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careless years is gained by no other clue. And Reynolds had this clue: the whole man was simple and sincere. As artist,

he esteemed whatever had light and shade; as poet, he loved the face of childhood; as workman, he set his hand. with might to each successive task. And to that task his subjects came well prepared. The young visitors of his studio were uncoerced by an educative system, repressive, as was the system of the previous century. The leading principle of that rule was plenty of the rod and but little of the kiss: the custom of bended knee in the presence of the parent may be referred to as an indication of its severity. That system, however, was over, and Sir Joshua's little sitters were not thus stiffened into machines. Nor were they stiffened into priggishness by the hot-house education of to-day. Neither formal nor precocious, the children brought to Reynolds were thorough children.

Such was the artist, such his subjects. And not less harmonious in co-operation was the era he adorned. As occasionally occurs, even in this world of untoward action, the man of singular capacity arose in times singularly opportune: the special gift accorded with the special time. The direction given to thought, while Reynolds exerted himself, was eminently opportune, for it was eminently straightforward. Literature was animated by singleness of aim, akin to his simplicity: his simplicity to deal with things as they really were was then the common impulse of the intellect. The idea, for instance, of tracing in the talk of childhood symptoms of the soul's immortality was not only unknown to thinkers then, but would have been unmeaning. Poet or painter in the eighteenth century sought for no "better lore" from an infant, than what lies obvious in its smiles and tears. The cares of children distressed Goldsmith, and "their welfare pleased;" but childhood excited in him no rapture. The fancy that the cradle is a meeting point between earth and heaven would have been a ludicrous fancy to Dr. Johnson. Babies were to him things to feed and to keep warm. Swift

even had proposed to boil and eat them: and though they fared better at the hands of Steele, yet he relates that sweet narrative of boyish grief, caused by a father's death, not to illustrate childish impulses, but the growth of the author; and though he describes his son " employing himself on the floor of the room, sweeping the sand with a feather," this pretty picture was to please "his Prue," and not the public.

Above all, the clammy paw of the sentimentalist was not then laid upon childhood. Sterne turned for images of pathos to a jackass and a starling. The choice indicates the popular direction given to the pathetic fancy! Cruel agony, such as Dickens and Victor Hugo wring out of infantine sorrows, excited emotion too poignant for the earlier sentimentalist-such agony would have upset the harmony of Sterne's pictures; and his writings harmonize with his time. Had his readers wished it, Sterne would not have left unexplored such a fertile mine for tears as childhood.

Thus English education, English culture, and our great English artist met in fortunate accord. Reynolds's fine intellect was left unbiassed. He did not. try to convert his little sitters into opportunities either for preachment or pathos; to paint childhood as it was, and is, was his artistic aim. And there was another origin to the perfect achievement attained by Reynolds; namely, that common cause-that is so uncommon-an honest heart. Not putting first picturesque action, or playful incident, or the artist's power, Reynolds gave his first, last, and every thought to the portraiture of his sitters. Likeness, veracity, was enough to rouse him to the full; and with veracity came the purest poetry.

That this devoted surrender to portraiture is not possible to all is proved by the present exhibition in Trafalgar Square. On one wall of the East Room is a "Portrait of Master Cayley," on another the picture called "Asleep." Both pictures are from one hand-the gifted hand of Millais; both alike represent children; in other respects they are most unlike. The little gentleman's face

is sufficiently brightly painted, for it is by Millais; but all the brightness is derived from the clever application of paint, and workmanship of a reasonably good quality has been reserved to the face alone. The attitude is commonplace. The accessories are slighted. The hands are portrayed with positive slovenliness. Delicacy, purity, sweetness, are reserved for the incident" picture, the picture of the child "asleep." The tossed hair upon the pillow; the flush of warm breathing on the resting cheek; those gently curved fingers, all asleep and all perfection; are pictorial charms, that show what this artist can do when prompted by the stimulus of an incident. That the stimulus was needed when Millais turned to direct portraiture is proved by the treatment, half clever, half contemptuous, that he awards to Master Cayley.

Reynolds craved no stronger excitement than a child's sweet face to elicit his best power. If this picture had issued from his studio, the portrait would have been an image of boyhood, as individual as is Master Cayley himself, and yet a poetic creation for the delight of the whole world.

Child portraiture at the hand of Reynolds is, as said before, a pleasant theme. Mr. Stephens evidently found it so; the pages he devotes to this subject contain apt description and discriminating criticism. The illustrations, also, are satisfactory, photographic photographic copies of good engravings of Sir Joshua's works, both known and unusual. In subject they are select and varied; and as good as photographs can be, firm and keen in tone. But they show no attempt to obviate that objectionable feature of the photograph-a shiny surface. This glossy, light-catching coat is an almost inevitable evil in oil pictures; the flat surface of a fresco is one of the advantages of fresco painting, and it used to be the certain characteristic of works of art on paper. Till chemistry can supply an escape from surfaces greasy with a varnish of eggflip, the photograph must be, to a certain extent, a distasteful production.

