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there are many more women of good ability than men, as it is said there are parts of the world where the average height of the people is decidedly above that of countries having proportionately many more tall men, but unfortunately still more very small

ones.

Now and then ladies and gentlemen, clamouring for perfect freedom for the two sexes, condescend to inform their opponents that, though there have been more male than female celebrities, the explanation is be sought in the unfairness with which the female sex is treated. "Who can tell," it is asked, "whether ladies are unfit to be generals, statemen, surgeons, barristers, clergymen, as long as they are debarred from entering these professions? Who can tell whether women are not the equals of men until they are both educated alike, and given the same opportunities of distinguishing themselves?"

I should be disposed to attach more importance to these objections were I not aware that in those callings which are and always have been open to women, they have utterly failed to equal their male rivals.

Can Mrs. Worthington Bliss and Claribel be compared with Handel, Spohr, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, and Auber? Can Sappho, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mrs. Opie, Madame de la Mothe Guyon, and the charming Felicia Hemans, compare with Milton, Dryden, Byron, Petrarch, Virgil, Homer? Can even Mary Somerville be placed in the balance against Pascal, Arago, Galileo, Archimedes? Can Mrs. Penrose, better known by her nom de plume as Mrs. Markham, be held to equal Macaulay, Hume, Bancroft, Froude, Thucydides, Xenophon? Can Olympia Moratta, for whose abilities and learning I have profound respect, be considered any set-off against Bentley and Porson, Pusey and Max Müller? Can Mrs. Henry Wood, Miss Dinah Muloch, Miss Yonge, Mrs. Beecher Stowe, compete with Scott, Manzoni, Voltaire, Goethe, Fielding? Can even Marian Evans and Jane Austen outweigh Lytton and Thackeray? To all these questions there

can be but one answer.

Even among painters-surely painting is open to both sexescan the splendid productions of Rosa Bonheur and the superb "Roll Call," of Miss Thompson be placed in the scale against the masterpieces of Alfred Elmore, Holman Hunt, Millais, and Frith, among living English painters alone, or against the long, long list of great painters whom Italy, Flanders, England, Greece, ay, and France and Germany have, in ages past, produced? Why, all the masterpieces of female art in the world scarcely deserve mention by the side of the splendid masterpieces of Murillo and Sir Anthony Vandyck. It would take hours to enumerate all the

men, who, in a hundred walks, have left a name that will last for ever, who have done or written something noteworthy, which the world cannot afford to let die. Fifty names, at the outside, would embrace all the women who have left their mark on the age in which they flourished.

In one walk of life alone women have held their own against rivals that ignoble walk which consists in being the favourites of a powerful, arbitrary monarch. But women will not care to know that Madame de Pompadour, Madame de Maintenon, Nell Gwynne, Jane Shore, Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and Abigail Masham, are quite equal to Villiers, the Despencers, and Piers Gaveston.

But, in sober earnest, the rights of women should be conceded as a right, and not as a favour. All those professions in which they can successfully engage should be flung open to them. They should not be prevented from giving their attention to any kind of occupation in which they can do good to themselves and the world. But I should deeply regret were women, in their eagerness to prove their equality to man, to forget that peaceful home. life in which men cannot take their place, and where they can succeed to perfection in making themselves and others happy.

V.

ROSA BONHEUR.-There is a lady-of course, I refer to Rosa Bonheur-whose transcendent ability as a painter of animal and still life places her little below the late Sir Edwin Landseer. There is something indescribable in her paintings, so beautiful, so natural, so life-like.

This gifted woman is the daughter of an able French artist, who, in her early childhood, directed her studies, and gave her the inestimable benefit of his advice and experience. He used to take her with him into the country; and, while he was busily engaged in his work, though never too busy to remember her, she passed her time studying and copying nature. To those early lessons she owes more than to anything else, except to her own wonderful genius and untiriring perseverance.

Rosa Bonheur was born at Bordeaux, in 1822, and from an early age appears to have devoted herself to art. Some of her brothers and sisters have attained great eminence as painters. The painting, which established her reputation, is her "Labourage Nivernais." But another masterpiece, better known in this country, is her "Horsefair;" the latter was exhibited, in 1855, at the French Exhibition, in London, and called forth a burst of admiration which her later efforts have deepened.

Take one of her most beautiful paintings-" The Return from Pasture"-what is there in it so charming, so sublime? It is not that the picture is merely the representation of nature-a very unsuccessful and poor painting may be that. It is that the glories of the summer evening, the exquisite contour of living animals, are idealised, and, at the same time made so real, so beautiful, presented, as it were, so vividly to the eye of the spectator, that the painting produces an effect on the mind which the original could not.

Though charming enough, the scene depicted, in the "Return from Pasture," is not an uncommon one. In the foreground are some cattle and a few sheep, and a peasant lad, on horseback, is driving them homewards. At the back the sun is majestically setting, and its last rays are lighting up the sky with the splendour of a fairy scene.

A thousand times, every summer evening, a similar scene is being enacted in different parts of Europe. The subject is so homely that it would seem hard, nay, impossible, to give the representation of it on canvas an interest that never flags. But see the creative power of genius. A picture, true to life, even in its minutest particular, is by the painter's magic art made almost sublime. The cattle in the foreground, slowly returning homewards, have an interest for us no living cattle would possess.

