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Furthest of all from them the light vine leaves are touched in with a grace that Adrian van Ostade would not have excelled. By the embrasure of the window-just before the great thickness of the wallstands a woman, angular, uncomely, of homely build, busied with household cares. In front of her comes the sharp sunlight, striking the thick wall side, and lessening as it advances into the shadow and gloom of the humble room: wavering timidly on the plates of the dresser, in creeping half gleams which reveal and yet conceal the objects they fall upon. The meaningless scratch and scrawl of the bare floor in the foreground is the only fault that at all seriously tells against the charm of work otherwise beautiful and of keen sensitiveness; and the case is one in which the merit is so much greater that the fault may well be ignored or its presence allowed. Again, ‘La Vieille aux loques '- -a weary woman of humblest fortunes and difficult life-shows, I think, that Mr. Whistler has sometimes been inspired by the pathetic masters of Dutch Art.

We have seen already that two things have much occupied Mr. Whistler as an artist-the arrangement of colours in their due proportions: the arrangement of light and shade. And the best results of the life-long study which by his own account he has given to the arrangement of colour are seen in the work that is purely or the work that is practically decorative: the work that escapes the responsibility of a subject, And the best results of the study of the arrangements of light and shade are seen in half a dozen etchings, all of which, except The Kitchen' and the 'Vieille aux loques,' belong to that series in which the artist has recorded for our curious pleasure the common features of the shores of the Thames. Here also there is evident his feeling, not exactly for beauty, but at all events for quaintness of form. It had occurred to no one else to draw with realistic fidelity the lines of wharf and warehouse along the banks of the river; to note down the pleasant oddities of outline presented by roof and window and crane to catch the changes of the grey light as it passes over the front of Wapping. Mr. Whistler's figure-drawing, generally defective and always incomplete, has prevented him from seizing every characteristic of the sailor figures that people the port. The absence, seemingly, of any power such as the great marine painters had, of drawing the forms of water, whether in a broad and wind-swept tidal river or on the high seas, has narrowed and limited again the means by which Mr. Whistler has depicted the scenes below Bridge.' But his treatment of the scenes is none the less original and interesting. By wise omission, he has managed often to retain the sense of the flow of water or its comparative stillness. Its gentle lapping lifts the keels of the now emptied boats of his 'Billingsgate.' It lies lazy under the dark warehouses of his little Limehouse.'

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The artist's finest etchings of the Thames are six in number-we need not include such pretty dreams as his Cadogan Pier and the

like faint and agreeable sketches, like his painted Nocturnes; they belong to that order of his work. Of these six finest-these six by which his etching takes serious permanent rank-two have been done somewhat lately. The 'London Bridge' and the little 'Limehouse' (Free Trade Wharf, I think)-not the larger 'Limehouse' of the Catalogue-are among the happiest examples of the art that is swift and brief to record an impression. The spring of the great arch in 'London Bridge,' as seen from below from the waterside, is rendered, it seems, with a sense of power in great constructive work such as is little visible in the tender handling of so many of the Thames-side etchings. The little Limehouse,' published by the Fine Art Society in Bond Street, is, in its best impressions, a very exquisite little study of gradations of tone and of the receding line of murky buildings that follows the bend of the river. It is a thing of faultless delicacy. A third, not lately done, has been lately retouched: the Billingsgate: boats at a mooring.' In the retouch is an instance of the successful treatment of a second 'state,' or even a later 'state' of the plate, and such as should be a warning to the collector who buys first states of everything -the Liber Studiorum' included-and first states alone, with dull determination. Of course the true collector knows better: he knows that the impression and not the 'state' is all, and he must gradually acquire the eye to judge of the impression. A year or so ago Mr. Whistler retouched the Billingsgate' for the proprietors of the 'Portfolio,' and the proof impressions of the state issued by them reach the highest excellence of which the plate has been capable. Not aiming at the extreme simplicity and extreme unity so happily kept in the London Bridge' and the little 'Limehouse,' it has faults which these have not. The ghostliness of the foreground figures demands an ingenious theory for their justification, and this theory no one has advanced. But the solidity of the buildings here introduced -the clock-tower and houses that edge the quay-is of rare achievement in etching. For once the houses are not drawn, but built like the houses and churches and bridges of Méryon. The strength of their realisation lends delicacy to the thin-masted fishing boats with their thinner lines of cordage, and to the distant bridge in the grey mist of London, and to the faint clouds of the sky. Perhaps yet more delicate than 'Billingsgate' is the 'Hungerford Bridge,' so small, yet so spacious and airy.

