yet always with singular beauty. Gray is the only color-a soft, purplish, silvery gray; and the silhouette the only style of drawing. By their outlines I guess that that wavering slender spike amid the glistening haze is the church steeple-that squarish blur the belfry of the court-house -the next irregular smudge a certain collection of house-roofs; but all seem as foreign and unsubstantial as shadows, so quaintly are they now clouded, now lightly revealed, by the swirling, satiny snowflakes that fill the air with particles luminous in themselves yet obscuring the landscape.

Suddenly, dark midgets attract my attention, and, pulling my cap over my eyes, I wade out into the meadow where weeds and grasses stand thick above the snow. Tough and elastic are these thin old plantstems that have kept their erectness all winter; and wild parsnips by the hundreds are holding up their hands with fingers clustered to catch fistfuls of this late cloudbounty, like children in the earliest autumn flurry, eager to welcome the coming of sliding and snowballing.

Gleaming merrily among these weeds, whose capsules still hold a treasure of seeds, romps a company of sparrows, amicable and industrious. The largest and most conspicuous, of course, are the juncos,

whose notes have so metallic a clink that once or twice I am deceived into thinking the distant hammering in a blacksmith's shop is their chatter in a new direction. Their slate-colored coats, buttoned high across the breast over white vests, like old-fashioned dress-suits, look positively black amid the purity of their surroundings, and they trot about nimbly on top of the snow, dragging their tails so as to leave a well-marked trail. With them are active, chippering field-sparrows, so small and colorless as to be hard to follow in the murk of the storm; a single olivehued goldfinch, silent and unhappy; and

phut-out from between my feet bursts a song-sparrow, scattering a fleecy spray like a torpedo. I stoop down and probe the hole. It is a well leading to a long tunnel beneath the bent grasses, and arched by thick snow. Twenty birds

could hide there, safe and warm; and at its further end I find a half-made nest, soaked and sodden, yet well worth finishing, no doubt, after it has dried. This submersion must be a frequent mishap to this and other early birds, which catch something besides worms in our mutable climate; but had the owner gone so far as to have been sitting on eggs, doubtless she would have kept at her brooding and

I followed those plucky meadow-birds that day perhaps two hundred yards, wading through the snow and matted herbage, and I thought it fun. It gave a new view of everything; and the rascals paid so little attention to the bad weather that I would have been ashamed to shirk it. Then up the hill I went, through briers and brush and laden trees, fairly floundering in the snow, hearing but not seeing a crow whose querulous tone betrayed an almost despairing loneliness and disgust, and then struggled across a bleak upland, where winter came and went at thirty miles an hour, to a road that wormed down through a shady cutting to my copse.

Here was shelter, and the birds knew it. I saw one fool of a robin (robins are mostly fools) hunched up, shivering and disconsolate, on an exposed twig where he could hardly keep his balance, as though he didn't care whether he lived or died; but all the others had stowed themselves away in snug crannies under the overhanging crest of the bank, or were wading in a little runlet at its foot, seeking food, or roosting comfortably beneath the thatch of dense cedar-bushes, and they swore

in my attempt to learn where they were and what they were about.

Finches abounded, too, searching the bark of tree-trunks for hiding beetles and insects' eggs, plucking at old flower-heads for seeds, nibbling the dried purple fruit of the brier, chirping and chatting cheerily, but never singing-except one sort, which kept high up in the tree-tops. It sang a bright, sweet, warbler-like lay, not often repeated, but breathing the spirit of sunshine and summer and green leaves in a way wonderfully inspiriting in this whirl of cold and snow. The delicate notes fairly sparkled as they eddied away with the flakes, and probably were those of the tree-sparrow- -a Northern cousin of the chippy.

During March the buds swell with sap and new energy; many forest trees begin to flower, to the delight of the kinglets and white-throated sparrows, some even before they put forth their leaves; and patches of meadow and hillside grow emerald-green with new grass, and are dotted with delicate blue and white and yellow flowers. The bluebird seeks its mate; the robin has already found one, and begun its nest; the song-sparrow is caroling to his love from every brush-pile; the

swamp is vocal with the rollicking notes of the crow-blackbird and redwing, and marsh-hawks are again coursing low over the meadows in search of mice and the awakened frogs.

Such vernal rejoicing is often interrupted, nevertheless, by an ice-storm-one of the most disagreeable incidents of this month of many moods. A day of rain will come when the temperature is low enough to freeze most of the water as it falls, and the result is that the ground, the windward side of buildings, fences, tree-trunks, and all other exposed objects, are soon perfectly glazed, and each leafless twig is incased in ice. When, as frequently happens, such a day and night are succeeded by a clear morning, and the bright but feeble sunlight is reflected from thousands of burnished, crackling twigs, as from a forest of glass, the scene is a very striking and beautiful one; but the weight of the accumulated ice often causes vast damage to shade and orchard trees--one of Nature's rudest methods of pruning.

Such ice-storms occasionally happen as late as the last week of March, by which time all animal life has begun to stir about and many birds have arrived, so that widespread distress and death are likely to follow. The little birds can usually shelter themselves, though migrating hosts sometimes become so soaked and chilled in such storms that they are unable to fly, tumble helpless to the ground, and may be caught in the hands. The larger birds fare even worse. Credible instances have come to my knowledge of eagles and swans -the strongest of land and aquatic birds respectively-becoming so plumage-soaked and loaded with ice that they could not spread their wings or rise into the air, and have thus suffered the humiliation of being taken alive or knocked over with sticks.

