Great Britain, where she was received in the most flattering manner, and where a number of her best paintings have been gathered. Her relatives' presence in Paris quickly brought her back there. Up to his death in 1849, her father was at the head of the establishment known, later on, as the Imperial Drawing-School, of which Rosa Bonheur was, in turn, made the titular directress, taking her sister Juliette -Mme. Peyrol-as her assistant. The pupils remember the excellence of her instruction, the friendly abruptness of her advice; nor are they likely to forget her decisive way of sending all the girls who did not possess the sacred fire back to their household duties, or her severity towards the mannish behavior of

those who tried to imitate her by voluntary oddities in their dress; for she had a horror of all affectation. She was very exacting with others, because she did not know what it was to spare herself. Up at dawn, she worked without intermission, even on the days when she granted

her life. Grown old in years, if not in mind and appearance, she was living in isolated sadness, for all her relatives were either dead, dispersed, or needed in the homes they had themselves founded. The successive loss of two very dear friends, Mme. and Mlle. Micas, who had always taken care of her house, and watched so that she should not tire herself beyond measure this loss, which was one of the deepest griefs of her life, had left her forlorn and quite discouraged. A lucky chance finally brought Miss Klumpke to her, and they now furnish an example of one of those rare friendships, such as can exist between two women of very different ages, having a protective form on one side and a respectfully devoted one on the other. The fact of being Miss Klumpke's native country is not the least of America's merits in Rosa Bonheur's eyes. A perfect conformity of tastes contributes to this close companionship, and through it the great artist has regained her courage and con

Ever since the Universal Exposition of 1867, when she received the Medal, Rosa Bonheur has sent less and less to the Salon. The vogue of newcomers, such as Troyon, has perhaps turned aside a portion of the inconstant Parisian public from her; but England still considers Rosa Bonheur the rival of Landseer as an animal-painter, and America enthusiastically grants her a place in the foremost rank. It can be said that, besides some of her greatest successes, she owes America one of the last consolations of

much larger studio, speaks of journeys to the South in the neighborhood of Nice, where, in bygone days, aided by a gift of divination peculiar to herself, the site furnished her the African landscapes where she placed her families of lions.

In these times of somber pessimism, she retains her faith in the future of her country, her faith in God, in the unlimited power of good will and all effort towards the good, and, besides, faith in herself, and proves it by having begun the sketch of an immense composition that cannot be finished conveniently until she is in the

new studio. This is to be the "Dépiquage du Blé." A number of fiery horses led by one man are trampling wheat, and forcing the grain out of the ear. As this piles itself up, all the lower part of the picture grows full of a translucent dust-cloud; and the artist is enjoying, by anticipation, the sunbeams that will play through it. The very short winter days prevent her working on this great canvas for the present, so she has turned from farm horses to finish a divine one, a 66 Pegasus," ready to spread his white wings and soar far above the flower-dappled meadow. And to further convince herself that, while she

retains her power, she is not, for that, devoid of grace and fancy, she goes on casting Phoebe's silvery quadriga or Apollo's blazing chariot on fans, with the same tiny, delicate hand that, nevertheless, has victoriously accomplished so much formidable labor.

In the meantime she tells us, with juvenile gayety, how she brought up her orphan dog, Daisy, on the bottle. Seeing Rosa Bonheur and talking with her, the thought comes that perhaps there is nothing more beautiful than winter, when, by miracle, a genial and luminous spring lies under its

snows.

OE'S character is the most complex which has yet appeared among American writers, and his genius is the most elusive and individual. He fills a very considerable place in our literary development, and yet, in important aspects of his career, he seems to have been entirely detached from it. His genius is no longer questioned, nor is his influence; and yet his impress on the spiritual life of the country is hardly perceptible. Concerning no other American man of letters has there been such a consensus of critical opinion abroad; concer ing no other native poet, save Whitma.. have there been such radical differences of opinion at home. He holds a secure place among American writers, but he is in no sense a representative writer; his character and career were deeply affected by the conditions of the time in which he lived; but one looks in vain for any vital expression of the life of his time in his prose or verse. In his criticism, it is true, there are the reflection and imprint of the literary conditions amid which he lived; but his criticism, although temporarily significant and important, was the product of his analytical skill and insight, not of his genius. He is, within narrow limits, as true an artist as Hawthorne, and at times the master of a spell which Hawthorne did not command; and yet he has left a larger legacy of second-class work behind him than any other American writer of his class.

He came early under Southern influence, he always regarded himself as a Southerner, and he has been long accepted as the foremost representative of the South in our literature; but it would not be easy to discover the marks of the Southern spirit or the Southern tradition in his work. His temperament had much in common, it is true, with the Southern temperament, but no man was more free from that intense localism of feeling which is characteristic of the South.

As a critic his point of view was that of an American slightly in advance of his time; as a creative artist he has no country. A singular detachment is characteristic of

his work at the very time when great passions were steadily rising and important historical movements taking shape. While Lowell, Emerson, and Whittier were profoundly influenced by the spiritual conditions about them, Poe took his solitary way as remote from the inspiration of the period as he was from its disturbing influence. The contradictions in his character and life were even more radical than those in his genius and art; and neither the writer nor the man is comprehensible without careful, open-minded, and sympathetic study of his conditions and career. These contradictions began with his birth; for although he was to be the most widely known of Southern writers, he was born in Boston. He was always a man of solitary temper; he never struck roots into any soil; and it seems significant, therefore, that, although born in the capital city of New England, neither he nor his parents can be said to have lived there.

His grandfather, David Poe, a man of Irish blood, was an ardent patriot during the Revolutionary period, and left a reputation in Baltimore as a vigorous and resolute person, whose will commanded his temperament. Poe's father began as a student of law, and ended by going on the stage. His mother, Elizabeth Arnold, the daughter of an English actress, who forsook the region of Covent Garden for the precarious life of a player in the New World, was a woman of delicate figure, the possessor of a sweet voice of small range, and of a charm of manner which won friends if not popular success. The two young actors were married in the South, appeared in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York, and reached Boston in the fall of 1806. Here they spent the three succeeding years, and here, on January 19, 1809, the second son was born and named Edgar. Two years later the family, sharing the vicissitudes of players of mediocre talent in a country in which the position of the stage was still uncertain, were in Richmond in extreme destitution. The pathetic appeal, published in a local newspaper, in which "Mrs. Poe, lingering on the bed of disease and