeches in this early part of his Parliamentary career very much on trust. The reports in Hansard, the semi-official records of the House of Commons debates, give only leading men in the first person, and Gladstone had not at that time advanced to the dignity of the first person. So we read only that the honorable member for Newark said that he would not at that late hour of the sitting detain the House too long with the observations he had to make--and so on. gather, however, even from these

We can oblique

and colorless reports, that Gladstone's style was even then somewhat diffuse and rhetori cal, that it was usually very happy in its phrasing, that it was very fluent, and that the manner of the speaker was animated without being too dramatic. Mr. Gladstone, in fact, did not take the House of Commons by storm, and did not try to do anything of the kind. His great Parliamentary rival, Mr. Disraeli, did a few years later try to take the House by storm, and made a dismal failure of the attempt, and was thrown back consequently for many sessions in his Parliamentary career. One especial gift Mr. Gladstone very soon showed the House--his wonderful skill in the arrangement of figures. He came of a great commercial family, and he might be said to have been cradled in finance. To paraphrase Pope's famous line, he lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. had some early opportunities of showing his capacity for such work, and thus he soon recommended himself to the attention and the favor of Sir Robert Peel. Peel might be said in a certain sense to be a Gladstone without imagination. In later years Gladstone used to be called a pony Peel, so much was he thought to have borne a resemblance to the great free-trade MinisNow it is to the praise of Peel to liken him with his pupil Gladstone. So does perspective alter even in the practical life of Parliament.

ter.

He

[To be continued in the Magazine Number for February]

For Jove, whose common use enshrouds
His lightning fire in folded clouds,
Once now his thunder-steeds hath driven
And lightning-car through cloudless heaven.

Then wayward streams, and solid ground, Then Atlas from his farthest bound, Shake; aye, and Styx the tale can tell, And lowest depths of hateful hell.

T is less than twenty years since American women began the study of art as a profession. Before that time it was a fixed idea in the general mind that it was the duty of a "lady" to live in self-denying poverty, rather than to practice any industry or occupation for profit; and yet when I look back to that period, and even before it, I seem to see that the necessity existed as certainly as it does at present. It was as difficult then as now

for the father of a family to maintain the non-producing five which, according to statistics, are the average burden of the producer.

In those days the lucky or unlucky males of the family were carefully shaped and prepared for the world-grind at as early an age as possible; but the girls-no one had ever heard of a girl of good family making money. It is true that the giving of music lessons was a possible and respectable recourse in cases of what was appropriately characterized as genteel poverty; and perhaps it was an unconscious recognition of the need of help at the family oar, and a

wish to give it, that made every mother's daughter, of any degree of refinement, learn the piano. It was an inevitable part of the girl's education, even when musical ability was entirely wanting.

A few, a very few, women painted in water colors. That is, they painted flowers on cardboard, and fans, and satin screens; but these were for domestic enjoyment only, and if the family life failed at its source, and the man who was at the head of it died, nothing remained for the conservative women of the family but to hang like an incubus upon any man or men who were theirs by right of blood.

It was the universal acceptance of this interpretation of what was appropriate in woman's life that made it an invariable custom to provide a liberal education for sons only, and to equip them as completely as possible for the heavy demands which family life might make upon them. As the girls were to be maintained, instead of maintaining themselves and others, it was not considered necessary to prepare for their future otherwise than to make them

They were the most exact housekeepers, the daintiest of cooks, the most exquisite of needlewomen; but to have sold the preserves concocted with so much skill, or to have turned their exquisite needlework to profit, would have relegated them without question to the ranks of cooks and seamstresses.

Occasionally some one of them, in spite of her educational disadvantages, developed into a woman so superior as to be a friend and counselor to the thoroughly educated, college-trained man who was her father or husband or brother. Still, whether superior and charming, or inferior and still charming, if any one of them failed of her natural vocation as wife and mother, she did and must become an inevitable burden, making life hard for some overweighted

man, and doubly hard for her repining and idle self.

Of course I am speaking of the families of professional men and merchants living in villages and towns rather than in cities. In large cities there was always a probability or possibility of the head of the family securing a fortune amply sufficient to provide a maintenance for the women of his

family, and even to float them with dignity upon the sea of life; but the unmarried daughters of professional men living in the country were so great a contrast to the same class at present that it is amusing as well as interesting to follow out the reasons of differ

ence.

The greater part of the professional women of to-day are the daughters of professional men of narrow means, or of merchants who have not achieved fortune. They are well born and well bred, and come from homes distinguished by refinement and culture; and the multitude-for they are a multitude -has so persistently walked over and trodden down the prejudice against professions and Occupations for women that it is almost as natural to expect a girl who does not marry early to thing" as it is to expect the sons of a family to go into business, or prepare for a special career.

do some

Girls are being educated for much arduous and responsible work in life, and for many varieties of it; but most of all, perhaps, they are studying art. There are to-day thousands upon thousands of girl art students and women artists, where only a few years ago there was scarcely one.

I remember perfectly the woman who, forty years ago, loomed upon the feminine horizon as a painter-a painter of portraits as well as of compositions.

My first acquaintance with this lady's work was made somewhere in the fifties, at an exhibition of the Academy of Design,

which was held, I think, on Seventeenth Street, long before the present Academy, so soon to vanish from our sight, was built. The picture was a street scene-a gathering at a town pump. It was presumably a New York street pump, for they were not then, as now, in the far, far past, and could easily have been found as models in Hoboken, where the artist lived. The group of servants, waiting for the morning supply, was a picturesque and pleasing one, and I remember seeing two Academicians, Elliot, the portrait-painter-Charlie Elliot, as he was universally called-and H. Peters Gray, also a popular portrait-painter, commenting upon and praising it, with heads together, in front of the small canvas.

As far as I know, Mrs. Spencer was the only woman painter of the time at least the only one-oh, tremendous achievement! -who painted in oils. She was alone in her little day, and there was a long gap of

I

time, filled only by women flower-painters, who had by that time climbed to the use of oils, until Miss Lea, who afterward became Mrs. Lea-Merritt, came upon the scene. remember a full-length portrait of Admiral Farragut, placed in a window at Goupil's, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twentysecond Street, which, by reason of the prominence of the subject, and the fact that the portrait was painted by a woman, excited much attention. The Admiral was standing in the shrouds of a vessel, if that is what the rope-ladder which leads upward over the deck is called, and was, I think, holding a speaking-trumpet in his free hand. I remember that Mr. McEntee-that most appreciative of painters and generous of men-spoke of it as a work any artist might be proud of. Whether in the light of present accomplishment it could be as well praised, is more than I can say. However that may be, Miss Lea soon disap