until we learn to respect work for its own sake, and not for the name it bears. The craftsman can never be an artist; the copyist does not necessarily share one spark of the genius of the master: but while I have the thought, the feeling, the truth of the artist conveyed to me by a copy, I shall prize the picture, just as I should the book, which, by means of types arranged by a nameless printer, transmits to me the thoughts of a Plato or a Luther. But we are again forgetting the pictures around us. You must allow me to throw the rein right over the neck of my enthusiasm as I look upon Mr. Faed's principal work of the year,-Highland Mary. This is one of those pictures for which I am ready to thank and bless an artist: so deep, so delicate, so pure is the pleasure it imparts; so beautiful and unsullied are the emotions it awakens; so sweetly attractive, so airy, so endless the imaginings it evokes; so thickly-crowding, so noble, so natural, the thoughts and associations it suggests. Highland Mary is on her way back from Ayrshire, and has already reached the mountains of native Argyllshire. She rests by the wayside. Around her are mountain flowers,

the fox-glove, the heath-bell. In the distance the view is closed in by the blue and gray of the hills. With one hand she draws closer round her her plaid of tartan. Her other rests on the little scarlet bundle in her lap. Her hair is bound by a simple blue braid, and the blue, gray, and russet of her dress combine into a pleasing harmony of color. Everything breathes a subdued but tender loveliness; not the loveliness of Greece, not the loveliness of Italy; not the loveliness of regal purple or queenly jewels; but that which lurks in the sequestered dell or about heathery braes, and which peeps out here and there from the cottage and the dress of the peasant. But this is not all. There is a picture within the picture. There is a central beauty, to which

all the rest of the loveliness ministers, and up to which it leads. This is the face of the figure; that face of Highland Mary which beams on you from the hill side, holding you with its pensive beauty, so faultless yet so Scottish. The full, ripe lips are closed in silent kindliness and love, no Paphian curve expressing the consciousness or pride of beauty. On the cheek rests the color of the mountain rose, that indivisible blending of the dawn-red and the snowwhite, which is nature's highest effort in hue. The eye, soft, deep blue, looks out in maiden purity beneath the unwrinkled maiden brow. Spread over the whole face, breathing through its every feature, what thought is that which is its life and spirit? Ah, we can guess it well! Highland Mary is dreaming of that strange Ayrshire youth from whom she lately parted; that swarthy youth with the glittering eye, in whose words dwelt so potent, so perilous a fascination. She thinks of Robert Burns. A thousand fancies and questions, of virgin pride, of womanly ambition, of glad, loving surmise, are whirling in summer tempest, spanned by its rainbow, through her breast. Further than this the poet-painter does not reveal: but who can hinder imagination from looking somewhat beyond, and seeing the lowly headstone in the highland churchyard, beneath which so soon were laid all the earthly hopes and loves of Highland Mary!

Smith. Permit me to express my decided hope that your Pegasean enthusiasm has finished its flight, and to congratulate you both on the emptiness of the rooms and the patience of your one listener. But Mr. Faed's is no doubt a beautiful picture, a work of unquestionable genius. Have you reflected on the seeming difficulty of painting a really beautiful female face? No manifestation of beauty exercises. so entrancing a power over man. The grace of the forest,

the color of the garden, the evening on the sea, the morning on the mountains, all these possess but a feeble enchantment compared with that of the countenance of a lovely woman. I must add that the power to bring this beauty upon canvas is very rare among artists. Faed is one of the few painters who has an unerring eye for female beauty; among living painters he seems to be without an equal in this department. I trust that nothing may induce him to desert the manifest walk of his genius.

This picture pleases me, also, because it supports a little theory of mine, which, countryman as I am, has been discussed more than once at my fireside. In perception of what may be called typal loveliness, in capacity to appre hend abstract and, so to speak, geometrical beauty, partic ularly of the human face and form, the Greeks surpassed all nations. In the very accuracy of their perceptions here, might lie, partially at least, the cause of that restriction of their sympathy for the beautiful, which contrasts. with the expansiveness of the Gothic spirit. Grant that there was a certain meagreness, a sameliness, a too scrupulous elegance, in their sense of beauty; grant that they bound the zone of Venus a little too tightly; yet I think you will find that with them lay the discovery of those essential, geometrical forms, of which all beauty in lines must be a modification. This face in Mr. Faed's picture is perfectly Scotch. The brown hair verging to golden, the cheek somewhat round and full, the general tendency to depart from the perfect oval, these all abandon the Aphrodite model. Yet the Greek type is discernible. It is seen in the proportion and unity of the features, in the chiselling of the brow, in the delicate straightness of the nose. It is the Greek ideal of female loveliness, only not shaped from Ægean foam, or breathed on by Ægean

breezes. It grew amid the mountain heather, and its cheek was visited by the rough wind of Scotland.

Thom. It is unpleasant to hint an objection to such a picture, and while Mr. Faed gives us such beauty, I for one have not the heart to bid him venture on any modification of his system. But what do you think of that background?

Smith. The mountains are certainly generalized. I cannot say I like generalization; but you know the connoisseurs are very terrifying on that subject.

Thom. We must be too severe neither with Mr. Faed nor with the connoisseurs. That the background of this picture is generalized, there can be no doubt. The painter evidently concentrated his power upon his figure, and left the trees and hills in great measure to the brush. Yet the generalization is not extreme. The mountains, you observe, are by no means strictly conventional,-in form at least. They are bold and serrated, true to the general type of the Argyllshire mica schists. Mr. Faed has evidently looked on these mountains, and that with a penetrating, mindful eye. So much on his behalf. To the connoisseurs it must be conceded, that their theory of generalization, if not true, is an apology for and aim at truth, and finds its analogue in nature. What is that theory? It is that every picture should have one central interest, idea, object; that everything ought to be subordinated to this; and that, therefore, the painter should fling in his backgrounds in broad, general, conventional masses, lest the minute perfection of their painting arrest the attention of the beholder, and diminish the power of the central idea. Now, it is unquestionably true that nature teaches and pleases by single effects, keeping in view particular objects in particular cases, to the marked, though not entire, exclusion of others. The carolling of the birds in temperate

are

climates, the songs of the linnet, the lark, the blackbird, are plainly intended to be delightful to man, and poets in all ages have testified to the completeness of success with which the intention has been carried out. It is equally manifest that the colors of tropical birds—the most brilliant of nature's colors, though inferior,in all qualities save brilliancy, to the color of flowers and precious stones intended to be a source of joy. I do not mean, of course, to assert that everything on earth is meant exclusively for man. The manifestation of his own glory and perfection is an all-sufficing end to the Creator. Yet is it true that. man, in virtue of his Divine origin and relationship, has had his eye so far opened to the mystery of nature, that the mode in which he is affected by any natural phenomenon may lead him on by gentle hints to the intention of nature in the case. In the contrasted instances I have quoted, the unmistakable effect aimed at, in the one, was of sound, in the other, of color. And what I would have specially observed, is the singleness of the effect in either case. The plumage of the nightingale does not divert your attention from her note: you listen in vain for anything beyond an unmusical screech, from the bird that glances with dazzling flash through the gloom of southern forests. Look, again, to the vegetable world. Take the two great families, discriminated for Art, not for Science, of the flowers and the trees. Of all the ministers of beauty, pure and simple, flowers are the best accredited: their office in creation it is impossible to mistake. "What is the use of flowers?" This question, in its generally received implication, is one of the most foolish and ignoble which can be put. Economic use they have none. They are nature's living antithesis to economic use. They exist to be admired, looked at, loved. They are chalices of Divine workmanship, of purple, and