since the days of William Mount. By this we mean the identification of the artist with his subject, which renders it dramatic, and inspires it with that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. In this respect he occasionally suggests the inimitable humanity which is the crowning excellence of the paintings of Millet. In passing from genre to our later portraiture we do not find the same proportionate activity and intelligent progress that we see in other departments of our art, although some very creditable painters in this department can be mentioned. Mr. Harvey A. Young, of Boston, has shown a good eye for color, and seizes a likeness in a manner that is artistically satisfactory, while he does not so often grasp the character of the sitter as his external traits. Mr. Custer, of the same city, charmingly renders the infantile beauty of childhood, its merry blue eyes, the dimpled roses of the cheeks, and the flaxen curls that ripple around the shoulders. There is, however, too much sameness in his work, a too apparent tendency to mannerism. Mrs. Henry Peters Grey has a faculty of making a pleasing likeness. She has executed some portrait plaques in majolica that are remarkable evidences of the progress ceramic art is now making in the United States. Mrs. Loop is at present one of our successful portrait painters. Her works are not strikingly original, but they are harmonious in tone and color, and poetical in treatment. Mr. George H. Story should be included among the most important portrait painters of this period. His work is characterized by vigor of style and pleasing color; he seizes a likeness without any uncertainty in technique. William Henry Furness, of Philadelphia, who died in 1867, just as he reached his prime, was allied in genius to the great masters of portraiture of the early stages of our art. He matured slowly. His first efforts showed only small promise, but he had the inestimable quality of growth, and he has been equalled by few of our painters in the study and rendering of character. When he had a sitter he would give days to a preliminary and exhaustive study of the mental and moral traits of the individual. When we come to a consideration of natural history in this period of our æsthetic culture, we find that it is the most barren of good results of any branch of our art. We are at a loss to account for this, especially as the evidences of promise are also less prominent than in landscape and genre. Not only has the number of the artists who have pursued animal painting been proportionately small, but the quality of their work has been of a low average, and lacking in the originality elsewhere apparent. In the painting of pastoral scenes, with cattle, Peter Moran, of Philadelphia, probably shows the most originality and force, and Mr. Robinson, of Boston, has displayed exceptional vigor in painting the textures of cattle, but without much invention in composition. Mr. James Hart for the past twelve years has made a specialty of introducing groups of cattle into his idyllic landscapes. They are often well drawn and carefully painted, and are in general effect commendable, although, like most of our animal painters, Mr. Hart does not seem to have got at the character of the animal as Snyders, Morland, or Landseer would have done. Mr. Dolph has painted some creditable cats and pugs in combination with interiors, and two young artists, Messrs. George Inness, Jun., and J. Ogden Brown, have executed some promising cattle pieces. Our continent is not so plentifully stocked with wild beasts and game as some parts of the Old World, but we have the panther and the bison, now fast fading into a mere traditionary existence before the rifle of the pioneer. Mr. R. M. Shurtleff has a pleasant fancy for catamounts and deer, and has made a special study of them, of which the results appear in dramatic bits of the wild life of the woods introduced into effective paintings of forest scenery; and Mr. A. F. Tait has devoted his life to rescuing from oblivion species which are fast becoming extinct, unless our game laws are better enforced than they have been hitherto. There is often too finished a touch to the art of Mr. Tait, which deprives it of the force it might otherwise have; but he has, on the other hand, painted game with remarkable truth, and he brings to the subject an inventive fancy that greatly adds to the variety and interest of his works. We might add in this connection an allusion to the ingenious carvings of Alexander Pope, a young artist who not only cuts out groups of game from a block of wood with much cleverness, but also truthfully colors the grouse and teal his skillful knife carves out of pine. The list of ladies who have been measurably successful in flower painting is very large. There is a branch of art which latterly | floral compositions. has attracted much attention in this country. We refer to still-life. Mr. George H. Hall, who is also known as a genre painter, justly earned a reputation years ago for effective painting of fruit and flowers, in which he has hitherto had few equals in this country; and M. J. Heade has devoted his attention successfully to the rendering of the strange gorgeousness of tropical vegetation. The ideal flower painting of Mr. Lafarge we have already mentioned. Miss Robbins, of In reviewing the subject we find every where abundant evidences of a healthy activity in American art. While some phases of our art, after a growth of half a century, are passing through a transition period, and new methods and theories are grafting themselves upon the old, there is every where apparent a deeper appreciation of the supreme importance of the ideal in art, and a gathering of forces for a new Boston, is at present one of the most prominent artists we have in the department of flower painting. She composes with great taste, and lays on her colors with superb effect. Some of her paintings not remotely suggest the rich, massive coloring of Van Huysams. Messrs. Seavey, of Boston, Way, of Baltimore, and Lambdin, of Philadelphia, have produced some interesting results in this direction, and Miss Dillon and Mrs. Henshaw have executed some very beautiful advance against the strongholds of the materialism that wars against the culture of the ideal, combined with a rapidly spreading consciousness on the part of the people of the ethical importance of art, and a disposition to co-operate in its healthful development. B. Clarke and R. E. Moore (American Art Gallery), [EDITOR'S NOTE.