and bred, Luke Fildes stands firmly on "I have just read an attack on schools of art," I say, as he motions me to a seat and continues his work, "in which the writer contends that they do harm in introducing people into the practice and profession of art who have no faculty for it, and are therefore wasting time." one of the author's characters is standing. prayer-book in hand, supposed to be on her way from church. I notice with what consideration the artist treats her, how often he allows her to rest, and with what painstaking care and minuteness he introduces her into the rural group which he is depicting. "Talk of questioning the value of schools of art," he says, as his model goes into the adjoining room for luncheon"look at this!" He takes from his book-case a copy of Caldicott's nursery book The Mad Dog. and asks if that would ever have been produced but for schools of art; and then we drift into a discussion of his more impor tant pictures, and I find him enthusiastic in regard to the mission of the painter. His Muse has nothing morbid in her song; her promptings are akin to the inspiration which tinged the brushes of Reynolds and Wilkie, and fired the souls of Defoe and Dickens. "My idea in painting 'The Reformed Penitent,'" he says, "was to contrast the way in which the Prodigal is received and the home-returning of the penitent woman who has been led astray. There is no forgiveness for the erring sister; she goes back to her native village to find nothing but desolation, a ruined home, a cold, unsympathetic stare of wonder and indignation even from her once dear friends. Surely there is something wrong in this; anyhow, it is very pathetic, and I have tried to put it on record." How touchingly he has done so all will remember who saw the work: the desolate cottage, the wretched girl prone upon her face in its shadow; the village awakened to her presence; the gossips telling each other of her return; the only indi "Yes, I think I have seen the article. The answer is very simple. Many persons are no doubt induced to begin art studies on account of the great facilities 'now offered, some of them no doubt without the necessary qualifications for success. But they will soon discover their mistake, or if not, the fact that they do not get on will prompt them to take up some other branch of industry. But their efforts will have done them no harm, and everybody can not come to the front. The usefulness of schools of art in our generation can not be overestimated. Their local influences in provincial districts have a humanizing tendency which is of the highest impor-vidual in the entire crowd who is not tance. People who do not care about politics, and who have no taste for theological and other controversial subjects, find the art school interesting; and those who are opposed to each other on public questions meet here on neutral ground; and insensibly the local magnates who are active in administering the affairs of the district become instruments in the promotion of an improved taste in art, which is already seen in the decoration of their houses and in the pictures they hang on their walls." While we talk the artist is engaged upon a composition in black and white for the illustration of a novel. His model for thinking or talking of her being a little child, whose first ambition in life is to get upon the back of the great cart-horse which his father is driving home. The story is as admirably told as those of "The Casual" and "The Widower." There is no artist who takes a broader or more sensible view of his profession, none with a more honest admiration for English art, or a greater faith in its splendid destiny, than Luke Fildes. Turning back toward the heart of London from this new art colony of Melbury Road, we reach, on the other edge of Old Kensington, the home of John Everett Millais, who, national in his inspiration and national in his works, lives in the high esteem of his fellows, and is to-day the very head and front of the English school of painting. It is a remarkable career of success, that of the painter of "The Boyhood of Raleigh" and "Chill October." An infant phenomenon in art, he passed unscathed through the perils of a strange precocity. A seeker after truth, he entered the shadow and the valley of pre-Raphaelitism, and came forth not only unharmed, but stronger for his wanderings. Born in the leafy month of June, fifty-four years ago, his pencil drawings at the age of eight were sufficiently striking to greatly astonish the President of the Royal Academy of that day. At nine he won a silver medal of the Society of Arts, and at sixteen he was the author of a historical painting, "The Capture of the Inca by Pizarro," which was hung with distinction on the walls of the Royal Academy. At twenty he joined the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood," which until his accession consisted prominently of Dante Gabriel Rossetti the poet, Holman Hunt the painter, Woolner the sculptor, Coventry Patmore the poet and essayist. A protest against conventionalism in art, this school split upon the very rock which it started to avoid. Nothing more conventional ever saw the light in the history of art than the works of the pre-Raphaelites. Their motto was "Truth," and the details of their pictures came out as if the spectator had viewed them through a microscope. Their motto was "Truth," and yet they saw no beauty in man nor woman. Under their inspiration Millais painted a sentimental picture entitled "The Woodman's Daughter," and the village maiden was positively ugly. It is not necessary to dwell upon these anomalies of a school which had a foundation of good, and which undoubtedly proved a useful training for the conscientious brush | by Norman Shaw for George H. Boughton, of young Millais; but it is fortunate for English art that eventually Millais flung from him the shackles of a narrow Mediævalism of style and color, and turned his back upon "Christ in the House of His Parents," with its realistic shavings and its ascetic figures, to paint "The Order of Release," "The Northwest Passage,' "Chill October," and "The Cuckoo'-examples of a healthy inspiration as robust in their grand breadth of treatment as they are perfect in technique and true to nature. "The Cuckoo" is a poet's dream of English childhood; "Chill October," a dirge for dead summer-time, sung in gusty moanings by swaying reeds that shiver in the autumn winds. In his house, as in his pictures, Mr. Millais has discarded every affectation of art and knowledge. Neither the shadow of the pre-Raphaelite nor the intensity of the so-called æsthete disturbs the general air of unpretentious prosperity that characterizes his handsome house at Palace Gate. It might be the residence of an opulent merchant