The sheep, on whose backs the sun is shining so brilliantly are in all respects natural, and yet the expression, the grace of outline, the grouping give them beauty, a charm that the same sheep would never have in real life. And, then, the boy on horseback,-what a lovely picture of a shepherd lad! He is not remark. able for beauty, or stature, or intelligence: his horse is not unlike ten thousand horses to be found in any English county: yet the boy and the horse together have something about them which no one could faithfully describe, but which gives them more interest and greater attractions, than all the shepherd boys have ever possessed who have driven cattle home on a summer evening, mounted on quiet, badly-groomed horses.

VI.

THE ROLL-CALL.-This celebrated picture, by Miss Thompson, a young English artist only twenty-six years old, has for more than a year been the wonder and admiration of all classes. It has been seen by hundreds of thousands of spectators, not as usually the case, belonging exclusively to the better-educated classes. Well does the Roll-Call deserve this admiration, for a more remarkable work never was produced by an English lady.

The subject is happily chosen, one which, for an Englishman, must

always have interest. The scene is the muster of the Foot-Guards on the afternoon of the Battle of Inkermann at least, some of the newspapers have given it this name; but Miss Thompson, certainly as good an authority as the newspapers, has not stated that it represents the afternoon of that gloomy November day. The name she gave

it is the "Muster of the Guards after a winter battle in the Crimea." The snow on the ground is enough to show that the scene depicted is not that of Inkermann, which, unless I am mistaken, was fought on a gloomy autumn morning, when snow was not lying on the ground.

To the left of the picture is an officer on horseback. In the very front, and to the right of the mounted officer, is an orderly calling the roll. Before him, stands a small body of gigantic guardsmen, the remainder of the Coldstreams. A great fight is over, a dear-bought victory gained, and the survivors of the carnage and strife of what may have been an awful and memorable morning, are drawn up for the lists of the killed and wounded to be made out. The picture is wonderfully like what, no doubt, often actually took place. There is none of the romance and glitter which some people associate with war, and this adds greatly to the value and importance of the painting.

The expression on the faces of the men, the wonderful perfection with which every bear-skin, every tunic, every rifle is drawn, the sad, yearning look of some of the men, mourning for fallen companions, the resolute, sorrowful bearing of all, the mained limbs, are all so sternly natural that no one can turn away without having a better conception than any verbal description would convey of the sad scenes which "after the battle" presents.

The genius of the young artist will, no doubt, not desert her, and in the future her name and reputation may go down to posterity among the greatest of the present century.

VII.

THE OLD FRENCH WAR.-It is a long time since the Battle of Waterloo restored peace to Europe, sorely in need of repose; it is much longer since the crowning victory of Trafalgar broke the naval power of France for half a century. A still greater number of years have flown away since the commencement of the troubles which culminated in a quarter of a century of bloody hostilities. Yet, a short time ago many officers and privates still survived, who not only remembered the commencement of those wars, but had actually played an important part in the earliest of the battles of the great French revolution.

It is so long since the events occurred to which I have just alluded that it seems almost inconceivable that men are still alive

who took part in them; but I shall confine my remarks to a few of the veterans who have recently gone to their rest.

Not ten years have elapsed since Lord Combermere, who commanded the allied forces under the Iron Duke in the Peninsula, passed away at the age of 93, while as recently as the 12th of January of the present year died at Brighton Admiral Sir Augustus P. Westphall, the last surviving officer of Nelson's ship-the Victory-at Trafalgar. A few days earlier the sailor who was in charge of the boat which landed Napoleon at St. Helena, sixty years ago, died at the age of 96. Almost on the same day died Captain Payne, formerly of the Grenadiers, aged 91, who had seen some hard fighting before many of the white-haired men of the present day were born. Five years ago died Lord Gough, who entered the army in 1794, and still more recently Field-Marshal Sir John Fox Burgoyne, the son of the unprincipled and unsuccessful, though courtly and accomplished General Burgoyne, of the old American war of independence, passed away. Sir John Burgoyne held an important command in the Peninsula sixty years ago, and yet survived the close of that great war nearly two generations. The past winter has greatly thinned the ranks of the survivors of the old wars, fought before our fathers were born, and while our grandfathers were babies in arms. Only a few aged soldiers are still alive who connect us with Nelson, Abercrombie, and Moore. One of these relics of olden times died on the 15th of March, at Brighton : Field-Marshal Sir William Maynard Gomm, a gallant old soldier, Colonel of the Coldstreams and Constable of the Tower, had served everywhere and had done good service everywhere. He carried the

colours of his regiment into action, in Holland, in 1798, and was made a K.C.B., in 1815. One feels that in losing such brave veterans something has dropped out of the history of the world, which increases the interval separating us from the great wars and memorable events of seventy and eighty long years ago.

VIII.

A MODERN BATTLE.-Reviews and mimic representations of battles have always possessed for me a strange and inexplicable interest The orler, the discipline, the fine physique of the men, the enlivening strains of the bands, have had and still have for me a charm, a fascination, which nothing else has ever imperilled.

Before I knew quite so much of the circumstances amid which battles are really fought, I used to watch with great admiration some of the caricatures of war at which I chanced to be present. On one occasion I found myself near two thousand men, five deep, who for a quarter of an hour were keeping up a terrific fusillade on

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