Bissot or the small stereoscopic slides with which we are so familiar. Let us readily grant that photography is not a fine art itself, neither can it possibly take the place of any intellectual work; that it can exercise no power of selection, modify no expression, raise no emotion, evoke no sympathy; but although it can never raise us to the contemplation of any spiritual truth, it reproduces accurately the aspect of the material universe. Its effect upon the art of our generation has been great, not perhaps altogether good. So far, it has certainly given an undue impulse to the merely imitative faculty, while the noblest of human faculties, the imagination, has been in abeyance; but we cannot but think that its influence will tend in the long run to strengthen the latter, by endowing it with a more accurate and enlarged experience. We may at least be grateful that it has displaced a great deal of bad art. A photograph of the Coliseum or of Notre Dame is better worth having than the incorrect lithographs that used to stand for them; and the sun gives us a better idea of Vesuvius than the execrable guache drawings that were formerly exposed in the Neapolitan print-shops. And although we may regret the temporary eclipse, for such we trust it is, of miniature painting, we have little reason to deplore the annihilation of that cheap art of portraiture to which Mrs. Lirriper was sacrificed, and to the professors of which, as she says, "you paid your three guineas, and took your chance as to whether you came out yourself or somebody else."

But while the influence of photography may be clearly traced in the more careful study of form and detail which distinguishes our living subject painters from their immediate predecessors, our portrait painters have refused to profit by a discovery which might be to them an invaluable handmaid, while it never could become a successful rival.

Want of strong individuality is the characteristic of nearly all modern portraiture,-not only in the countenance but in the action and build of the figure. The old masters were all alive to the importance of making a portrait an absolute fact in the first place; and although Titian and Vandyke, each in his different way, by surpassing knowledge of treatment, ennobled the aspect of their sitters, they never sacrificed an iota of character. With modern portrait painters it is a common practice to sacrifice their strong faculties of observation to the prevailing taste of the day, or to the requirements of family affection and prejudice. Against this weakness photography bears witness in a hundred ways. Harsh, black, unpleasant, and ugly as you please, and utterly contemptible as a work of art, a photograph sets before us a true representation of the construction of the cranium, the exact set of the features, and the general build of the body, with

a marvellous accuracy that it is out of the power of any human hand to rival. No child will mistake it, the dullest clod will recognise it; yet it is but a dead image, lacking the spark of human intellect which gives life to the meanest work of the hand, and we have more sympathy with the work of a sign-painter than with it. But by the intelligent portrait painter, surely the representation which conveys the exact conformation of the skull, the air and custom, as it were, of the man in his bodily presence, rendered so faithfully by this wonderful agent, should be received thankfully and modestly; he should use it as Vandyke or Reynolds would gladly have used it, as a valuable aid, not as a base trammel. Only an accomplished painter can so use it; only he can translate its meaning. At present it is, for the most part, neglected by those who might well profit by its help, and debased by the modifications of sixth-rate miniature painters, so that many of our portrait painters are half afraid to make use of it, and altogether afraid to acknowledge its value.

That it must eventually be the means of raising the art of portraiture to a more subtle and higher rendering of truth, we firmly believe. As yet our contemporary portraiture shows very little evidence of this; but we may mention the admirable portrait-busts of Mr. Woolner in illustration of the effects produced by this wonderful discovery upon an active and sensitive mind. Mr. Woolner is probably wholly unconscious how many of the really valuable results of photography he has appropriated and embodied in his work. No portrait painter has yet seen or felt the true use of it, or we should have less reason to complain, year after year, of the portraits that are said to disfigure the walls of the Royal Academy. The infusion of that hard stern reality which we so greatly deprecate in a photograph is more than all else needed in modern portraiture, and though a second-rate painter may fear to become the slave of the process, and is ever ready to dread that his work may be superseded by its mechanical results, the truly accomplished artist, who has mastered the greater difficulties of his art, will recognise in photography the most valuable of those mechanical aids which from time to time have been placed at his disposal by the discoveries of science.

