for what he does. A loved wife may demand subsistence, a circle of helpless children may raise to him the supplicating hand for food. He may be driven to the act by the high mandate of imperative necessity," &c. &c. And a little farther on it is affirmed, that the libeller's victim, "if innocent, may look like Anaxagoras to the heavens, but must feel that the whole earth," &c. Such was the speech by Bill chosen ; but in reciting it, pretending to forget the words, he travestied it into utter nonsense. The professor did not quite comprehend him at first, for he began in a low tone, and had a Rachel or Robsonlike habit of dropping his voice at times, till almost inaudible; but, when the grave instructor did hear what was going on, he was horrified by the following:

"The man who blunders on the high

way may have the hindrance of an analogy for what he does. A snubbed wife may command resistance; a circle of yelping children may raise to him the suffocating hand for food. He may be driven to the act by the huge mammoth of impertinent necromancy."

The professor rubbed his ears and eyes, hardly daring to believe those organs. Meanwhile, Bedlow had gone down into one of his sotto voces, and the next words audible were

"If innocent, he may look, like an ox or an ass, to the heavens-" Here Bill's speech was brought to an untimely close, for the professor, in great wrath, ordered him down, and threatened to have him suspended. But the good luck which seemed to attend Bedlow in all his scrapes, got him off scotfree. To be continued.

I TRUST that some one who is capable of dealing with questions of Art, and who is not indifferent to the power which women may exert in raising or in corrupting it, will draw our attention to the Female School of Art and Design which has been opened at 37, Gower Street, and of which the following account is given in a paper lately issued by the Committee :

"1. This School, originally the female 'School of Design,' was established by Government at Somerset House in the year 1842-3, but, from want of accommodation, it was removed to adjacent premises in the Strand, and, for a similar reason, was afterwards transferred to Gower Street in February, 1852.

"2. Its object is twofold: I.-Partly to enable Young Women of the Middle Class to obtain an honourable and profitable employment; II.-Partly to improve Ornamental Design in Manufactures by cultivating the taste of the Designer.

"3. Since 1852 six hundred and ninety Students have entered themselves at the School, and the number at the present time is one hundred and eighteen, of whom seventy-seven are studying with the view of ultimately maintaining themselves. Some of them, daughters of Clergymen and Medical Men, unexpectedly compelled, by a variety of causes, to gain their own livelihood, and even to support others besides themselves, have, through the instruction and assistance received here, obtained good appointments in Schools, or are enabled to live independently by means of private teaching. The present daily attendance averages seventy.

"4. The success of the School has been considerable. In the last three years, the stu dents have taken an annual average of twenty Local, and three National Medals, and, at the last Annual Examination, six of them obtained Free Studentships. Six of them, moreover, gained their living for several years, by Designing and Painting Japanned Articles, in Wolverhampton; one was for several years a Designer in a Damask Manufactory in Scotland; another supports herself by Lithography; and three are employed in a Glass

Factory, where they draw and paint figures and ornamental subjects for glass windows. Besides these, there are many of the former students, who are now engaged in teaching in various Schools belonging to the Science and Art Department.

"5. Precisely at the time when the School seems to have struck root, and to be steadily widening its area of usefulness, the Committee of Council on Education have intimated their intention of withdrawing their special assistance from the School (amounting to 5007. per annum), and of finally closing it, unless it can be placed on a self-supporting basis.

"SCIENCE AND ART DEPARTMENT,

"SOUTH KENSINGTON, LONDON, W. 10th day of February, 1860. "DEAR MADAM,-In reply to your request that I would state my opinion as to the success of the instruction afforded to Females in the School of Art in Gower Street, I most willingly state that the School in all our Competitions, both Local and National, has ever borne and still maintains a high position. I am also aware that many females of the Middle Class have through it been enabled to earn a competent livelihood by their own industry, as Teachers, Designers for Linens, Carpets, Papier Maché, etc., the School thus affording valuable assistance to a class of females, for whom there have hitherto been few means of providing.

"I am, Madam,

"Yours faithfully,

"RICHD. REDGRAVE.

"To Miss Gann,
"Superintendent of the School of Art,

"37, Gower Street, W.C.

