Cavaliers, No. 7, though defective in drawing, and rather suggestive of the French picture, The Duel in the Snow, is a very notable performance coming from so young an artist.

We should have thought that the skim-milk poetry of Longfellow would have found fitting interpretation amongst our younger artists; but it is not even so. To paint from Longfellow requires some little poetic fancy; whereas Mr MacTaggart has brought nothing to it but a dogged perseverance and a mechanical process. Though, we doubt not, dead to the charms of blanket, bed, and bolster, Mr MacTaggart may have studied this morning effect from nature, we cannot congratulate him on his success. The drunken fisherman leaning on the rock we pass without remark; but the impressive rendering of the sea, and the excellent painting of the wreck, the drowned girl, and foreground generally, go far to redeem the more conspicuous defects of the picture.

Of the works of Messrs Herdman and Gavin we shall this season say nothing. We give them the opportunity of another twelvemonths' labour; and we warn them, that if their pictures do not evince a more earnest and appreciative study of nature, and a thorough laying aside of their present sickening mannerisms of colour, let them then look for judgment without mercy. We hope better things of them; let them look to it that we be not disappointed. Of Mr William Crawford's Return from Maying, No. 190, what shall we say? except that it is "sweetly pretty," and that we cannot trust ourselves to express what our feelings would be were we in the delightful situation of Mr Rees.

No. 122, La Mort d' Arthur, by Mr James Archer, is unquestionably the best figure-picture exhibited by a Scottish artist this season, The advance of Mr Archer in his profes

Whatever a correct eye

sion has been very remarkable.
and well-skilled hand, united with a very considerable
amount of intelligence, could do, might always be looked
for in his works. Furthermore, they were always marked
by a feeling of gentlemanly refinement, and occasionally by
classical scholarship. During the last three years, however,
he has attained to a more perfect mastery of the ordinary
technical resources of Art, and though his last year's
picture showed a deficiency in the capacity and discrimina-
tion of the historian, this Mort d' Arthur demonstrates
the possession of considerable inventive genius and poetic
feeling. This melody may not be instinctive in his
nature; it may be that he is only partially poetic, and
that, as it were, artificially and by a great effort. His
whole art, indeed, is systematic, rather than intuitive.
This, however, is the finest picture he has yet produced,
and not because it is faultless; far from it. But so ear-
nest has been his aim, and so high the result, that we
shall not mar the effect of its power upon the imagination
and feelings of the reader by thrusting forward its de-
ficiencies. We have not here that Arthur, as head of the
"goodliest fellowship of famous knights whereof this
world holds record".

"Not that Arthur who, with lance in rest,
From spur to plume a star of tournament,
Shot through the lists at Camelot, and charged
Before the eyes of ladies and of kings;"

but the wounded king, his wide blue eyes looking wistfully-his forehead striped with the dark blood-his face colourless as the withered moon, smitten by the beams of the springing East-his light and lustrous curls clotted into points and hanging loose-and all his greaves and cuisses dashed with drops of onset. His head lies in the lap of his queenly sister, Morgan le Fay.

Three queens-one black-hooded, sable-stoled, dark as a funeral scarf-minister unto him. The agony of lamentation, and the cry that shivered to the tingling stars, now hushed in silence. Here he lies, a dying warrior, never again to hear the noise of battle. But

"In the island-valley of Avilion,

Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,

Nor ever wind blows loudly."

In what is technically called genre Art, our local artists have been tolerably successful, and, indeed, it would have been rather extraordinary if some had not succeeded where so many have tried. Yet the success is limited at the best. Among the scores of pictures of this class exhibited year by year, how seldom do we see anything but the most commonplace rendering of uninteresting incidents. In many cases the artists do not even achieve an incident, but content themselves with representing the interior of a cottage with a Decent Auld Wife, as one of them puts it, or a young one beside a cradle. The highest efforts fall far short, for the most part, of the everyday rural life of Scotland. Undoubtedly Mr John Burr is the best man among the younger painters of this class. There is great vitality in his work. The arrangement of colour in Homewards, No. 427, is good, and the tints brilliant but we should have liked a little more refined drawing about the neck of the girl. No. 429, a sketch for a picture of lowly life and pathetic interest, reminds us somewhat of Mr John Faed's treatment of similar subjects, but it contains much of what is both better and worse than the average examples of that artist. Next in order perhaps, come Messrs Orchardson, Ross, Cameron, Edmonstone, and Legget. No. 366 is a very well

;

painted female figure, by Mr Orchardson. Of Mr Cameron's numerous pictures, the best is No. 535, Village Children, simple and natural in expression, and refined in colour. Mr Edmonstone's idea of his subject is always excellent; in Duncan Gray, No. 501, the expression is admirable, and the Highland Interior, No. 163, sketchy, but very full of light and nature. This artist might, we think, take a much higher position were he to study his colour more directly from nature. Mr Legget shows a tendency to blackness in his best pictures, but his Trawlers, No. 578, shows a decided advance. No. 143, Stringing Gowans, by Mr J. M. Stewart, is natural and carefully painted, but faulty in the drawing of the head and bonnet. No. 56, The Lesson at the Window, by Mr Proudfoot, is the best thing we have seen from this artist. But most of the pictures of this class are positively without either merits or faults to comment upon. No thought being expended upon them, and no thought suggested by them, any criticism must be a mere chronicling of small beer.

Far different is the case with Mr E. Nicol; his works always have a meaning. Striking into a new path, he has taken his place as the most original of our figurepainters. His pictures are full of character, and abound in humour of the healthiest and best description. He has as yet only given us one phase of Irish life, it is true, but he is still a young man, and his progress has been so rapid that he has a very wide field before him. The works he exhibits this year are less important, perhaps, than some of his previous ones, but three of them are admirable examples of a class of subjects he has made entirely his own. His own Foirside, No. 405, may be said to illustrate a less distressing idea of the "Onconvainancy of Single Life," than that of the earliest and happiest effusions of Mr Nicol's

humour, Pat, seated in his snug cabin here, seems to experience no such difficulties with his stocking-darning as his predecessor had to contend with in keeping together the wonderfully nondescript inexpressibles which many of our readers doubtless remember. Yet it seems serious work, too, if we may judge from the expression of his face, and Biddy's arch smile, as she peeps in at him, makes Pat's unconscious seriousness all the more effective. The picture is very felicitous in point of character, and all the details are well painted. Widow Machree, No. 284, and Flabberghasted, No. 116, are equally forcible in humorously characteristic expression, and executive ability, although the former is not, perhaps, so successful an illustration of the song as of an Irish courtship in the peasant life which the artist has so carefully studied. Improving year by year in his style of painting, we have little doubt that Mr Nicol will, ere long, extend his range of study, bringing his quick perception of character to bear upon more varied aspects of human life without losing any of his fine sense of humour. Mr Charles Lees, Mr Gourlay Steel, and Mr Giles may be referred to as among those artists who have each, in a certain sense, made a specialty for themselves; the one confining himself, in great part, to the aspects and sports of winter of which Shinty on the Ice at Duddingstone, No. 381, is an excellent illustration; the other devoting himself chiefly to the painting of animal life, occasionally, as in his Highland Gamekeeper, No. 294, successfully combined with some degree of human interest; and the third, making us familiar with wilder animal nature in its haunts, while taking his place among the more general ranks of the landscape painters. The works exhibited by these artists this season do not call for anything like detailed criticism; they differ little in character from those they