to designate America as its special habitat. The discussion stirred up by this Habakkuk Mucklewrath has brought out anew the spavined adage that if America have no leisure class, it has a leisure sex, and the corollary unfolded by the good Watts about the kind of employment which is provided by abundant leisure. But, rather oddly, at the same time a cisatlantic discussion has arisen over the social defects of the male American. Nobody pretends that the defects appertaining to excessive idleness are his. On the contrary, the very complaint of him is that he is excessively given to business. Wherefore his womankind are, in the estimation of many rapid tourists and of some more mature observers, better educated than he, and more addicted to the things of the mind. According to Mr. Perry Robinson, he frequently has to ask his wife who painted the prides of his gallery, whereas the English wife has to resort to her husband for that class of information. But hence, so to speak, the cultured American girl, revolting from her uncultured though strenuous compatriot, finds herself more at her ease with the cultivated and unstrenuous stranger, and even the American matron, or pseudo-matron, it is more than suggested, finds satisfactions, of course within the limits of becoming social intercourse, with the leisured and cultured Briton, with the lively Gaul, with the omniscient and nullificent German, which she cannot derive from the companionship of her liege lord and countryman.

It is very odd, very "rum," her congenial Briton would say, how the American girl in particular is deceived. (As to the American matron, provided she keep herself out of the scope and purview of French fiction, it does not so much matter.) The American girl is apt to forget or ignore that the very thing that makes her eligible in the eyes of the foreigner is the very thing that she owes to the disparaged American male parent, whose limitations she finds irksome, the same limitations which in the comparison with the "cultured" and "leisured" foreigner discommend her coeval compatriot to her. For while it has been justly remarked that in affairs of the heart women are the more practical and men the more romantic, the remark is of a domestic significance and will not bear exportation. The Continental European frankly admits a mercenary

Yes, we arraign him; but he, the weary Titan, with deaf ears and labor-dimmed eyes, continues, in short and in his own locution, to "saw wood." Perhaps it were better for him if he were a little less strenuous, as certainly it were better for his European rival if he were a good deal less lazy. The male American may cherish an inarticulate conviction that he has the makings of a better husband than the more ornamental male European who may yet put him to shame in a casual discussion on Shakespeare and the musical glasses. And, really, the time seems to give it proof. An American, to be sure not a very strenuous one, in Mr. Henry James's "Portrait of a Lady," warns the American girl who is about to give herself to an exemplar of culture, also an American (although as the other American observes, "one forgets that, he is so little of one"), that she was 'meant for something better than to keep guard over the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante." She came, by tragical experience, to the same conclusion. In fact, the novelist, in the work in question, anticipated and summed up the recent contention. Caspar Goodwood and Gilbert Osmond, respectively, embody the types of the strenuous American and the cultivated foreigner, and the distinct moral is that Isabel Archer chose the wrong man. When the poet Bunthorne, in Sir W. S. Gilbert's operetta, inquires of the rustic maiden, “Do you not yearn?" she makes answer, "I yearn my living." It is a pertinent answer for the male American when he is challenged by the female American. He may with some confidence expect that the other things she misses in him will be added unto him; whereas this particular capability will surely never be a by-product of graceful and cultivated ease.

As to the Autograph Letters of Authors

leaving behind him a novel or a book of poems that wins at last a wide circle of ardent admirers. While he was alive he could not earn his living by his pen, and his writings went a-begging, with no buyers. And then, when posthumous fame comes to him too late, the imploring missives that he wrote in his garret to unappreciative publishers came to be worth more in the market than he was paid for any of the works into which he poured his soul. He himself may have received little or nothing for his masterpiece while he was alive; and then when he is dead and gone, every A. L. S. that can be discovered in the waste-paper baskets of his contemporaries is proffered for sale to eager collectors at prices which would have made him laugh aloud with incredulous self-mockery.

A single note of Milton's, or even a signature sprawled in an odd volume, will now bring more than the poet received for "Paradise Lost." Charles Lamb was not cast down by the simplicity of his scale of living, and he was sustained by his sense of humor and by the manliness of his character; but he would have had the smile of the unbeliever if a prophesying friend had told him that the manuscript of any single one of his essays would be more valuable than the pay he probably received for all his contributions to the London Magazine lumped together. Thackeray again, with his modesty which did not prevent now and again a suspicion as to his own work, would have been pleasantly flattered if he could have foreseen that his charming little notes, with the casual caricatures he liked to scrawl in the blank spaces, would be quoted in the market at prices far outreaching that which he himself was paid for his more carefully composed contributions to the reviews.

There are authors of our own time who have now awakened to the possibility of this future inquiry for their stray correspondence, and who are therefore most fastidious in their letter-writing, never permitting even the least important note to go forth that is not fit to be welcomed in the most exacting collector's library. The letters of these authors are always neat in chirography and perfect in orthography. They are all of them what the dealer will delight to call "characteristic specimens," and they will also take their place at once and without any editing in the

"Life and Letters" which the natural vanity of these writers looks forward to. Missives thus conscientiously composed are not so much letters to the actual recipients as they are epistles to posterity. And perhaps, like other epistles to posterity, they may not always reach their address.