"7. In reply to the first question it may be stated, that over and above the immense importance of making every effort to provide channels of industry for young women, other Schools of Art are, on various grounds, inadequate. Most of the young persons who attend this School, live at too great a distance from South Kensington to be able to attend there; and there is no other School in London, exclusively for females, in which teaching is given for the whole day, on five days of the week, or in which the instruction is so ample, and the range of subjects so extensive.

"8. By an augmentation of the Fees (at present very low) for the day classes, and

by a saving in house-rent, which might be effected by purchasing or renting convenient premises in the neighbourhood, the expenses, there is reason to hope, might, by careful financial management, be brought down to a level with the receipts.

"9. This, however, can be looked for only when the school has been started afresh on its new career and housed in premises of its own, repaired and fitted for the purpose.

10. To purchase suitable premises and to make them thoroughly complete, a sum of at least 2,000l. is required, to raise which the Committee of the School are compelled to appeal to the public. It is understood that the Science and Art Department is prepared to apply to Parliament for a grant of 25 per cent. on the cost of erecting the building.

"11. A love of the beautiful is one of those endowments of our nature, which we may reasonably suppose is to be carefully cultivated with the rest. It is most certainly a right and laudable object to keep open every possible channel for the employment of young women. However anxious we may be to retain them in that private life in which their right position undoubtedly is, yet cases constantly occur in which they must either starve in obscurity, or come forth to struggle, and perhaps to descend in the social scale, through no fault of their own. The instructions given in this School are eminently useful in preventing such misfortunes, and may be received and eventually turned to profit, without necessarily taking them out of their proper sphere. To throw away the ground won by many years of patient industry would be mortifying, if not foolish ; and it is hoped that this appeal on behalf of a School hitherto so ably conducted, and so conveniently situated for the North and West of London, as well as for the City, may be liberally responded to, not only by the residents in the immediate neighbourhood, but also by the inhabitants of the Metropolis at large."

This quiet and reasonable statement could derive no force from any words that I could add to it. If it needed professional recommendations, it is supported by the authority of Sir Charles Eastlake, Mr. Redgrave, and Mr. Westmacott. Clerical aid it has of the most effective kind. The Rector of St. Giles's, whose zeal and faith are well known, is chairman of the committee. But if I cannot help the cause myself, I may do it some service by connecting with it the name of a lady who conferred great benefits upon her generation, whose memory all who knew her even slightly would wish to cherish, and who cannot be more effectually, gratefully remem

bered than by any services rendered to this Institution.

There are no charges more frequently brought against this age than these three; that it is an age of dilettantism, that it is an age in which criticism has banished creative power, that it is an age in which women aspire to a dangerous independence. Everyone feels each of these charges to have some reason in it; many of us may have discovered that to repeat any one of them, and to bring the best proofs we have of its truth, is, after all, of very little service to the time which we denounce, or to ourselves who belong to that time. When we can find a person who shows us some road out of dilettantism, into that of which it is the counterfeit; out of criticism that crushes all creative power, into the criticism which reverences and fosters it; out of the independence of the sexes which destroys the work of both, into that fellowship and co-operation which is implied in their existence, that person ought to be welcomed as one who is fit to teach us and help us, because one who evidently cares more to correct evils than to point them out, to call forth good than to complain of its absence. Anna Jameson won this title to all grateful and affectionate recollection. Not in single irregular efforts, but by her whole life, she was combating dilettantism in its strongest hold, by showing how Art has connected itself with the most practical convictions of mankind, what it has done to embody those convictions, how it fails to satisfy them. She deliberately selected for the subject of her criticism not that which she could look down upon and contemn, but that which she could look up to and admire; she taught the members of her own sex, who need the lesson almost as much as ours, that scorn is not the twin sister of wisdom, but of weakness. Vigorously and courageously identifying herself with much that men dislike or dread-suffering herself to be called one of the advanced or fast ladies, who claim a position which was not intended for them-she really did more than almost any to counteract the tendencies of which she

was willing to bear the disgrace-to counteract at the same time the male vulgarity which, under pretence of teaching women to keep their right place, deprives them of any place but that of their servants or playthings.

