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with her. And, come to think of it, I don't believe I was quite civil to him," she said. "I didn't thank him, nor say good-night. I was wild to reach you." She mused a moment, with her eyes upraised and fixed on the lamp-flame; then added, more softly, "But I recollect he said something before he turned away. It sounded like 'God bless you!' That was very good of him. Young men don't usually speak so. I would rather one should say that to me than pay me the finest compliment."

Unnoticed by her, Judge Fanshawe watched his daughter closely while she spoke. "That is a young man whom I esteem highly," he remarked quietly.

“Do you?" said Rose, with a pleased, unconscious smile, her color deepen ing softly.

*

*

Lieut. Campbell's hand was on the door-latch when he heard her speak his name, and came quickly back to her.

"I thought," she began, then stopped. From his height he looked down with smiling eyes upon the dear girl, with her frank, bright, blushing face.

"I'm afraid you will think I don't know my own mind," she said in some distress. "But when I saw you going, I thought that may-be I know well enough now, without waiting a week. I'm pretty sure that if you and papa are willing, I am-that is-I meant to say

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What His Honor's Daughter meant to say must forever remain a matter of doubt; for that sentence was never finished.

PICTURES IN THE PRIVATE GALLERIES OF NEW YORK.

II.

GALLERY OF JOHN TAYLOR JOHNSTON.

A PRIVATE picture-gallery means something more than the munificent disposition and refined taste of its owner: it is significant of many things of general interest. It may even be expressive, to a certain degree, of the range and scope of our social life, of our intercourse with nature, of our understanding of much that is related to our affections. An adequate account of pictures in modern galleries would be a comment on the ideas, the tastes, the sentiments, the manners and customs, of the men and women of our epoch.

For example, we are in Mr. John Taylor Johnston's gallery, which, in the number, interest, and value of the paintings that it holds, is second to no gallery in New York; and, with one or two pictures more, it could be made superior to any. It is wholly modern. Instead of representing a few simple ideas, like a gallery of ancient art-in, stead of presenting to us symbols and types-instead of giving us the religious and exalted,-it shows us forms

and colors that express the particular tastes of individual men, which we enjoy because we are curious-because we are interested in more things than men of the pagan or of the pagan-Christian epoch.

But it may be said that all art is a representation of the particular tastes of individual men; so we must make this distinction: while the particular tastes of the old painters were more or less limited to madonnas, saints, and goddesses, the particular tastes of our modern painters carry them over every form of contemporary life. The old painters depended upon the natural, permanent, and typical; the modern painter relies upon the occasional, the customary, and the characteristic, and he is under the rule of propriety. The modern painter is secular in his aims, and the ancient was religious; and while he was religious he was not necessarily ascetic, but bore as free and uncorrupting witness to the loveliness of material beauty in the figure of a boy, girl, or woman, as, to-day, a pious

girl does when she paints a wreath of flowers. But we make a distinction between the beauty of a flower and the beauty of a woman. We look upon

the undressed loveliness of the first without reproach; but the undraped form of a girl is generally excluded from our art-galleries. Not only is our philosophy at fault, but our sentiment of the beautiful is feebler than our notion of propriety; and the suggestions which come from minds not free from mediæval prejudices against what is called the flesh-are attributed to beauty itself, which is irreproachable.

When we get our Phidias and our Titian to work with our Darwin and our Huxley, we shall understand that God's unimpeachable manifestation is not less in the natural than in the spiritual, and that it is as blasphemous to impute evil or corruption to the beautiful, as to accuse God of wickedness. Who can believe that the beauty of the Venus of Milo ever inspired a debasing sentiment, or ever made a corrupting suggestion, in the mind of a man? But when Satyrs carve, and Fauns paint, the expression of animal life must dominate in art. Our mistake is, that we abuse the animal, instead of frankly accepting it when nature reaches no higher expression. How much the painting of the nude figure may represent all that is most sacred in our minds, we may see, perhaps, in a picture by Gleyre, recently added to Mr. Johnston's gallery, and representing two Greek women in the classic atrium of a Greek houseone, a mother, about plunging a rosy child in a rose-marble fount; the other, a wholly naked and strikingly natural girl-natural, like Palmer's "White Captive," who stands contemplating the struggling and vexed boy. It is a frank example of the nude in art, and it is wholly free from any thing corrupting or debasing. We use the words "corrupting" and "debasing," because they express the influence commonly imputed to any thing like nude art, and, as commonly, are supposed not to be present in art which belongs to the epoch of hypocrisy or of clothes.