I recall one such season when a tempest of freezing rain had raged for thirty-six hours, though it was quite time for winter's savagery to cease, even in stern New England.

Next morning it was hard times among the wild animals in the grove, and worse out in the country fields. Seeds and buds were locked in icy chests, and the insect stores, packed away for safe keeping under the bark and in various crannies, were sealed beyond the reach of the most persistent beaks. The field-mice found that

their tunnels, bored just beneath the leaves while the snow covered them, were battered down; and the squirrels dared not venture along their slippery runways in the tree-tops, nor risk a leap from branch to branch.

The house at that time was surrounded with big trees, relics of ancient woods now almost engulfed in the growing town; these were inhabited by a large colony of gray squirrels, besides a few red ones. I could see, here and there, a head poked inquiringly out of a hole, or peering from the door of one of the little cabins lodged among the oak limbs; but not a single furry acrobat would trust himself to those glassy twigs, and I thought I could detect an anxious expression in their big black eyes, as if they wondered how they were going to get any breakfast.

The squirrels had to endure their fast, but for the birds something might be done. So we cracked a handful of nuts, broke some corn into grains, and threw these and the table-crumbs out by the door. I had actually seen no birds about, save a band of bluejays and a group of English sparrows which had dwelt in the wood-pile all winter. But in a very few minutes a plentiful company came to our table, including some whose presence I had not noted before, evidently new comers, There were song-sparrows with black ephods; the big-headed whitethroats, and their brethren with the jaunty caps of black and white; the chestnutcrowned tree-sparrows; a goldfinch, still wearing his dull winter suit; a whole host of snowbirds, in white waistcoats with ivory bills and pink stockings; nuthatches, chickadees, and, most beautiful of all, the purple finch.

This last is one of our most confiding and prettiest birds. The male looks as though he had plunged his crested head deep into the juice of dead-ripe strawberries, the rich syrup of which had trickled down his breast, staining rosily the white feathers, and had poured over his back into a pool near his tail.

How did all these little beggars learn so quickly that alms had been spread for them? Where had they been hiding? Whither did they disappear next day, when the sun had come out, the ice had melted, and not a bird visited my lunchcounter?

T

HE recent visits of M. CarolusDuran to America have served both to extend his deserved popularity and also to emphasize the distinctive art of which he is a master. His aim and style, followed by French portraitpainters, may be called the objective. The beautiful is sought and realized for the beautiful alone: the goal is art for art's sake. A Frenchman does not preach a moral sermon from it; he does not tear the soul out of art, as do the subjective artists. He finds his whole duty and delight in the reproduction of nature by means of his own individual technique. In this M. Carolus-Duran is as good an example as any. His drawing is carefully bold, his brush-handling unlabored; above all, his color is wonderfully vigorous and vivid. Take the Velasquez-like child, "Beppino," for instance. One of this painter's best works is the portrait of his wife. France has honored itself by the acquisition of this exquisite picture, and it now hangs in the National Gallery of the Luxembourg, near the artist's equally celebrated" Lilia." In the Museum catalogue it is called “La Dame au Gant," as Madame Carolus-Duran is pulling off a glove from her left hand. The other glove has already fallen on the floor. She has apparently just come in; she has not yet removed her hat. The figure is fulllength, and is painted as if walking across a room, the head being lightly turned and the eyes glancing as if for an instant at the spectator. Nothing could be more graceful than this pose, and the whole composition is as rare a union as any of the vivacious and the restful. In color it is certainly a change to a quieter symphony from the painter's usual boldness of tone. So specially gorgeous, indeed, is the color in most of his pictures that it has become his chief distinguishing characteristic. His canvases gleam with such a bewildering dazzlement of the shades of sapphires, rubies, topazes, opals, amethysts, that we fancy his own mind must itself be a constantly changing kaleidoscope. Yet his portraits are never ephemeral or trivial. They are lovely physical

creations--and there they stop. Delicious as is their eye-delight, let us be satisfied with it. Their creator has not always been fortunate in his subjects; for the most part they seem self-conscious; they are thinking about the pose. This rather reacts upon the artist himself, and we begin to fancy him, too, as a bit self-conscious and self-complacent. His studies, however, are so frank, sincere, and altogether charming-why does he not go a step further, and give them a bit of poetry? Is he only a man with a marvelously quick and sure eye for every æsthetic effect? Is he only an artist with individual style a-plenty, but nothing more? We end by looking at the unduly accentuated and glowing gowns and curtains and embroideries in his portraits rather than at the heads themselves. At the same time, all this elegant environment is a relief from the entire literalness which includes no emphasis on beauty, nor even the quest for it.

If M. Carolus-Duran has been more successful with his portraits of women and children than with those of men, the older and more eminent M. Léon Bonnat has been more successful with men than with women, and has produced noteworthy studies of the most distinguished French personalities-Thiers, Dumas, Jules Ferry, Jules Grévy, Pasteur, Carnot, Cogniet, Aimé Millet, Cardinal Lavigerie-a collection as notable for historic value as for artistic worth. M. Bonnat does more than mere brush-work; he instructs the world by word also, for he is the honored Professor of Painting at the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts. His pupils admire the fine, intelligent head-as good a subject for painting as any-with its white hair and beard, its grave and serious expression, above all the self-poise of one who knows well what he is talking about. Carolus-Duran has also had much success as a teacher. Strangely enough, the prodigal colorist comes from the north-he was born at Lille in 1837; while M. Bonnat, who is more famous for his drawing than his color, comes from the warmer south-he was born at Bayonne in 1833.

M.