But these are not the only letters that are written with an eye to the future autograph collector. M. Porel, the manager of the vaudeville theatre in Paris, has recently been narrating his recollections of the dramatic celebrities he met in his youth. And one of his anecdotes is a little disquieting to the peace of mind of the autograph collector. M. Porel tells us that he dropped in one morning to keep an appointment with the elder Dumas, and he found that the kindly and robust author had spent the whole night in a vain effort to make a thousand francs, which he needed to help the son of an old friend and which a dealer had promised him in return for five hundred autograph letters. He had toiled over these never-to-be-sent and never-to-be-received missives until he had exhausted every possible epistolary form and until he was absolutely exhausted himself.

To an observer on this side of the Atlantic familiar with the history of the stock exchange this anecdote recalls the method of Gould and Fisk printing off shares of a new issue of Erie stock as fast as these could be sold. To emit five hundred letters by a single writer appears to be a painful example of over-production. But probably the dealer who made the bargain knew his business, and he intended to lock up this mass of correspondence and to float single specimens into circulation slowly and skilfully, keeping his price up by every method known to the trade. This adroit French merchant in MSS. would never have been guilty of underselling-unlike one of a later American dealer who recently proffered for only nine dollars a letter of Artemus Ward, written and dated in 1885-a score of years after the decease of Charles F. Browne! Now, a letter in the handwriting of a dead man referring to events that took place long after his demise is absolutely unique. To ask only nine dollars for it was to give it away; for in reality it was priceless, since it proves the immortality of the soul and also the control of pen, ink and paper by disembodied spirits.

I

MORE EXAMPLES OF THE ENGLISH SCHOOL AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.

T is a pleasure to return to this school, and to note the effort that is being made at the Museum to extend the list and range of the British painters who must always be of peculiar interest to Americans.

That ill-starred genius, George Morland, is represented by a homely theme characteristic of the subjects that appealed to him. The "Midday Meal" is the picture of a pig sty shaded by a group of large trees; a young farm hand, carrying a pail of feed and followed by three hungry swine, approaches the sty. Swineherd and swine are given with a light touch which reveals the pleasure some of these early Englishmen took in the mere manipulation of paint; and while the color * See the Field of Art for January of this year. VOL. XLV-42

is of a certain conventional mellowness, it is still acceptable, and, for the period, good. To those interested in following the sequence of the practice of painting in England this canvas is an example they will enjoy, and is a desirable possession for the Museum.

There is a portrait by Sir Martin Archer Shee, P. R.A., of that handsome man, the "Irish Liberator," and master of popular

oquence, Daniel O'Connell, painted in a conventional way and conventionally lighted -interesting, however, as showing an intermediate period in English portraiture analogous to the lapse in our own art after Stuart and others of our early painters; a merely well-painted but colorless performance. In describing his dress would not the catalogue read better if "waistcoat" were to replace the word vest? Elsewhere we come to an381

other Sir Joshua, hung regrettably high, which seems to suggest some of his most captivating qualities. It is the portrait of "Master Hare," delightful in its creaminess of both flesh and frock, and, as we have said, in this artist's happiest vein. The landscape background exists merely to detach the lovely figure of a child, and it fulfils its purpose. The tone of the sash and edging to dress falling from shoulder is of a delicious and harmonious mauve that contributes to the delicacy and breadth of the canvas as a whole. It is a delicacy devoid of weakness and a breadth without emptiness that the artist has achieved here.

Like some others of the English land* See the previous article, Field of Art for January, 1909.

scapists, Richard Wilson first essayed portrait painting, but, on going to Italy, the scenery so attracted him, that he relinquished portraiture and turned to landscape. He never lost the Italian accent, so to speak, and his English pictures had almost invariably a foreign and un-English air; so that his Italian landscape here seems strongly reminiscent of Claude Lorrain, while that entitled "The Storm" suggests, weakly, Salvator Rosa. It is valuable for the Museum, however, to possess this connecting link between English and Italian landscape art, and we are glad to see it here.

"The Bridge of the Stour," by John Constable, is an instance of the faithful portrayal of natural effects, and in this picture we must

not look for even the picturesque sentiment that he can sometimes give. This is far from the imaginative rendition of Turner, but it is a vivid and sprightly presentation of high noon-a solidly painted work of more technical than æsthetic interest. The sky with active clouds is finely given-a good, wholesome, homely canvas.

"Ariadne in Naxos," by George Frederick Watts, shows much of this painter's large sense of form and much also of his limitations. There is a big, handsome conception and impression in its landscape accessory, but it is marred by turbulent and broken drapery lacking breadth; reminiscent of the Elgin Marbles without their thorough and profound knowledge of the

form it envelops. Both Satyr and panther in the foreground leave much to be desired both in form and color, so undecided are they in each of these qualities. Despite this, there is a large feeling of corporiety in the figure of Ariadne herself; it is all indicative of a high artistic purpose and aim in hesitating hands.

A little picture by George H. Boughton, "A Puritan Girl," is among the English group, and it is of a sentiment and workmanship quite representative of a certain style of English painting of the late nineteenth century. We would, perhaps, like to see something more important by this painter, although, for showing his method, this is as characteristic as a larger work. It