bathed in hues of promise. He would roam through the halls of immortal work in the Louvre; he would stand in Imperial Rome amid all the glories of art. While he thus muses, a letter arrives from his father, telling him that difficulties would prevent his Italian excursion.

But he did not give up his purpose. He wandered from city to city, like the great Italian painters, when a Leo was on the throne of the Vatican, and another Medici ruled at Florence, and in the June of 1841, he sailed from Orleans for Marseilles. He spent four years in Europe, studying and copying the works of the great men of old, in Paris, at Geneva, at Milan, Verona, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Naples, Rome; the galleries of all he studied, in order that he might come back to be a true father to Canadian art. While in Naples, he was offered a passage in a Levantine cruiser, and thus he was enabled to visit the shores of Asia and Africa. He was on his way to Jerusalem with a party of Syrian explorers, when he and his friends were obliged to make for the coast in consequence of being deserted by their Arab guides. On his return he endured great hardships, but he landed on the African coast, and this consoled him, as he was able to boast he had been in every quarter of the globe.

He brought back with him a mind enlarged by observation, by communion with great artists, and well stored with pictures of famous scenes. He also brought copies of the most renowned pictures in the galleries of Venice, Florence, and Rome. An Irish artist whose friendship he had acquired while in the Imperial city, gave him an introduction to the Rev. Dr. Purcell, Bishop of Cincinnati. In this introduction, the artist urged the Bishop on no account to miss seeing Kane's admirable copy of Rafaelle's portrait of Pope Paul II. Among the paintings he copied, and of which he bore across the Atlantic copies, were Rafaelle's Madonna in the Pitti Palace, and his portrait of Pope Julius II; the portraits of Leonardo da Vinci, and of Rembrandt, painted by themselves, and which are among the glories of the Florentine gallery; of Murillo's Madonna, and Busato's portrait of Pope Gregory XVI.

One of his special friends, while he was in Italy, was Stewart Watson, a Scottish artist. They fraternized with that readiness with which Irishmen and Scotchmen proverbially fraternize when they

AN ARTIST EXPLORER.

615

meet abroad. They travelled together from Italy to London. They shared the same lodgings at "Mr. Martin's, Russell Street." Mr. Hope James Stewart was another Scotch artist, whose friendship he enjoyed while in Italy. This gentleman wrote to him from Edinburgh:-"After London this place looks like a dead city, and reminds me much of the way you and I felt the quietness of Rome, after our trip to that noisy and favourite place, Naples."

"In 1844," says Professor Wilson, "Mr. Kane returned to Canada with all the prestige of a skilled artist, who, by his own unaided energy had overcome every obstacle, and achieved for himself opportunities of studying the works of the great masters in the most famous galleries of Europe. He was now to display the same indomitable energy and self-reliance in widely different scenes. In the preface to his Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America,' he remarks-On my return to Canada from the continent of Europe, I determined to devote whatever talents and proficiency I possessed, to the painting of a series of pictures illustrative of the North American Indians and scenery." Sir George Simpson, the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, entered cordially into his plans. His romantic experiences and adventures are related with graphic power and the fidelity of an artist, in his "Wanderings," published by Longman in 1859. He crossed the continent, travelling weary miles a-foot, or paddling over lake or river in a canoe. He visited the Saskatchewan, traversed the vast prairie, crossed the Rocky Mountains, navigated the Columbia River to Oregon, explored Puget's Sound, visited Vancouver Island and other wild scenes, amongst which he describes himself as straying almost alone, scarcely meeting a white man, or hearing the sound of his own language. His pencil was ever busy. Chiefs, women, medicine men, hunting scenes, Indian games and dances, rites and costumes, all were transferred to his canvas

He returned to Toronto in 1848, with a well-stocked portfolio. Sir George Simpson had given him a commission for a dozen paintings of savage life:-buffalo hunts, Indian camps, councils, feasts, conjuring matches, dances, warlike exhibitions, or whatever he might consider most attractive and interesting. In 1852, the Legislature of the Province of Canada passed a vote authoriz

ing him to execute a series of Indian pictures, before which the visitor to the Parliamentary Library at Ottawa, never fails to linger long. His most liberal patron was the Hon. G. W. Allan, to whom he dedicated the narrative of his wanderings.

Ile married, in 1853, Miss Harriet Clench, of Cobourg, herself an artist of no mean skill. He now devoted himself to his art with great zeal, and painted a hundred pictures; Indian scenes, landscapes, portraits, Indian groups coming into vivid portraiture beneath his forming hand. These paintings are in the possession of the Hon. G. W. Allan, of whose collection, at Moss Park, they form the principal attraction.

He visited Europe in 1857, to superintend the execution of the chromo-lithographic illustrations of his "Wanderings." On his return he resumed his pencil. He was about to follow up that volume with another, when his eye-sight failed. Unfortunately his art was not one he could prosecute without the eye. He died on the 20th of February, 1871, from an abscess of the liver. His portrait of Queen Victoria, after the picture by Chalons, is amongst his best works.