It is not however by the aid of photography, or by any special education, or by any acquired knowledge of technical processes, that any man can become a great portrait painter. A man of genius like Reynolds takes his position with the greatest certainty, though all our highly prized means and advantages have never been placed at his disposal. Such a man alone can make a right use of them, because he is so independent of them. Reynolds had no better teaching than that of a sixth-rate painter, and no greater opportunities of study and travel than such as are open now, at infinitely less trouble

and cost, to the great majority of students; yet he turned to wonderful account all his opportunities, while he did not scorn the meanest help: he derived the breadth and vigour of his style from the study of the Venetian and Flemish masters; but he never parodied their works: he made use of the mechanical assistance of his drapery-men, and gave life to their work by the faculty which enabled him to make it his own. His light was reflected by his immediate successors, and finally went out with Jackson, the last of our luminous flesh-painters. No painter since his day, not even Turner, whose highest ambition was to lie beside him in St. Paul's, has made so great a mark, or exercised so large an influence on the English school. The present school of portraiture needs above all things the direction and presence of a man of similar genius, if only to teach our painters how to throw aside the weakness which makes them the slaves of fashionable caprices, and to instruct them how to make use of the advantages, discoveries, and highly increased means of study, which of late years have been added to the general sum of their resources and experience.

LOWES DICKINSON.

IF

F one were to pay heed to much of what has been said upon platforms, and written in pamphlets and newspapers, in the course the last eight or ten years on the subject of the education of women one might be led to think that it was a matter heretofore almost wholly neglected, and that the present generation was the first to discover that women require and deserve training suitable to the share that falls to them in carrying on the affairs of life. A very slight retrospect will show how far this is from being the case. We shall find, on the contrary, reason to believe, that from the very earliest times the bringing up of girls must have been a subject of anxious care, not only to the matrons, but to the men of every civilized nation Thus, to go no farther than the Bible for examples, the pages of both Old and New Testaments exhibit many a bright portrait of a maiden armed with all the graces of her sex. If we turn to the other best known peoples of ancient days, we shall find equal reason to believe that they were not so indifferent to the education of their daughters as is sometimes rather too hastily assumed. The poets of Hellas would scarcely have ascribed their inspiration to the favour of virgins of Hellcon, had they been accustomed to the society of women incapable of literary cultivation and refinement; nor, again, under that disadvanta could they have conceived the charming feminine characters with whi their works abound. Nor would we readily believe that the advant

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ages of education were confined to a particular class of women, whose habits of life made them eager to adorn mind and body with every meretricious attraction. It is a point difficult to prove. Unhappily, it is too clear that the estimate of women at Athens was low, and the view taken of their duties as wives and mothers mean and degrading. And no doubt few would be found to rise above the low level assigned them, for women in all ages and countries adapt themselves very much to what men think of them. At the same time there could be no chance of our hearing of such exceptions as might occur, since Pericles must have expressed the general feeling of his countrymen when he said that nothing was more creditable to a woman than to be never heard of among men. that we have no data to go upon. wombs of ignorant and foolish mothers. glorious deeds of her sons redound to the glory of Athens, so we may reasonably infer that Hellenic soldiers, statesmen, and poets owed much to those who bore them, and praise the mothers in the children. The same argument might be used of the matronage of Rome. But it is not our present business to argue the matter. We would merely indicate that there are grounds for thinking that more regard was paid, and with more success, to the education of women in past ages than is commonly supposed, and remind our readers that while they are sure to hear of all the evil that can be said against the sex, and find the names of the most profligate women recorded, history is. likely to be silent concerning the great bulk of those virtuous and accomplished matrons who, content with bearing the conquerors of the world intellectual or world material, lived quiet and unknown under the shadow of their homes. We may pass to the more immediately interesting subject of the education of women in our own country.

The pretty story of King Alfred's childhood-his coveting an illuminated copy of a Saxon poem, and winning it of his mother by learning to read it-may be fairly taken as typical of the way of English mothers with their sons. There is perhaps no nation on the face of the earth where women have more uniformly claimed or better exercised their natural rights in the bringing up of their offspring. Few men have attained to greatness among us on whose character this tender nurture of early years has not left deep marks, few who have not openly and thankfully acknowledged the debt. But it may be again inferred that women who could so acquit themselves of their teaching duties could not have been rude or uneducated. And it must be said that the chroniclers of England have done them considerable justice. Our annals teem with the names of royal and noble dames renowned for every feminine accomplishment, as well as