A ROWTON HOUSE RHYME.

HOURS BEFORE DAWN.
Where would I be?

Between the heather and the sea,
Beside a lozenge-windowed kirk,
That in this hour of morning mirk
Looks grayly towards the storm-gray
Manse,

Whereround tall rhododendrons dance.
There spreads a belt of greenest grass,
Where white-plumed dandelions pass
Their time in tossing on the air
Winged seed on seed, light care on care.
Between the heather and the sea

Is where I'd be.

There summer's scourge doth not prevail,

Nor shrieking winter's tempest-flail; And spring and autumn shimmer and pass

Like shadowy breath upon a glass.
Shine high the sun, brood low the dark,
Sing soft the wind, sing loud the lark,
The sowers sow, the reapers reap--
Naught touches them that there do
sleep

Between the heather and the sea,
Where I would be.

Nor dreams are theirs, nor hopes, nor fears;

Nor laughter's light, nor noise of tears;
Nor vain-breath struggle to be first,
Nor any soul- or body-thirst;

Nor any hunger, fanged and fierce,
The spirit to slay, the flesh to pierce;
Nor any memory sad or sweet:
But sleep is theirs, full, round, com-
plete-

Between the heather and the sea,
Where I would be.

Love comes not there; she owns no thrall

Within those bounds; yon lichened wall (O wisest, grimmest, best of friends!) The frontier of her kingdom ends, As who might say, "Till death-not after!"

Nor ever there rings children's laughter,

That cruellest of darling chains
Bind weary men to living's pains.
Between the heather and the sea
Is where I'd be.

Below the dappled nor'land sky
My father and my mother lie,

Safe in the garth of Tired Man's Lease:

And crowned with plenitude of peace, As they these thirty years have lain, From Life's delight and Life's disdain Secure, they share an unjarred slumber,

No jealous dreams of waking cumberBetween the heather and the sea,

Where I would be.

Thither, O thither let me wend
This goodly day of harvest's end,
Forsaking all the doing and din,
To lie and sleep beside my kin!
And first-I know-my dead shall wake
And open wide their arms and take
Close, not the grown man, but the

child

They knew, by Life yet undefiled, Between the heather and the sea,

Where I would be.

And we shall talk a little while.
My father with a grave wise smile,
My mother with a wistful tear,
Holding my hands, shall listen and hear
My tale-the telling takes not long:
Love, loss; fight, flight; an hour of
song!

Then she: "O baby, do not weep!"
And he: "It's over, boy. To sleep!"
Between the heather and the sea-
It's there I'd be.

To sleep! To sleep!
Hark! there's the knell
Relentless of the rousing bell!
Up for another day of doing,
Of fortune-wooing, fame-pursuing!
Up with what hope is left, and out,
Out for assault, rebuff, and rout!
Won I the world, the world I'd pay
To sleep, six hundred miles away,
Between the heather and the sea,
Where I would be.

"One of the men I should like to meet in England is William Quiller Orchardson." So spoke the great Shakespear ean writer of America, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, when I was staying with him on the Delaware River near Philadelphia.

We were standing before a large engraving of the "Mariage de Convenance," one of this famous scholar's dearest possessions.

"The idea," continued Dr. Furness, "the thought, the sense of design; the space, the refinement, the art of the whole thing, are, to my mind, perfect. The man who did that must be a charming man, and next time I cross the Atlantic I shall hope to see him." They will never meet now, but I told Sir William the story when I came home, and he looked quite shy with simple pleasure that anything of his could have found so much appreciation.

No work of Orchardson's is better known probably than this one, although, perhaps, he attained his highest standard in "Hard Hit" and the two Napoleonic pictures.

Sir William Orchardson was one of Nature's courtiers. He was refined in manner, delicate in thought, artistic in temperament.

England has lost one of her greatest painters. Orchardson is one of the names that will be known centuries hence. He was one of the few men to see his old work increase in value. He had a style of his own. "Thin" some called it, doubtless because of his means of work, whereby the canvas remained exposed: but the talent was not thin. It was rich in tone, and the work was strong. Probably no living artist painted with less impasto, and yet produced such effect of solidity.

He had great partiality for yellows and browns, madders and reds, and, whenever he could introduce these tones, did so. He loved the warmth of mahogany, the shade of rich wine in a glass, the subdued tones of a scarlet robe, the russet brown of an old shooting-suit, and as his own hair had a warm hue, he generally wore a shade of clothes which toned in with it. As gray mingled with his locks, he took to gray tweeds, and a very harmonious picture he made with his slouch hat to match.

In these days, when it is the fashion to belittle modern artists, and magnify a hundred-fold the value of socalled "ancient masters," it was delightful to come across one whose power was actually acknowledged under the hammer in his own life-time. One of Orchardson's pictures, "Hard Hit," painted in 1879, fetched nearly £4,000 at Christie's a year or so ago for America. He had the gratification of seeing many of his canvases double and almost treble in value, and yet he was always well paid for his work on the easel.

Greater men than he, men who are the most famous "old masters" of today, men like Frans Hals, on the contrary, were ill paid. Hals was terribly poor during his life (perhaps due to his dissipated and improvident ways) and disappeared for about twenty years, during which time it is supposed he was in prison for debt. Yet now his pictures fetch £26,000 and £27,000 in the market. Hobbema was even worse paid for his work. Almost the same story of constant poverty applies to Rembrandt. At a later date, a man like Raeburn, during the years of his apprenticeship, nearly starved, painting pictures which now fetch

£2,000 to £3,000. Romney, Reynolds, and Gainsborough in many cases received only £50 for a portrait which today is sold for several thousand pounds.

