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swamp is vocal with the rollicking notes of the crow-blackbird and redwing, and marsh-hawks are again coursing low over the meadows in search of mice and the awakened frogs.

Such vernal rejoicing is often interrupted, nevertheless, by an ice-storm-one of the most disagreeable incidents of this month of many moods. A day of rain will come when the temperature is low enough to freeze most of the water as it falls, and the result is that the ground, the windward side of buildings, fences, tree-trunks, and all other exposed objects, are soon perfectly glazed, and each leafless twig is incased in ice. When, as frequently happens, such a day and night are succeeded by a clear morning, and the bright but feeble sunlight is reflected from thousands of burnished, crackling twigs, as from a forest of glass, the scene is a very striking and beautiful one; but the weight of the accumulated ice often causes vast damage to shade and orchard trees-one of Nature's rudest methods of pruning.

Such ice-storms occasionally happen as late as the last week of March, by which time all animal life has begun to stir about and many birds have arrived, so that widespread distress and death are likely to follow. The little birds can usually shelter themselves, though migrating hosts sometimes become so soaked and chilled in such storms that they are unable to fly, tumble helpless to the ground, and may be caught in the hands. The larger birds fare even worse. Credible instances have come to my knowledge of eagles and swans -the strongest of land and aquatic birds respectively becoming so plumage-soaked and loaded with ice that they could not spread their wings or rise into the air, and have thus suffered the humiliation of being taken alive or knocked over with sticks.

I recall one such season when a tempest of freezing rain had raged for thirty-six hours, though it was quite time for winter's savagery to cease, even in stern New England.

Next morning it was hard times among the wild animals in the grove, and worse out in the country fields. Seeds and buds were locked in icy chests, and the insect stores, packed away for safe keeping under the bark and in various crannies, were sealed beyond the reach of the most persistent beaks. The field-mice found that

their tunnels, bored just beneath the leaves while the snow covered them, were battered down; and the squirrels dared not venture along their slippery runways in the tree-tops, nor risk a leap from branch to branch.

The house at that time was surrounded with big trees, relics of ancient woods now almost engulfed in the growing town ; these were inhabited by a large colony of gray squirrels, besides a few red ones. I could see, here and there, a head poked inquiringly out of a hole, or peering from the door of one of the little cabins lodged among the oak limbs; but not a single furry acrobat would trust himself to those glassy twigs, and I thought I could detect an anxious expression in their big black eyes, as if they wondered how they were going to get any breakfast.

The squirrels had to endure their fast, but for the birds something might be done. So we cracked a handful of nuts, broke some corn into grains, and threw these and the table-crumbs out by the door. I had actually seen no birds about, save a band of bluejays and a group of English sparrows which had dwelt in the wood-pile all winter. But in a very few minutes a plentiful company came to our table, including some whose presence I had not noted before, evidently newcomers. There were song-sparrows with black ephods; the big-headed whitethroats, and their brethren with the jaunty caps of black and white; the chestnutcrowned tree-sparrows; a goldfinch, still wearing his dull winter suit; a whole host of snowbirds, in white waistcoats with ivory bills and pink stockings; nuthatches, chickadees, and, most beautiful of all, the purple finch.

This last is one of our most confiding and prettiest birds. The male looks as though he had plunged his crested head deep into the juice of dead-ripe strawberries, the rich syrup of which had trickled down his breast, staining rosily the white feathers, and had poured over his back into a pool near his tail.

How did all these little beggars learn so quickly that alms had been spread for them? Where had they been hiding? Whither did they disappear next day, when the sun had come out, the ice had melted, and not a bird visited my lunchcounter?

T

By Elbert Francis Baldwin

HE recent visits of M. CarolusDuran to America have served both to extend his deserved popularity and also to emphasize the distinctive art of which he is a master. His aim and style, followed by French portraitpainters, may be called the objective. The beautiful is sought and realized for the beautiful alone: the goal is art for art's sake. A Frenchman does not preach a moral sermon from it; he does not tear the soul out of art, as do the subjective artists. He finds his whole duty and delight in the reproduction of nature by means of his own individual technique. In this M. Carolus-Duran is as good an example as any. His drawing is carefully bold, his brush-handling unlabored; above all, his color is wonderfully vigorous and vivid. Take the Velasquez-like child, "Beppino," for instance. One of this painter's best works is the portrait of his wife. France has honored itself by the acquisition of this exquisite picture, and it now hangs in the National Gallery of the Luxembourg, near the artist's equally celebrated" Lilia." In the Museum catalogue it is called “La Dame au Gant," as Madame Carolus-Duran is pulling off a glove from her left hand. The other glove has already fallen on the floor. She has apparently just come in; she has not yet removed her hat. The figure is fulllength, and is painted as if walking across a room, the head being lightly turned and the eyes glancing as if for an instant at the spectator. Nothing could be more graceful than this pose, and the whole composition is as rare a union as any of the vivacious and the restful. In color it is certainly a change to a quieter symphony from the painter's usual boldness of tone. So specially gorgeous, indeed, is the color in most of his pictures that it has become his chief distinguishing characteristic. His canvases gleam with such a bewildering dazzlement of the shades of sapphires, rubies, topazes, opals, amethysts, that we fancy his own mind must itself be a constantly changing kaleidoscope. Yet his portraits are never ephemeral or trivial. They are lovely physical