Tempting as would be the excursion, we cannot venture in among the Reynolds' child-gallery. But description to awake enthusiasm for those delightful pictures is needless. The "Strawberry Girl" is as much an accepted type of beauty, as the Venus of Milo, or Raffaelle's Cardellino; as perfect in its kind, as firmly imprinted on the memory.

In his treatment of childhood Reynolds adopted two broad defining principles. Boys are regarded generally as creatures of fun and whim. And so he paints them-mimicking the strut of the imperious Henry, crouching sulky in the corner, or sitting with each hand pressed upon each knee, staring roundeyed, with looks that would be loutish, were they not so quaint. In dealing with girlhood Reynolds displayed a greater variety. Many of his little maidens were fortunately happy in their lot; they smile sunny-faced; rejoice in a mother's caress; or survey the world from the exaltation of her shoulder. More, however, are of pensive mien. In one of these pictures Reynolds attains the highest level of the art; it shall be described, to prove his claim to stand second to none, even as a religious painter. It was the "Penelope Boothby" that graced the Great Exhibition of 1862. She appears in her portrait as a little girl, barely emerged from infancy. She sits straight before us, looking straight at us, with blue-grey, lucid eyes. Her attitude bespeaks a trustful tranquillity; her look is pensive, steadfast rather than sad, yet makes appeal to all, with motionless emotion. And on this hinted regret is based the painter's intention. The meaning of the picture is to tell the story of her early death, of a death without death's bitterness, and the story is told with a touch most gentle. This sadness has no sorrow, the dark valley has to her no shadow; the regret that enfolds Penelope is not her regret, but ours.

And upon this expression rests the portrait's essential motive, the pure imaging of innocent, unconscious childhood. The child is utterly unwitting,

not only of the emotion she excites, but of the influence under which she sits subdued. Death's cloud encloses her, but her sky is not darkened. She is resigned, with resignation granted by the Hand she does not yet recognise; calm, with a calmness of which she is unheedful; innocent, by the absence of all evil; docile, from a docility that cannot imagine disobedience. Heaven is reflected in her eyes; but she does not know that. She becomes a celestial vision, because she is so absolutely a little girl. "Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."

A picture such as this, or the "Age of Innocence," or the "Angel Faces" in the National collection, places Reynolds foremost among religious painters. Beauty, purity, reverential awe, and the repose of childlike faith, are certainly heaven-descended thoughts; as certainly

are such thoughts the surest paths to heaven; and nowhere in art do such thoughts find expression more absolute than in these pictures. It is all very well to say that Reynolds is "a long way in the rear of the grand old painters," of spiritual 66 essences and their like." He is the painter of spiritual reality; and that is far better, for it is far truer. If ever may be found in our work-a-day world "the bridal of the earth and sky," it is in the face, 66 SO calm, so bright," of this Penelope.

Fra Angelico, in cloistered dreams, exalted by prayer and fasting, sought to see beatified expressions on imaginary features, the clearest realization of the divine influence. In his way he has attained this. Yet he never revealed in his angelic representations the overshadowing of God's presence more truly than Reynolds has by simple portraiture.

SILCOTE OF SILCOTES.

BY HENRY KINGSLEY, AUTHOR OF

CHAPTER LIV.

THE PRINCESS'S TALISMAN.

"RAVENSHOE," 99 66 THE HILLYARS AND THE BURTONS," ETC.

"Is he dead?" said the Princess scornfully to James, coming up to him while he was quietly smoking in the sun in front of the Colonel's quarters at Pozzo d'Orno.

"Is who dead?" asked James, in surprise.

"Your new friend, Colonel Silcote; the man for whom I have sacrificed everything, and who has taken up with a boy like you; excluding me, and refusing to see me. Is he dead? "No, my lady. He is going on very well."

"He and I were both better dead. Will he see me?"

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thinks that you would dissuade him from it. If you saw him, and did so, he would swear at you certainly. I will tell you the simple truth. He has forbidden me to let you see him.” "This is the very basest ingratitude," said the Princess.

"On the contrary," said James, "he merely fears that you will persuade him to fight no more; and that he will not have strength of purpose to resist you."

I

"Have you been persuading him to fight?" asked the Princess. "No. am a credulous and foolish woman; but I cannot believe that you, with your gentle young face, could be such a wretch, such a villain, as that. Any money which you may get by the murder of Colonel Silcote will be a lifelong misery to you."