Now, just step with us to the opposite end of Mr. Johnston's gallery. We are before a picture by Knaus, a famous painter, who cares nothing for the Greeks, who loves the homely, the characteristic, the humorous, and who is inimitable in his way. He has painted an old beau and two young German peasant-girls in the group before us, the two girls laughing, hearty, honest, sitting under a tree, the old peasant standing before them. What could there be in such a group to alarm a Christian? And how much must there necessarily be in the nude figures of Gleyre to question on the score of modesty and propriety? Possibly you might think this. But just look at the face of Knaus' Old Beau! As nature, it is wonderful-far beyond the pure and beautiful contours of Gleyre's nude figures; but, as suggestion, as companionship, infinitely less. Look at the old peasant with his senile Satyr-face; look at him with his moist, sparkling eyes, his flabby, slobbering mouth, his effete figure, and familiar expression-nothing more ignoble, nothing more disgusting, than that face. It is only because we can laugh at it, it is only because it amuses us with its libidinous senility, that we tolerate it. This old beau belongs to art as Falstaff belongs to art. His face is inimitable-a wonderful portrait of reality, replete with vulgar suggestions; while Gleyre's nude art is replete with pure and lovely suggestions. Childhood, an incident of home-life in antiquity, the morning bath, a chubby boy plunged into a rose-marble fount, a lovely nude figure seen in profile, leaning upon the marble basin, and the cold and severe and elegant accessories of a Greek interior, to localize the subject-these make a picture which, save the novelty of so frank, so real an exhibition of the nude in art, is not only instructive as a faithfully studied representation of a pagan household, but is also pleasing as a representation of home-life in an artistic and charming form. Gleyre is no colorist, but he loves a pure line and a clean tint. His flesh-painting is thin, but delicate, and he is a fine artist, but not a great paint

er. Knaus' Old Beau is an admirable piece of painting, and the color is brighter, and the touch in the old man's head delightfully spirited, crisp, and brilliant. If we are honest in our purism, we would prefer Gleyre's nude figures to Knaus' Old Beau.

If we are broad, complaisant, indulgent, like Shakespeare, we will heartily enjoy the striking and vivid characterpainting of the German painter, and no more trouble ourselves about his condition than about Mr. Beard's “Jealousy" -a picture which we recall, in which jealousy is expressed by an absurd and distressed rabbit witnessing another preferred to himself. To the natural man, the triumph of instinct is not a subject of satire; it is a subject of satire only in a corrupt society, and in men who dishonor impulse. But, from pictures which raise such troublesome and delicate questions as the two just spoken of, look upon that fine specimen of Corot —a wood-scene-recently added to Mr. Johnston's fine collection. If Corot's art is still a secret to you, look at this pieture until you are permeated by the sentiment of nature which it expresses, and understand the delightful, easy (although, in fact, we suppose it to be the result of very great labor), natural style which it exhibits. Every thing is cool and dark, but not cold and black, in this picture. The daylight hardly gets into the woods, but you see it is outside in the spots of light that are seen through the trees at the horizon. And how fine is the rendering of light! how transparent and cool the shadows! how light and leafy the masses of foliage, at once airy and penetrable! It is a French wood—that is, a damp, dark place, with elegant and thin trees, not grand and solemn like our American woods. These tall, reed-like trunks, these scattered branches, this freedom from undergrowth, is unlike the tangled and profuse and varied vegetation of our forests; but it is nature, and it is nature as painted by a gentle and naïf man. The painters of our woods could be taught something by this specimen of Corot. The quality of the color, the

