Carlsen and nature in another mood. Great darkening white clouds edged with glowing light sweep across the deepening blue; a single tree grows panicky in the rising wind; and the last of the shadowed sunshine pales over a field of stacked corn. Appropriately near at hand hung a much admired landscape, Willard D. Paddock's "Passing of the Storm," when the first ray of sun breaks the blackness and a rainbow rises over the hills.

Those whose hearts are in the highlands would have taken large delight in several striking mountain pictures. Among these was the winner of the Julia A. Shaw prize -given to the best picture painted by a woman-in this case to Charlotte B. Coman's "September Morning," a mountain scene of strength and beauty, blue hills of Connecticut rolling out into broad, limpid distances.

So and no otherwise hillmen desire their hills.

Charles Warren Eaton's "Heart of the Range" to choose among his mountain studies shows a majestic cloud-and-windswept summit-side high above the worldyou draw a long breath to see it.

Indeed, the Exhibition was singularly rich in landscapes, though there were few marines. Gustave Wiegand was there with two magnificent pieces. Walter Clark was at his best in a rich "Woodland Pasture." Van Laer's "Connecticut Hills;" Potthast's "Fall Landscape;" H. R. Poore's "March Hay;" Lewis Cohen's woodsy "Brook;" conscientious and convincing "Top of a Hill" and "Stony Pasture" by Lathrop; Bruce Crane's fresh and true. "Afternoon Shadows," occur to mind out of a world of beauty. A brave, new note was sounded in the work of Rockwell Kent and Edward W. Redfield; and W. L. Palmer had a winter scene that is bold.

A distinct American influence appears in the growing number of views of great cities. The long parallel lines of streets and high buildings, softened by clouds, mists and smoke are beginning to excite the imagination of artists. "Times Square," "The Flat-Iron Building" and "New York's Sky-Line" attracted notice.

Among marines, Ben Foster's "Nightfall Along Shore" was powerful, and Elliott Daingerfield had a masterful sea

coast, showing the hazy and luminous intermingling of waves, spray, clouds and light.

The Carnegie Prize for the most meritorious oil painting in the Exhibition, portraits excepted, was accorded by the judges and beholders to Louis Loeb's "Morning."

"Morn in yellow and white came broadening out" over trees and sky, and stream and field. Mr. Loeb's "Morning" is deeply poetic and imparts the spirit of morning, the morning of day and the morning of the world. Huntsmen after hounds, a shepherd with his flock and a woman at the stream indicate in their garb the primeval earth. In the coloring particularly, "Morning" has a classic quality.

The Shaw Fund, devoted to the purchase of one or more works of art each year, has been expended for Hugo Ballin's "Pastoral." The charming composition, the grace and poise of the grouping are at once apparent; and very beautiful is the soft blending of browns, grays, greens and purples that characterize the painting.

The portrait of Mrs. Clarence Mackay was placed in the central position in the Vanderbilt gallery, the post of honor. The picture might more justly be entitled "Witchcraft," "Magic" or "The Sorceress." Considered as a portrait proper it is strained and unconvincing; but as a symbolic painting which, as a matter of fact, it is, the work is notable. The long, shimmering grey gown, the mystic, changeful lights in the crystal globe, the tense absorption in the eyes and the dull, neutral background give a deep impression of occult concentration.

The picture, however, has not the beauty and power of another Alexander"A Mother." Many persons must have left the Exhibition with Alexander's "A Mother" established in memory above all else. Such wealth of sentiment, with so much refinement and reserve, is not often found among the paintings of to-day. A woman, handsome, strong and sweet, visibly uplifted by noble emotion, holds her baby in her arms, while its father, book in hand, bends reverently to kiss her brow.

Louise C. Cox presented another variation of the theme of motherhood. Her "Mother and Child" is affectionate, deli-. cate and singularly fortunate in the use of lines. In coloring, it suggests roses, shading from the pearly pink of the child's flesh tints to the rich rose tones of the mother's velvet draperies. Mrs. Cox contributed also two characteristic portraits of good little girls, "Waiting" and "Blue and White," both exquisite in color, lifelike and sweet.

Among genre paintings and other figure studies not strictly portraits, we observed that an artist of promise has come out of the West. He is Henry S. Hubbell, of Chicago, with a virile brush, a keen insight, and a sense of humor. His "Poet in Bohemia" has been much noted and is strong-though the subject suggests the poetaster more than the poet. His "Paris Cabman" is funny and as true as life, and his "Caress" is infinitely tender.

J. G. Brown has done the comfortable "Builder of Boats" here illustrated, with his accustomed human feeling and care of detail. Albert Herter sent "The Round Mirror," which lacks consecutiveness, but is alive with fascination and color. "Labor is Prayer," by Walter Florian, in the manner of Millet—a laborer at work, on his knees, in a field-is reverent and sincere. Robert Henri's "Spanish Dancer" has been much commended for frankness and truth of color.

Julian Story's well-known portrait of Mme. Emma Eames, which hung in the Society's Room, had a quality that many of the portraits lacked-distinction. There were a number of other excellent portraits.