Finally, there are the Thames Police' and 'Black Lion Wharf.' These are among the most varied studies of quaint places now disappearing-nay, many of them already disappeared-places with no beauty that is very old or graceful, but with interest to the Londoner and interest too to the artist-small warehouses falling to pieces or poorly propped when they were sketched, and vanished now to make room for a duller and vaster uniformity of storehouse front; narrow dwelling-houses of our Georgian days, with here a timber facing, and

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here a quaint bow window, many-paned-narrow houses of seacaptains or the riverside tradesfolk, or of custom-house officials, the upper classes of the Docks and the East-End; these too have been pressed out of the way by the aggressions of great commerce, and the varied line that they presented has ceased to be. Of all these riverside features, 'Thames Police' is an illustration interesting to-day and valuable to-morrow. And Black Lion Wharf' is yet fuller of happy accident of outline and happy gradation of tone, studied amongst common things which escape the common eye. It is a pleasure to possess these so faithful and so spirited records of a departing quaintness, and it is an achievement to have made them. It would be a pity to remove the grace from the achievement by insisting that here too, as in 'Nocturne' and 'Arrangement,' the art was burdened by the theory; that the study of the arrangement of line and form' was all, and the interest of the association nothing. When Dickens was tracing the fortunes of Quilp on Tower Hill, and Quilp on that dreary night when the little monster fell from the wharf into the river, he did not think only of the cadence of his sentences, or his work would never have lived, or lived only with the lovers of curious patchwork of mere words. Perhaps without his knowing it, some slight imaginative interest in the lives of Londoners prompted Mr. Whistler, or strengthened his hand, as he recorded the shabbiness that has a history, the slums of the Eastern suburb, and the prosaic work of our Thames. Here at all events his art, if it has shown faults to be forgiven, has shown, in high excellence, qualities that fascinate. The Future will forget his disastrous failures, to which in the Present has somehow been accorded, through the activity of friendship or the activity of enmity, a publicity rarely bestowed upon failures at all; but it may remember the success of work peculiar and personal.

FREDERICK WEDMORE.

THE BRITISH ARMY.

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ADAM SMITH, speaking of war, said: As it is certainly the noblest of all arts, so, in the progress of improvement, it necessarily becomes one of the most complicated amongst them.' If this maxim is applicable to armies in general, it seems specially so to that of Great Britain in the present day. The so-called great military nations of Europe apparently feel themselves compelled to maintain vast masses of trained men in readiness for war, offensive or defensive, as the case may be; but their armies are not dispersed in foreign lands, nor are they called upon, as a rule, to undertake distant expeditions. Their arrangements no doubt entail gigantic efforts and great personal sacrifices, but they are not enhanced by abnormal causes; and therefore a system of compulsory short service, with large trained reserves concentrated at home, affords them the means of meeting their essential requirements.

With us, however, the problem is very different, and in some respects far more complicated. Whilst our insular position relieves us from the necessity of maintaining very large forces in this country, still we have to provide means for home defence and be prepared to take a certain part in European contests; and, in addition to these, our foreign and colonial dominions entail upon us responsibilities from which the continental powers are practically free. In fact, the duties of the British army are so arduous, and its services both in peace and war are so constantly required in distant scenes, and under such an infinite variety of circumstances, that to create and maintain an organisation suited to these numerous and abnormal requirements is not only a matter of great intricacy, but one which naturally forms a constant topic of discussion, and indeed of anxiety. And when we consider that within the last few years the conditions on which our soldiers are enlisted have been almost entirely altered, with a view of giving the army an elasticity and a reserve of power which it has long sought for, but has heretofore never realised; when, I say, we consider the great change thus brought about but not yet fully matured, it is not surprising that the circumstances should be carefully weighed, and even earnestly criticised. Those who have taken any part in effecting these recent reforms have no reason to complain of the attention now

paid to the subject, their sole aim having been that the armed force of the nation shall not lag behind in regard to augmented power, but shall be in better condition to meet those varied duties which year by year become more onerous, owing partly to the greater preparations of other powers, and partly to the extension of our dominions in every quarter of the globe.

Before proceeding to describe the present organisation of the British army, which has been so much affected by the introduction of 'short service and reserve' in lieu of the former system of long service with a life pension, it will be well to look back for a few moments at the arrangements which preceded it, and which are still regarded by some as having attained the desired standard of efficiency. In what may now be almost styled the olden time-that is, in the days of Wellington and the Peninsular war-our ranks were filled by men enlisted for unlimited service, who continued to serve until old age, combined with foreign duties or campaigning, had rendered them incapable of further active work. Soldiers in those days remained for many years consecutively abroad, often in unhealthy climates, and a large proportion never returned to their native land; and although we fought and won many a battle under that régime, it was not only a costly but a harsh and an inefficient system,' many of the men being physically unfit for prolonged campaigning. The late Duke of Wellington at all events did not feel able to speak well of the arrangements of those days, or of the condition of the army. Writing in 1829, he said :

In the moments of the greatest distress in the country recruits cannot be obtained for the army. . . . It was the object of Mr. Windham's Act to make the army a popular service in England, by making service therein profitable as well as honourable, but his measures totally failed. The man who enlists into the British army is in general the most drunken, and probably the worst man of the trade or profession to which he belongs, or of the village or town in which he lives. There is not one in a hundred of them who, when enlisted, ought not to be put in the second or degraded class of any society or body into which they may be introduced; and they can be brought to be fit for what is to be called the first class only by discipline, and the precept and example of the old soldiers of the company who, if not themselves in the same second or degraded class, deserve to be placed there for some action or other, twenty times in every week.

In 1847 the period of service was shortened to ten years, with the option of re-engagement to twenty-one years and upwards, carrying a pension, and this plan with slight modifications remained in force

As an instance of the excessive cost of those days, it appears that in 1812 the cost per head for recruits was as follows:

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