creations--and there they stop. Delicious as is their eye-delight, let us be satisfied with it. Their creator has not always been fortunate in his subjects; for the most part they seem self-conscious; they are thinking about the pose. This rather reacts upon the artist himself, and we begin to fancy him, too, as a bit self-conscious and self-complacent. His studies, however, are so frank, sincere, and altogether charming-why does he not go a step further, and give them a bit of poetry? Is he only a man with a marvelously quick and sure eye for every æsthetic effect? Is he only an artist with individual style a-plenty, but nothing more? We end by looking at the unduly accentuated and glowing gowns and curtains and embroideries in his portraits rather than at the heads themselves. At the same time, all this elegant environment is a relief from the entire literalness which includes no emphasis on beauty, nor even the quest for it.

If M. Carolus-Duran has been more successful with his portraits of women and children than with those of men, the older and more eminent M. Léon Bonnat has been more successful with men than with women, and has produced noteworthy studies of the most distinguished French personalities-Thiers, Dumas, Jules Ferry, Jules Grévy, Pasteur, Carnot, Cogniet, Aimé Millet, Cardinal Lavigerie-a collection as notable for historic value as for artistic worth. M. Bonnat does more than mere brush-work; he instructs the world by word also, for he is the honored Professor of Painting at the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts. His pupils admire the fine, intelligent head-as good a subject for painting as any-with its white hair and beard, its grave and serious expression, above all the self-poise of one who knows well what he is talking about. Carolus-Duran has also had much success as a teacher. Strangely enough, the prodigal colorist comes from the north-he was born at Lille in 1837; while M. Bonnat, who is more famous for his drawing than his color, comes from the warmer south--he was born at Bayonne in 1833,

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For forty years he has not failed to send a canvas to the annual Salon exhibition. The State has secured three of his best portraits for the Luxembourg-namely, those of Léon Cogniet, his master and predecessor in Beaux-Arts membership; of Aimé Millet, the sculptor; and, most striking of all, of Cardinal Lavigerie, late Primate of Algeria.

M. Bonnat brings to his later portraiture the strength of his success in genre and historical scenes and in figure pieces. His drawing is grandly forcible, but at times his color strikes one as being somewhat raw, especially just after the sight of one of M. Carolus-Duran's portraits. M. Bonnat's emphasis on light and shade makes his subject stand well out from the canvas. His works are minutely studied, and he has a thorough mastery of detail, thus differing from some other realists. Few portrait-painters have ever had greater facility for crystallizing all sorts of physiognomy, and the Bonnat characterizations always have as much veracity as force. Like that of Herr von Lenbach, his genius is noticeable quite as much in the treatment of hands as heads.

The qualities which unite these French realists are a genuinely Gallic gayety, vivacity, acuteness, harmony, proper perspective and proportion, objectivity. No matter how grave and reverend the Signorsubject, these distinctively French qualities are evident. Take, if you please, the Lavigerie portrait. It is that of a Roman Catholic prelate in his robes of state. He sits there before you, comfortably, solidly, but not stolidly; first of all a great physical object. He looks at you frankly, laughingly, even jokingly; but have a care: it is a great ecclesiastic who jokes; and now you seem to see a sterner gaze out of eyes environed by expressive wrinkles, and you begin to feel the coldness of steel armor underneath the warm robes. The Primate's substantial self is clothed in black and tied in, so to speak, by a wide sash of red silk. On either side falls his

Cardinal's purple gown. His right hand, on one of the fingers of which gleams a ruby, rests on the arm of his chair and holds a pen; the left hand is lying on his breast near a gold crucifix. The hands are masterly, yet somehow they suggest paws. The intelligent yet bull-like head; the sensitive nose; the splendid white, mane

like beard; the rather sardonic yet hearty expression-all this combination of the animal in one of the best men and keenest minds would be enough for most portraiture. The painter, however, has added various accessories: an Arabic inscription above the Primate's head, and a double cross against the wall; some huge volumes lie on the ground, and there is a table covered with papers and a map of Africa, upon which rests the Cardinal's hat. Impressive as is this portrait, its image on the mind is not entirely a lasting one. The work has been wrought in masterly style; but of what permanent good the style without some soul?