Living so much with the Indians, he acquired something of their quiet unimpressible manner. His memory was strong. When he gave them scope, his descriptive powers were of a high order. His gifts, however, in this respect would remain wholly hid from those who did not sympathize with his pursuits. "But," says Professor Wilson, who knew him, "he was a man of acute observation, and when questioned by an intelligent inquirer, abounded with curious information in reference to the native tribes among whom he had sojourned." His career is one of the most creditable in our annals. Irishmen and Canadians may well be proud of a man who taught himself a divine art, though he had to face poverty's all but "unconquerable bar." Though he studied our scenery and Indian customs at first hand, he did not wholly give himself up to nature. The Indian horses are Greek horses; the hills have much of the colour and form of those of Ruysdael, and the early European landscape painters; the foregrounds have more of the characteristics of old pictures than of our out-of-doors. All this is more particularly true of his later work, when, instead of going to

CANADIAN LANDSCAPE AND ART.

617

nature, he remained in his studio, and painted and repainted his early sketches.

The glory and beauty of Canadian landscape is not yet fully appreciated. The mission of Canadian Art is still before it,—to record and impress upon the people the peculiar beauties in atmosphere, colour, water, trees, rocks, all that makes our out-of-doors (if Canadians would only believe it!) second, in its own way, to nothing else in the world. It is important that this should be realized, since our art, for the present, must be landscape art. We have, and for some time can have, no other. We are in a transition state. The ingredients of a great people are being brought together. There can be no local colour where all is changing. The human element here must crystallize before it is picturesque or artistically attractive. At present it is bustling, noisy, pretentious, vulgar and ugly. The Indian has passed away, and his ghost is dirty, and wears the cast-off clothes of his white brother. The Acadian is gone. All that remains of him is Longfellow's "Evangeline." Railroads are reforming and mixing up the most conservative habitans. The artist must find subjects and inspiration in still solitudes, as yet undefiled by the foot of man. The human pot is boiling; the scum sometimes comes to the top; but let us wait in hope for the result of the enormous brew.

It would be invidious if it was sought here to designate any of our artists on whom Kane's mantle has fallen. Mr. Fraser, Mr. Martin, Mr. Verner, and others, all have studied our Canadian scenes; but none of them with the same love for Canada as Mr. Lucius O'Brien. This is not said because the blood in his veins is Irish. He has the true artistic spirit, and his oil paintings and water colours have an exquisite finish, a delicacy of feeling and a truthfulness of instinct combined with technical strength, which would give him a foremost place as an artist in any part of the world.

Photography is a useful if humble handmaiden to art, and the honour of introducing it to Western Canada belongs to Mr. William Armstrong, who came to Canada the year Baldwin retired from the Ministry. Mr. Armstrong, who belongs to a good family, was born in Dublin in 1822. His father, a general in the Royal Irish Artillery-which was merged in the regular service during

the rebellion of 1798-sent young Armstrong to the celebrated engineer Thomas Jackson Woodhouse to learn engineering. Having served as engineer in various important undertakings in England, he bethought him of emigrating to Canada where he was immediately employed under Mr. H. C. Seymour on the Northern Railway. He also served under Messrs. Shanly and Gzowski on the Grand Trunk Railway. It seems Colonel Gzowski gave him facilities for the introduction of photography. Mr. Armstrong's sketches of Lake Superior scenery-which he was the first to delineate have been highly appreciated at exhibitions in the old country.

A far greater honour the Irishman in Canada may claim than the initiatory step to the introduction of photography. A Scotchman, himself a poet of considerable merit, the Rev. William Wye Smith, pointed out in a lecture upon the poets of Canada, that Hamilton," a poem by W. A. Stephens, the Collector of Customs, Owen Sound, was the first volume of poems published in Upper Canada. Mr. Stephens, who was born in Belfast in 1809, came early to this country with his father. Prior to his acceptance of his office, now nearly thirty years ago, he did much both by word and pen to influence opinion in a Reform direction.

Mr. Stephens' poem deserved better treatment than it received at the time of publication. It is very unequal. But it has considerable merit in places. The conception is exceedingly good, and had the execution throughout been what it occasionally rises to, 'Hamilton" might have won an enduring place in literature.

I have already referred to Mr. Reade's poetry. We have in our midst a genuine child of song, and a literary man who is engaged in the useful task of writing the Constitutional History of Canada -Samuel James Watson, the Librarian of the Ontario Legislative Library. Mr. Watson-an Irishman pur sang-had, before accepting his present position, done good service as a writer on the Globe, and other leading papers. Amid the wearying and wasting labours of journalism, he found time to cultivate the divine art of song, and he has lately produced a volume which will cause his name to be syllabled after he himself has passed away. That which the literary man especially hungers for, he will find in Mr. Watson's poetry. Tired of the blaze of Homer or Byron, the mind of the