"No one knows his own greatness until he is dead" is, alas, often too true. Orchardson was one of the exceptions. He saw his work steadily rise in public esteem. He saw his "Mariage de Convenance," for which he originally received £1200, increase enormously in value, and his picture of "Napoleon on the Deck of the Bellepheron," painted in 1880, double in value before it went to the Tate Gallery.

But the more success he achieved, the more modest he seemed to become.

Simplicity was the key-note of the man. Simplicity of character, simplicity of life, simplicity of style. There is masterful simplicity in all his work. Look at the large majestic rooms he depicted, with one or two figures round which the interest lies. His work invariably gives one a sense of space, elegance, and refinement. It is always reserved in color and design, with great harmony and unity of effect, possibly helped by the use of a very limited range of color. His drawing was masterly in construction, highly sensitive in line, and had an entire absence of flashiness.

His portraits were, perhaps, his greatest achievement, and were extraordinary for their virility and power of characterization; they were hailed with enthusiasm by the artists both here and on the Continent. He did not do a great number. Indeed, he was by no means a prolific painter-from three to five canvases were the most he accomplished in a single year.

He elaborated his still-life as much as the old Dutch painters, but his eighteenth-century costumes were simple, the whole scheme of color and design was simple. Probably the most remarkable characteristic of his work

was the simplicity of means by which he attained his broad results.

As with his work, so with the man. He was moderate in all things. Gentle, refined, sensitive, thorough, and painstaking, always striving for better things. Never really satisfied with his work, never really satisfied with himself. A deeply religious man, he never mentioned religion, but somehow one felt he had profound convictions on this subject. His moral standards were high, his sense of justice was profound.

Two antagonistic qualities were ever fighting in the painter. The gentleness of the man, the determination of the character.

Orchardson had been a veritable hero

for years. He had really been an invalid since the last years of the century, sometimes desperately ill, and then again well enough to take up his brush and paint. Often he could only do an hour's work a day, and during that time Lady Orchardson always read aloud to him. It soothed and amused him at the same time, and volumes of memoirs and travels were his delight. His wife was always beside him when he worked, and her encouragement and criticism were of great value to his work. They were a devoted couple. Orchardson was thirty-five years of age when he married, and then he chose a wife many years his junior. Up to ten days before his death he was at his easel, finishing portraits, for this year's Academy, of Lord Blyth, and a wonderful picture of his colleague, Mr. E. A. Abbey, R.A.

At one time he had been a martyr to neuritis, and quite unable to hold the palette, so he devised an arrangement of a table, on which it stood, unless he could paint with his arm in a sling and a smaller palette tied round his neck like a pedlar's basket. Even neuritis did not stop his work. The triumph of mind over matter! There were days during those ten or twelve years when

he looked as if a puff of wind would blow him away. As time went on the constant pain from neuritis left its mark. The hands became thinner and thinner, the blue veins more pronounced. The legs seemed to be almost too weak to support even the frail body, and yet the eyes seemed more luminous, the speech more telling, and the work lost none of its brilliancy. Orchardson painted as well at seventy-five as he did forty years before. Of how many men can

that be said?

Pluck is a wonderful quality. How few people who admired Orchardson's marvellous picture of Lord Peel realized the agonies the artist endured during the time he was painting that and his following canvases? It was about 1897 that he first began to notice this pain in his left arm. After he had held the palette for some time a deadly ache would begin at his fingers and creep right up to his shoulders: a sort of dull gnawing, nagging pain. It began intermittently, and by putting down his palette for a time it would go away, but by the following year this pain had become his more or less constant companion. It gnawed at him while he stood before his canvas, it dragged at him in his sleep, and after hours and hours tossing about he would awake in great agony, for at night it seemed to get worse and disturbed the painter's rest. Some put it down to heart trouble, others to an affection of the nerves, but whatever it was, he was told that nothing could be done, nothing, at least, which could really cure the malady.

With the most splendid fortitude and pluck Orchardson realized the situation. He was still a man of little over sixty. He was at the zenith of his glory, thousands of pounds were paid for his pictures, and orders were far more numerous than he could accomplish; he had a large family beside him,

and for years he painted on with this agonizing pain, making light of the matter.

How ill he looked one day when I called! He appeared so much thinner than even a month or two previously, and there seemed a depression about the merry laugh and twinkling eyes. He wore his left arm in a black silk sling, and the hands, always thin, seemed to show more blue veins, and look more delicate and nervous than usual. His hands were even more characteristic than his face. He was painting, and beside him his palette was fixed on a music stand.

"A very awkward arrangement," he laughingly said, "but the best I can do, for I can no longer hold the palette at all."

"But the stand is just the right height, and looks all right," I said.

"Ah, my dear friend," he replied, "a subtle difference in color is very slight, but when you are standing back from your canvas and decide that a particular shade is wanted on a particular point of a particular nose, if you have the palette on your hand you can mix it at once, while if you have to walk back six or eight feet to the palette to prepare the paint to complete this little alteration, you may just get sufficiently off the shade to entirely alter the idea. I weigh every tone. I am not an impressionist."

Seeing Mr. Orchardson working under such circumstances struck me as One of the most sad and pitiful things I had ever known. Here was he, one of the greatest painters of the day, still in the prime of life, working against the most horrible odds, and yet sticking to it in a manner everyone must admire and few realize, for he always tried to make light of the situation. He painted his picture of Sir Peter Russell under these circumstances, also the portrait of Miss Fairfax Rhodes. Among his best-known