If English portrait-painters are not the equals of the French in the above technical excellences (which are also French national traits), no more can they repress in art their own national simplicity, somberness, self-sufficiency, nobleness. To the world at large, in its search for beauty, English portraits may not be so acceptable as French, but they appeal more to the individual; they are generally subjective rather than objective; they have more poetry and less prose; they give greater play to the imagination; in short, they are more spiritual.

If, however, there is any painter bridging the gulf which separates the arts of France and England as emphatically as the Channel separates the land, such a man may be found in Professor Hubert X Herkomer. Four decades ago, a pale, delicate child, about ten years old, came to England. His parents had already taken him to America from his birthplace near Landsberg in Bavaria, for the uprisings in '48 had made it impossible for them to live longer in the Fatherland. The expected fortune had not been found in the New World; its streets were not paved with gold, even though the mines of California had just been discovered. Hubert's father and uncle, carpenters of artistic instinct and intelligence, were only able to keep their heads above water; but already the boy was showing marks of genius, and his father must make more than a mere livelihood in order to give his son needed advantages. If America was a disappointment, perhaps England would not be; and the family set sail for Europe. Thus to British glory we lost one who would have stood in the

very front of our artist-ranks. In later years the son's success was ample compensation for his parents' endeavors, but he never allowed his onward strides to separate him from them. He provided a home and workshop for his father and uncle in his own fine castle of "Lululund" at Bushey, which the great prices he receives for his portraits enabled him to build. This splendid residence represents the actual personal decoration of the two old men as well as of the owner himself. The massive central keep is called "Mother's Tower;" while on the bank of the river Lech in Bavaria, near the old home, the filial artist has erected another memorial tower. Professor Herkomer's mother was a talented musician; and so marked is his own musical ability that, if he had not devoted himself mostly to becoming a great painter, he might have become notable in another field. As it is, he has composed works of no mean merit; he is an accomplished virtuoso and conductor. More than any other artist, indeed, he is a versatile modern Leonardo; he is painter, sculptor, architect, poet, musician, actor, manager, machinist, decorator, director, and professor. This last dignity, the appointment to the Slade Professorship at Oxford, succeeding Mr. Ruskin, is nevertheless no more highly prized than is his directorship of the school at Bushey, where many persons have established themselves, studying and working under his direction and breathing a veritable art-atmosphere. Here he gives active and practical expression to his Oxford lectures. The students now form quite a community by them selves, and Professor Herkomer has created a village of artistically planned cottages for them near his own home.

The first thing that strikes us in the Herkomer portraits is the apparent approach of the figures from the canvas. We do not go to them, they come to us. One reason for this is the nakedness of the backgrounds. Not only is there an entire absence of accessories; there is not even a foundation-color rich enough to attach itself to those of the figures and detract from them.

The second thing we note is the muscular repose of the subject. It is never a merely idle repose. Head, shoulders, arms, neck, bust, figure, all speak, not only of British blood and brawn, of virility,

solidity, tenacity, but also of that eternal "unhasting, unresting" which has made. England great. Thus the poses of his subjects are singularly natural-so natural, indeed, and so assured, as sometimes even to suggest Hals himself. Higher praise than this there can hardly be. That great Dutchman, whose only rival was Rembrandt, was not excelled even by the painter of the "Night Watch" in sureness of touch. In drawing, brush-handling, coloring, Mr. Herkomer seems equally at home; and he approaches the French because his technique, especially in color, is so admirable. On the other hand, in the individuality of his portraits, and in their expression of inner, more intimate life, he is English indeed.

The entire contrast to French objectivity, however, is found in the works of the octogenarian, George Frederick Watts, one of the most stimulating personalities of this or any age. He was never a studio student, in the sense of absorbing much from other men's teaching or other men's works, and he remains a somewhat inferior technician. He was independent from the start in methods as in aims. He was determined that his work, whether good or bad, should at least be as permanent as he could make it. Accordingly, he would not weaken its durability by any old-fashioned mixing of colors. He laid them on side by side whenever he wished a union of two shades. His work thus often seems spotty, muddy, though sometimes he produces a lambent color only to be compared to a dusty opal. His color has long been the target of critics, who also reproach him with drawing only as he paints. Nor do they fail to add that the abstract conceptions of his symbolic canvases enter at times into his portraits. There is a vagueness which distresses those used to a Bonnat decision and precision of line and color.

While the young Watts was thus persistently following out his own bent in painting, he was even more noteworthy in proclaiming a new and altruistic philosophy and practice. He was one of the first to give effect to that splendid socialism, as far removed from the extremes of collectivism as from the smug bigotry of the epoch when a new John the Baptist began preaching and painting in the wilderness. With the late William Morris,

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