-We are indebted to Messrs. T. Mrs. A. T. Stewart, and Smith's College (Northampton, Massachusetts), for their courtesy in allowing copies to be made of pictures in their possession.] A RAMBLE IN CENTRAL HE barrenness of life in TH great cities is not conducive to perfect healthy development, either mental or physical. To those whose childhood has been spent in the freedom afforded by broadspreading fields and forests, the confinement of brick walls, the incessant clatter and confusion of the city street, become positively sickening; and as the seasons come and go, the mind longingly follows the fair and wondrous changes taking place in the early home. Now the willows are sending forth their downy "pussies;" the alders are graceful with tassels; under the shadow of the old stone wall anemones and violets are springing up among the dry leaves of last year. A little later the lilacs by the old well are gorgeous with purple clusters, and the sight of a few half-faded blossoms at the door of the corner grocery makes the heart sick for the sweet perfume blowing fresh over the fields. In the summer come the roses, and no end of wild flowers, and as the days shorten, and the night air grows VOL LIX.-No. 353.-44 A-MAYING IN THE CENTRAL PARK. chilly, covering the meadows with blue mists, there are wildernesses of purple asters and solidago, forests all scarlet and gold, and heaps of fallen leaves forming a soft rustling carpet. And so the mind runs on and on, forever following the changing seasons. Still, he who carries the enjoyment of Nature's changing beauties even in his mind only is happy in comparison to him who, born to city dust and noise, knows not even in his dreams of the soothing power of country sights needs but a little coaxing to come and make her dwelling-place even in the heart of a great city. and sounds. There are many whose means allow them to leave the city during the hottest months; but even to them, as a rule, the secrets of Nature are secrets still, not to be revealed during a six weeks' sojourn in some farmhouse, or still less observable from the piazza of a fashionable watering-place hotel. Multitudes there are in every large city who, where the gentry lived in the stately fash In early times, when New York city was in its youth, the inhabitants possessed ample space for open-air pleasuring. There was the Battery, with its grand view of the harbor, and its row of houses closely confined by business, if not by poverty, can never taste the delights of even a single day in the country, and whose knowledge of it is limited at best to the dusty highways and tracks of market-gardens which are invariably the outlying precincts of large business centres. It would seem, indeed, as if Nature took fright in the presence of trade, and drew her garments away as far as possible from the jangle and confusion incident thereto. Still, Nature is kindly, and ion of olden time; the Bowery was a quiet, shaded way, running northward to the open country, and fields and swampy meadows covered a broad space where today trade is thickest, hottest, and dirtiest. But as years rolled on, it seemed as if the great necessities of commerce would swal low up the whole of Manhattan Island. and leave no breathing-room for its inhabitants, who were rapidly hurrying and scurrying to secure homes at its up-town end. Then it was--some thirty years ago squares only, dotted here and there at random through the city. New York city is very slow to move toward improvements which require expenditure in place of producing income, but once fully under way, and the necessity recognized, no city in the world is so headlong in carrying out its project. Therefore a park once thought of and decided upon, it was already as a thing accomplished, and the wonder was that the people had existed so long without it. There was considerable consultation as to the ground to be chosen for the purpose. The site finally decided upon was almost in the centre of the upper portion of the city, covering an area of 850 acres. -that the necessity for a great pleasure- | being insignificant bits occupying a few ground began to grow in the mind of the people. The idea first assumed stability after the publication of an article on "Public Parks," by the lamented A. J. Downing, who at that time was editor of the Horticulturist. Two years later, in 1850, Mr. Downing visited England, and in a series of letters written to his own paper he dwelt at length upon the great advantages derived by London and other foreign cities from their extensive parks, where the public found rest, recreation, and all kinds of healthful innocent enjoyment. New York, which had come to be one of the large cities of the world, possessed nothing within its extensive limits worthy the name of pleasureground, its whole wealth of grass-plots Never was a more desolate piece of land chosen for a pleasure-ground. The bar |