James thought she was mad. "You have puzzled me two or three times lately, my lady, and you are puzzling me more than ever now. I have tried to dissuade the Colonel from fighting any more, and indeed have pointed out that he, as an Englishman, has no business to be fighting at all. But he is resolute. God knows I would stop him

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"I like them very much."
"What else do you like?"

Arthur had put this question to him before; and he had answered "Several things;" but it was a very difficult question. He gave a general answer. "I think that I like most things, my lady."

"Do you like jewels?"

"I daresay I should if I had ever seen any," said James. "But then you know I have not."

"They are very nice, these jewels," said the Princess. "Believe an old woman when she says that nothing satisfies the soul like jewels. A beautiful young man is a glorious thing: a beautiful young woman is still more glorious. But they don't last. Your beautiful young man comes in time to look out of a bow-window in St. James's Street; and your beautiful young woman-why as for her, she may become in personal appearance anything which you like to put a name to. Do you understand me?"

"I thank God I don't," replied James. "But with regard to jewels. They never change. Look at this sapphire. This is one of the finest sapphires in Europe. None but a Silcote would wear it on a battle-field. It is a frosted sapphire, the very rarest of jewels, scarcely ever seen. Ten thousand years ago the stone was exactly the same. Seven hundred years ago a magician in Thibet engraved these letters on it, which, as you see, let the eye through the frosted surface into the wine-dark depth of the jewel. Do you see? "It is wonderfully beautiful, even to my eyes, madam."

The

"It is a talisman, in fact. magician sold it to Ghengis Khan; it descended to Kublai Khan; Kublai Khan gave it Maffeo Polo, who gave it to his nephew Marco; Marco, on his return to Venice from Genoa, gave it to the then Dandolo, from whom it descended to the Castelnuovos. The last Castelnuovo gave it to me, and I will give it to you-if you will let me see him."

"I doubt I should not know what to do with it, madam," replied James,

extremely amused at finding himself named as last successor of a line which begun by an Asian magician, went through Genghis Khan, Polo, Dandolo, and ended in himself. She had used the exact kind of humbug which a London-bred boy, like him, would be the first to detect and laugh at, and he did not care a bit for the jewel, though indeed it was perfectly unique.

"Will you take it ?" said the Princess. "I think not, my lady."

"I will see him," said the Princess. "Then why did you not go in at once, half an hour ago, before you tried to bribe me? I have no authority to stop you; go in now. I think that you ought to do so. I certainly cannot stop you."

"I never thought of that," said the Princess. "How very curious. Well, here is the bracelet for you at all events. The setting is common, but it is a valuable jewel."

"I

"I must decline it, my lady." "I am glad of that," said she. will give you something else. Do you like rabbits?"

"Why, my lady?"

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Boys generally do, and I would have given you some. Or a toy terrier, or a set of cricketing things; or a boat; or a pair of carrier pigeons; or a set of Waverley novels; or anything which you boys like. But I am glad you did not take my jewel. I should have hated you if you had, I know. I would sooner bind myself to pay your expenses at Cambridge than part with one of my jewels. Well then, I will go in and see him, and get sworn at. Is he alone?"

"He is quite alone. I must warn you, my lady, that his temper is very awkward. But it is right that you should see him. He will be furious with me, but it is right that you should see him. Be gentle with him."

"Gentle with him, boy? That I should be told to be gentle with him! Will he be gentle with me; with the

woman he has ruined?"

"I fear not, my lady."

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"But I came, nevertheless. swear at me, Tom.

Don't

I only wanted one little kiss before the next battle. It was not so much to ask. Don't swear at me."

"Swear at you, Aunty ?" said Colonel Silcote. "Am I a dog?"

"You do swear at me sometimes, now, you know. Let me have one more ten minutes of you. Let me love you, and kiss your dear curls once more. I swear that I will urge nothing. I swear that I will not urge you not to fight. Go; fight, my darling, if you will; and, if you are killed, I will abide the bitter end. Remember, Tom, that I am but a poor ruined old woman. They have all left me but you. Be kind to me for ten minutes. It is not much to ask. Only ten minutes."

She took out her little heavily jewelled watch and laid it on the table. “Only ten minutes of you," she said.

66

Colonel Silcote, with his sword clanking by his side, came to her and embraced her. "Aunty," he said, I believe that you are the best wɔman in the whole world."

"I am only the most foolish," she said.

"I fear so also. Why could you not have given your money and your love to some one more worthy of them, instead of to such a worthless dog as your nephew Tom ?"

"I don't know, I am sure. I suppose it was that I was fond of you." She sat down, and he, taking a footstol, sat at her knees, as he had been

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