Sargent.

Harrison.

Hunt.

Whistler.

Sargent and

Harrison.

Whistler, has been the reform in hanging pictures; though he has not been allowed to carry out his plans thoroughly, yet he has managed his exhibitions much more artistically than any others in the country. In landscape his night-scene at Valparaiso is marvellous, and we doubt whether paint ever more successfully expressed so difficult a subject. But even as Homer nods, so does at times Mr. Whistler, and sometimes "impress-sions" in oil, water-colour, and etching appear with his name, an honour of which they are unworthy. Yet so long as art lives will Mr. Whistler live in his Carlyle, his portrait of his mother, Lady Campbell, and some smaller works. Mr. Sargent's Carnations and Lilies must be fresh in our readers' minds. We will only say of it that we never saw the actual physical facts of nature so truthfully and subtly rendered. It is indeed a picture whose title to admiration will be lasting, and if the reader has not already seen it or, having seen it, has listened to ignorant critics, and passed it over as being "ugly," let him go to South Kensington and view it again, for the nation is its fortunate possessor. Let him look well at it, and consider what it is. It represents a garden at the time of day when the sunlight is fading but has not quite gone - crepuscule in fact, and with the dying light of day is represented the artificial light of Chinese lanterns. This is indeed a masterpiece. Mr. Harrison's "In Arcady" is wonderful in its effect of sunshine through trees, though the picture is marred by the low type of the models introduced and by the painting of the figures. Had it but been pure landscape it would have been a wonderful piece of work. Never have we seen the effect of noontide heat so well rendered. This, then, brings us to the end of American art, and it is to be hoped that men strong as these will go back to their own country and paint the life of their own land and time. William Hunt is a man much thought of in America, but we have never seen any of his paintings, though his book shows him to be a naturalist to the heart, and the reader will do well to read it.

Here, then, we must leave England and America, only-remarking that things look bad for the education of the American public when the best Americans stay away, and when rich sausage-makers buy Herbert's works with which to educate themselves, and when catalogue compilers take over boat-loads of English water-colours with which still further to lead them wrong. America wants no such education as can be given by Herbert's senilities or English water-colours. She wants a band of earnest young men, who, having learned their technique in the best schools in the world, namely those of Paris, shall return to America and paint the scenes of their own country, and therein only lies the hope for American art.

Rembrandt.