The works of Mrs. Jameson, by which she vindicated her title to be the daughter of an artist, and by which she showed how much she had cultivated all the gifts which she inherited, are her "Handbook to the public Galleries of Art in and near London," her "Companion to the most celebrated Galleries of Art in London," her "Lives of the Early Italian Painters," her "Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art," her Legends of the Monastic Orders," her "Legends of the Madonna." The work which was to complete this series, and which probably will interest English readers more than any of its predecessors, is said to be in good hands, and will, I hope, appear with as few disadvantages as a posthumous work can labour under. The handbooks, and even the delightful volume of biographies, I leave to those who can do them more justice. The other books deserve to be looked at from the unprofessional as well as the professional point of view; I might even say from the point of view which a member of my profession is likely to

occupy.

Legends will overwhelm history if there is not some one fairly to grapple with them, fairly to ask what they mean, why they have been permitted to exist, what lessons they impart. No policy is more foolish than that which pretends to ignore them, as if their existence was not a fact, as if that did not belong to history. By pursuing this' policy conscientious writers have not seldom produced the effect which they have sought to avert. They have enlisted the sympathies of their readers on the side of fiction. Nay, they have done worse. Through indifference to the real meaning of legends they have become inventors, and very coarse inventors, of legends themselves. The story of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus had no significance for them; so they must

give the boys a nurse, Lupa, fashioned out of their own brains. Philologers have at last discovered this danger; they have learnt to appreciate the importance of legends as expressing the thoughts and beliefs of men; they have seen that these thoughts and beliefs cannot be less worthy of study than mere occurrences, nay, that one is not intelligible without the other. Niebuhr, with a wonderful discernment of the limits between fact and fiction, has yet done more justice to the old Roman fictions than any of his predecessors.

But there has been a strange deduction from Niebuhr's doctrines. It has been assumed that the legendary is another name for the spiritual; the historical for the material. Those who feel that they need spiritual lessons and principles therefore begin to think that legends are worth at least as much as facts; perhaps a little more: those who cultivate a severe veracity treat all that lies beyond the commonest experience as the product of men's high conceptions of their own destiny; in plain language, as not real at all. The former seem to believe anything, and yet are in hazard every moment of believing nothing. The latter seem to care for nothing but what is substantial, and yet suggest the thought that all which has produced most effect in the world, and has done most good in it, is vapour.

Female reverence and good sense has done what men's scholarship has failed to do. Mrs. Jameson makes us feel the difference between the narratives of Scripture and the legends that have been grounded upon them. She does not treat the latter with scorn. She does not force any Christian or Protestant moral upon us. Had she done so her works would have been far less honest, and therefore far less useful. The legends have their honour. They express thoughts about the spiritual world which have been working in different times. They are not all good, or all evil. They have embodied themselves in paintings which rich men and poor men have looked at and learnt from. But the thoughts are not the spiritual world

They presume They could not

of which they testify. reality as their basis. have been if the spiritual had not first revealed itself in facts. Reduce the facts to the level of the stories, and the last become unaccountable. Raise the stories to the level of the facts, and they perish together. Yes, and in doing so you destroy the hope that in the nineteenth century,-in England, at least,we can ever have an honest and an exalted school of sacred art. English landscape painters have been great because they have refused to sacrifice the facts of nature to conventional rules. Does not the greatness of Mr. Holman Hunt's picture, that which the most ignorant of us confess as much as the learned, arise from a refusal still more valiant? He is sure that the divine does not mean the artificial. He desires to believe that he shall be most reverent when he is most delivered from the fetters of artifice. Is not this the condition upon which our painters must paint, upon which we shall accept their paintings as speaking to us?

Mrs. Jameson then, I believe, did a great work for her age when she plucked the flowers, and with no cowardly fingers grasped the nettles, of middle-age legendary lore. If she had cared for her reputation as a Protestant, she would not have done the service in this case as in others to Protestants and Romanists both, which she has done. She adds one example more to the long catalogue which proves that those will serve a cause best who will incur the risk of being called traitors to it. Her courage was owing to the simplicity of her purpose. She knew that her own sex wanted the kind of help she was giving them to admire and discriminate, and therefore she did not stop to ask herself what sentence captious men might pass upon her.

This object becomes even more apparent in her criticism. I own I do not like the title to the book which she wrote on the female characters of Shakspeare, "Characteristics of Women, Moral, Historical, and Political." There is a grandiloquence in it (as there was a senti