absence of dryness and paintiness in the touch-a touch remarkably light and fleeting and suggestive-is worthy of attention. The scattered lights tell as light, and the gray, dim green of the woods is finely rendered. No style is better adapted to the subject; it is close to it. How far is the false and the artificial from Corot's pallet! But this wood-scene is a melancholy picture; it is a picture that would be good for the eye of a tired man, and make a soothing solitude for his reverie. We can imagine a positive man taking infinite pleasure out of Corot's art, precisely because it is so uncertain and harmonious, and so tender in its meaning; for do we not ask another to give us what we lack ourselves? But perhaps your sympathies are not in the direction of such art-expression. Perhaps you like éclat the dazzle and force of effect of full daylight. Such suggestions of dampness and melancholy as Corot's woodroad make you shiver, and you ask to feel warmth, to see color and sunlight in a landscape.

In Mr. Johnston's gallery, Jules Dupres will give you what you want. This little canvas, not much larger than the printed page you have under your eyes, is a remarkable piece of effect; it is bright, vigorous, and rich in color, and free and full in style. It is open to the charge of being forcé or artificial in color, but it is vivid, and it is capable of giving a sensation. However, while you enjoy so much effect, while you marvel at the very solid painting of the lights and the very transparent and thin painting of the shadows, you must let me remark, that the tree is not beautiful in form, and that bitumen may be said to play too great a role in the picture. And yet this little picture is one of the most instructive in its method of painting-so instructive that we believe it could teach many of our landscapepainters just in what respect their method is monotonous and feeble. It is the work of a master. Why is it that both of these specimens of French landscape-art are more interesting and charming than any American landscape

in Mr. Johnston's gallery? It is because, in their style and sentiment, or method and feeling, they are superior to manner and feeling in the examples of our American painters. And we say this in front of the finest picture ever painted by Mr. Church.

The "Niagara "-the first Niagara painted by Mr. Church-is the only adequate representative of American landscape-art in Mr. Johnston's gallery. The drawing of the water, the rendering of the movement and character of the current, is finer than any thing we have ever seen of the kind in landscape-art. This "Niagara " is a remarkable study; it is a great part of the fact of nature, but its interest is closer to science than to art. It appeals to the intelligence, and it is the work of a good, cold understanding. We respect the talent of the artist, we admire the picture, but both are without charm; and, as art, the picture has very little that we care for. But in these bits of French landscape, so unpretentious, so strictly within the means of art-expression, so charming in suggestion, so natural, we have something that expresses a love of nature. They are full of sentiment, and indicate an artistic aim. We do not wish to detract in the least from what is justly due to Mr. Church as an artist. He has very pronounced merits next to very great defects. He is the only landscapepainter living who has any thing cosmical in aim and idea. But the very comprehensiveness of his aim, creditable as it is to his ambition, is hurtful to minor charms and precious truths in landscape painting. Mr. Church's "Niagara " justly holds a place of honor in Mr. Johnston's gallery, for it fairly represents some of the most striking, some of the most studied characteristics of American landscape-art. But, for the poetry and beauty of American landscape-art, we must look to Mr. S. R. Gifford; and yet the little specimen of Gifford in Mr. Johnston's gallery is a minor, if not an inferior, example of his talent. While Church is at his highest level in the "Niagara," all the other landscapists of our school are merely

represented here by characteristic pictures.

The series of landscapes known as Cole's "Voyage of Life" are not to be considered as landscapes; they are good allegories and poor landscapes. They represent Cole's ideas in a graphic but conventional manner. Were they less conventional they would be less intelligible; and we require an allegory to be perfectly manifest and expressive. Cole's pictures of the "Voyage of Life" must always have a charm for Sunday-school teachers; they must always be striking and admirable to people who write and read tracts. They are not very close to nature, but they are expressive of a common and universal conception of life. But there is no mighty invention in them-invention such as makes a part of the glory of Milton; there is no intense reality, no clutch upon fact, as in Dante. And what are symbol and allegory in the hands of any but exquisite or powerful masters ? Consider Cole's "Voyage of Life," and be wise. Symbol and allegory are means only for the great ones, as the epical is an aim only for the greatest man.

