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hopes. Its growth and progress to perfection must have been a constant joy, and Sir Frederick Leighton should be proud to have enriched London with a work in which we see the full Semitic splendour clothing Aryan grace of form.

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"Nothing is denied to well-directed labour."-SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

OU may as well give your time to large
pictures as to small ones," said Mr.
Gay to his daughter Blanchflor, while
looking at a reduced copy she had made

of a picture in the National Gallery. "It is the same
number of touches in a broader style. It does boys.
good to write in large text hand."

"I only paint for instruction and practice in art, father; I don't wish to be tempted to frame my copies. I am but a student, you know."

"Your teachers know their own business best, I suppose," said Mr. Gay, buttoning up his coat as he prepared to go off to the City. He was a partner in a thriving mercantile house, and, like many others, loved art for the pleasure it afforded him. I do not

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know that he saw, or sought, occult poetry therein; probably not. "But I fancy we get much of our niggling and small-minded work through these small pictures, and many young years are consigned to the portfolio tomb."

"But you are not for applied science through all its stages, are you, father?" asked Anima, the younger of the two sisters, a being full of brightness and enthusiasm.

"I am not sure but I am," replied he, as he meditatively took his last drop of coffee. "I fear we think more of making students than workmen. The old masters, including the goldsmiths, did not afford their pupils time for mere portfolio gatherings; they set them to apply a pattern, make an enlarged or working copy, rub in a background, or smooth off a set of tints that the master had already roughly laid; so the lads gained various practice, and their bread from day to day it mattered little whether they themselves learned to stipple smoothly or not. They worked for their master during their apprenticeship; now a master has to employ hired workmen, because work would be infra dig. for the young gentlemen, who must forsooth be kept while they are doing their studentship."

"We may well say 'the great masters;' they did great things when the school all worked together with one impulse," said Anima, her brown eyes sparkling.

"When Raphael and his school from Florence came, filling the land with splendour,'" quoted Blanchflor.

Their father smiled and spoke on quickly.

Let the child be naval cadet was

"We allow too great luxury of training time in art as in all other lines. The student is not earning his bread, he is only paying his way, in a wrong sense; that is, having everything paid for him until he is a full-fledged artist, an expert; when he must be set up in life with a cargo of pretty things in a tasteful studio, to run in debt while he waits till he has done something to make the world stare. Trade-work meant to pay can never get on so. brought up to his business, as a formerly tumbled into a ship and grew to be an admiral. Our ways may be improved, but our officers are not Nelsons. Let the art-students be set to do what work they can to save their masters' time, so shall we have larger works from these and better hope from those; both will improve, as will the public taste. An artist is wasted as a mere drawing-master." Mr. Gay drew on his gloves. "A boy swept a counting-house and grew to be a merchant; now he has a premium to do nothing paid with him, and, if his father is rich, he becomes in time-a sleeping partner! Whittington worked his way. A boy learns the method of business in an atmosphere of business; does enough to make himself just worth keeping, and

get himself educated for his promotion in his leisure half-hours; he rubs shoulders with men, not theories." Mr. Gay was in the Russia trade. "Your brother does not do much yet, but he picks up his crumbs. Young Beauclerk, who was sent with an education complete, was too grand for us; he had opinions of his own, argued them out, and let fly Stuart Mill at our heads. We could do nothing with him. We were glad when he found out that literature was his line, and left us."

"Conclusions drop rapidly through an empty mind," said Mrs. Gay.

"Motion in vacuo," said Mr. Gay, laughing.

"But the great masters rose out of the missal painters, father," said Anima, seeing Blanchflor was looking dejectedly at her picture.

"So they did, so they did. Well, it is beyond me; I must be off. Good-bye."

He was on the roof of the omnibus in a twinkling. "You are too quick, Anima," said Mrs. Gay. "A shot at a venture only hits straight by accident. Giotto and the greatest masters painted the convents and cathedrals they built; and though they did not despise minute beauty, they did not train their hand upon it. I see your father is right about the pictures, and the luxury of studentship. There is no reason why so much young work should be wasted; put children to some part of work they can do, and divide

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