Notable among the notable was Irving R. Wiles' graceful picture of his wife and daughter. In the midst of well-sustained detail the characters of the sitters are kept clear and determined. The color scheme is refined and sure, and full of light. Another Wiles portrait of character was his engaging, personal and direct presentment of the artist, W. T. Smedley. Mr. Smedley, himself had a group of feelingful and charming portraits of his mother, his wife and his son. Howard Gardiner Cushing has used a more imaginative, though normal and well-balanced treatment, and worked out his sitters' individ

ualities in color scheme, feeling, and even the names of their portraits.

William Thorne's portrait of Mrs. Finch is actual unphotographic and enduring. Alphonse Jonger's "Lady with a Harp" and M. H. Bancroft's portrait of the sculptor, Miss Evelyn Longman, are effective renditions of the artistic woman. Carroll Beckwith has done a vivid likeness of Emil Carlsen, but did not fare so well himself at the hands of Thomas Eakins, whose portrait of Mr. Beckwith is overrealistic, almost to the point of carica

ture.

W. J. Glacken's "Portrait of a Young Man" and S. J. Woolf's masculine portrait of John Finley are noteworthy. J. H. Niemeyer's young girl "In Brown and White" is markedly good.

Mary Foote has painted Frederick MacMonnies very much in MacMonnies's own sharp, dashing style; and Mrs. Albert Herter had a singular portrait of her husband, showing him in unusual semiOriental garb and setting, in striking contrast to his very modern head. Samuel Isham had a portrait of a well-bred, brighteyed woman, full of light and beauty.

Paintings of animal life were few, but of good quality. Lathrop had a forceful cattle study, Charles R. Knight a thrilling "Tiger and Cobra" and Carl Rungius was very successful with "Before the Battle,' an angry moose on a rocky ridge, and "In the Foothills," a deer-study, both full of the spirit of the wild.

The advance in American art and the increased appreciation of it seem to demand what artists and art lovers have long desired,-an American Salon, an annual official exhibition of American paintings of the highest order, that shall be recognized as an object of the nation's pride and solicitude, an exhibition opened by the President of the United States and given the impress of national importance. Such a Salon would not only increase the sale of American pictures, and act as a direct stimulus to artists, but it would also serve a broader purpose in improving the artistic judgment and good taste of the people, in proving to the world that we are not mere utilitarians, but have room and time in our busy life for the products of Sweetness and Light.

Sidney

NE of the first Oxford poets of

O whom we have record is Sir Philip

Sidney. The Dean of Sidney's college, Christ Church House, accounted it the honor of his life that he had been preceptor to that noble young man. Of Sidney's love of learning his biographer

wrote: "Here an excellent stock met with the choicest grafts; nor could his tutors pour in so fast as he was ready to receive." One of the unwritten chapters in the annals of notable college friendships is that concerning the attachment of Philip Sidney and Edward Dyer, a poet who lives in memory as the author of one peerless line,

My mind to me a kingdom is.

Shelley

Of the brief Oxford career of the glorious poet Shelley we have a faithful report in the memoirs of his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg. "No novel," says Symonds in his "Life of Shelley," "is half so delight

ful as that picture, at once affectionate and satirical, tender and humorous, extravagant and delicately shaded, of the student life enjoyed together for a few short months by the inseparable friends."

One extract from Symond's pages must suffice us here. It describes the vast confusion of the strange fusion of the strange poet-student's rooms; "chaos on chaos heaped of chemical apparatus, books, electrical machines, unfinished manuscripts, and furniture worn into holes by acids. It was perilous to use the poet's drinking vessels, lest perchance a seven-shilling piece half dissolved in aqua regia should lurk at the bottom of the bowl. Handsome razors

were used to cut the lids of wooden boxes, and valuable books served to support lamps or crucibles; for in his vehement precipitation Shelley always laid violent hands on what he found convenient to the purpose of the moment. Here the friends talked and read until late in the night."

We have spoken of two other great poets as having found high inspiration in the study of Plato. the study of Plato. That mighty master

a

of a certain little two-page tract of religious views. The storm raised by this immature utterance of a mistaken genius has long subsided, and at the very college that so hastily dismissed the momentarily thoughtless youth may now be seen noble memorial to the wondrous poet,-a marble, recumbent figure of Shelley's body as it was washed ashore, after that fatal day on the coast of Italy, in the summer of 1822. The figure by its wan, wasted delicacy, is a fitting emblem of the poet's exquisite powers cut down in the bloom of manhood. Lines from his own "Adonais" are engraved upon the frieze of the little memorial room:

He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light.

Charles Lamb, he who

set to prose what others saved for rhyme, was yet so much a poet at heart that a lover of his may be permitted to include him in a paper on poets. We must always regret that Charles Lamb was, as he wistfully and pathetically says, "defrauded in his young years of the sweet food of academic institution." What would not three years at Oxford have meant to this devotee of antiquity! Like Keats he wandered about the old city in the summer vacations, pondering "under the shadow of the mighty Bodley," loitering in "Christ Church reverend quadrangle" or among "the groves of Magdalen." He would peep in at "the butteries, and sculleries, redolent of antique hospitality," and he glowed