Mr. Johnston's gallery is rich in examples of the most celebrated continental painters. He has a Horace Vernet, perhaps the finest in this city, a large picture representing a cavalry charge upon brigands in the mountains -a spirited and vigorous picture. The velocity and energy of action in the picture are extraordinary. But you should remark that this world-famous painter has no precious element; that his talent is wonderful while his genius is inferior. But the quality of his mind is as good as Walter Scott's. He simply belongs more to the present. There is one criticism to be made upon every picture painted by Vernet-it is, that he never appeared to caress his work into beauty, or linger over it in love. He painted rapidly, as though his brush were a sabre with which to dash through his subject. His just observation, astounding memory, and uncommon facility of execution, always enabled him, however, to produce something striking and

natural. You will see, in Mr. Johnston's fine specimen of Vernet, just as much as a gallery of Vernet's pictures could enable you to see. His merits and defects are constant-blood-relations which he cannot shake off. Every thing has the same texture in his work, and very much the same value as color. All differences are expressed by positive light and dark, or by warm and neutral colors; he gives nothing of the gradation and delicacy and mystery which you find in the work of a colorist. A much finer work of art, and equally spirited, is a remarkable specimen by Decamps. It is a subject in which action and character are just as necessary as in Vernet's soldiers. It represents an Oriental officer of rank, surrounded by his guard of armed runners, going rapidly through the street of an Eastern city.

If you wish to see the difference between the works of two very remarkable men-both men alike interested in action, in the gesticulation of figures, in manners and customs, in the characteristic-both men positive, emphatic, brutal-you must consider Vernet's and Decamps'. Both were interested with similar subjects, but their gifts are so different, that, while Vernet never rose above the level of a clever journalist, Decamps reached the expression of an original artist. He may be said to supplement a Vernet's rapid, matterof-fact report of the action and locality of a group of figures, with an artist's expression of the sensuous and subtle, which seems to us at the bottom or in the life of most things, and the presence of which, visible or invisible, unindicated, unsought for by an artist, classifies him at once among the prosaic and limited as a Vernet, a Church, a Bierstadt. Now, here is Decamps, once one of the most dis puted names in French art, to-day understood as a remarkable colorist, a man of imagination, and with a taste for the barbaric. He never studied the figure as Vernet; he could not draw with the same power and certainty; but here is one of his finest pictures to be

compared with Vernet's; and, to us, in point of action, it is not less spirited, while for character, expression, variety, color, and tone, it is infinitely superior. Perhaps there is no such piece of mellow, rich, and harmonious color in any gallery in New York as we see in this Decamps. Certainly, nothing in Mr. Johnston's gallery is equal to it as a work of art. The painting of Oriental stuffs and weapons, the painting of the faces, is what we understand as the most expressive, the least obvious, the most powerful and subtle. The surface and solidity of bodies, the play of color, the depth of tones-all that we may suppose would be cared for by an artist and a painter-are powerfully rendered here. Vernet's group could have been just as well expressed in a black-andwhite sketch, or in a drawing; but this sensual, brutal Turkish Patrolman, with his armed foot-runners, these walls, this splendor of light, this gloom of shadow, glowing or transparent, is quite beyond any slight or cold means of art-expression; it is beyond mere science; it is the result of a gift, and it is the sign of genius, of the untaught; it is incommunicable, like poetry, like the art of great painters, like the eloquence of convinced and impassioned men.

Mr. Johnston has another fine specimen of color in a picture by Roybet, which represents a jester and a page witnessing a cock-fight. The subject, perhaps, is only a pretext to make an interesting picture of a scarlet doublet next to a black-and-gray costume. And what a superb scarlet is that of the jester's coat! But this picture is probably more interesting to painters than to average lovers of art, who do not care so much for style as for story and character; and in Roybet's pictures the style is the chief aim of the artist. Just leave this picture, and let us stand before a peasant-girl, by Breton. A single figure; the girl is knitting as she tends her sheep; the afternoon light lies on the sea and warms the sky. This is no pretty peasant of fan-painters; it is no English idyl of rustic life, at once tame and elaborate and insincere. It is an

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