of good taste, so far as any special idiosyncrasies of style or appearance go, with the exception of that tall northernmost window that looks out upon the Kensington High-road, and that great roomy" studio which it lights within. A magnificent apartment is this same studio, worthy of the man and his art-a lofty, spacious, impressive room, its dull red walls literally covered with tapestry. The mantel-piece is a block of carved marble. Above it hangs a portrait by Murillo. A polished floor amply covered with soft carpets and rugs; a few cabinets; a platform for models; a majolica pedestal for vases or flowers; a blazing fire on the hearth, the light of which dwells lovingly upon a rich rug-and this is the famous painter's workshop. How the painter's appearance and manner were characteristic of his work would have struck the most careless observer. A frank, robust, fresh-looking English gentleman, above the medium height, sturdy of build, broad of shoulder, a complexion suggestive of breezy downs and hills, a rich mellow voice, and a manner that of a county lord, master of fox-hounds, and owner of a thousand acres in the Midlands. As one example of the modern artists' homes of London, one of the earliest of them is West House, Campden Hill, built A.R. A., in the internal decoration of which the artist and his wife have expended much cultured taste, a wide study of the picturesqueness of England in the days of William III., Queen Anne, and the early Georges, and a current knowledge of the fine old furniture and decorations that still adorn many a delightful nook and corner of the Netherlands. Entering Campden Hill from the Notting Hill Gate side, you suddenly come upon a red brick oasis in the architectural desert-a house with crow-step gables and seventeenth-century windows that might in some sense find a parallel in a poem by Herrick dropped into the midst of a Times money article; for its due proportions are dwarfed and hidden by the hard stony wall of the local water-works, the tall chimney of which stands out in grim lines against the sky. The Pushing back a quaint pair of hammered iron gates, you pull at a handle that might have hung by a convent wicket, you raise a knocker that has surely come from the door of a painter's house in the days and country of Rubens, and you are in a lobby that gives upon the hall of the house. The staircase opens upon it, as do the three reception or living rooms. hall is a small room itself, and is often used for afternoon tea in summer days. The floor is a piece of Florentine mosaic, chiefly black and white. "It was laid by five Italian noblemen," says Boughton, who joins me while I am taking note of it, assuming the air of the professional guide so dear to the humorous fancy of Mark Twain-"at least they behaved as such, and they sang operas night and morning." I ventured a remark as to the expense. "As you are really going to write about it," says my host, "it is worth while to mention that those things that are beautiful are not necessarily dear, and that as a fact they are often very cheap. An oil-cloth for this floor would have cost me twenty pounds the mosaic only cost eighty, and it will last forever." It has also the advantage of being firm and pleasant to the foot, and is never the worse for any amount of cleansing. The design is simple and effective. You know how they make it?" asks the master of the house, as he leaves me once more to wander about at my own pleasure. "The bits of marble are fastened upon sheets of paper according to a plan and design previously settled upon, and are then sent over here in packing-cases, each part marked ready for laying down. This preliminary work is done by prisoners in Italy; the finishing process, as I said before, by noblemen, who sing entire operas during the process." the window-panes, and the blinds are blue silk. Striking effects are got out of deep blue plaques on the fire-place, and on a side table there is a handful of wall-flowers in a delf bowl. Chippendale and Adam furniture prevails, the latter being more particularly prominent in a couple of china cabinets and a handsome bookcase. Possibly, in considering this kind of inventory, which only sets forth points of note, the reader may imagine that I am describing what is, after all, only a room for show, and not a room for use. This is not so. You never lose the idea of comfort in Boughton's house. The sofas are made to loll upon, the chairs to sit in, and there is no suggestion that you may spoil anything. Beauty goes hand in hand with usefulness in every room, and the owner might have spent double the money upon both furniture and decorations without inspiring half so much confidence in this respect, and certainly without adding to the picturesqueness of this suite of rooms, elegant enough for a prince, useful enough for the humblest of his ménage. The third, or Amber Room, is the dining-room. Having regard to the harmonious effect of the decoration, an investigation of the details of it is full of surprises. Spanish leather, old oak, In The hall is panelled in wood painted two tints of Indian red, the wall above being a pale dull salmon-color. There is a velvet couch in the hall, an ornamental heater or stove, a cabinet of old china, a palm in a delf pot, and a few etchings and monochromes upon the walls. The general effect is cool and pleasant. The three rooms which open from the hall may be, and often are, used en suite, being separated by doors or curtains which are arranged in such a way as to make artistic breaks upon the whole when opened as one long saloon. The first is the Yellow, the second the Blue, and the third the Gold Room. Let me say at the outset that in mentioning these primary colors the reader is not expected to think of them in their positive boldness. Neutral tints are chiefly meant, though here and there crops out a bit of strong color. The first room is a successful attempt to deal with pinks and blues, which predominate in frieze and wall, held in check by golden panels with decorative sketches of the Seasons. The furniture is black, picked out lightly with dull gold, and the orna-dia matting, gold and brass, are all used ments are chiefly Venetian glass. The dado is painted a brown amber, the tones of which are repeated in various cushions and in the portière. The furniture is chiefly Chippendale. Drawing aside a Drawing aside a pair of yellow satin hangings embroidered in Japan, you step into the Blue Room, which is one of the most charming of bijou parlors, with a fire-place that is a delightful combination of the useful and the beautiful. You go to it at once. It is practically a cabinet for bric-à-brac, with a fire-place in the centre of it. The wainscot is high, and, like the fire-place, is painted on the flat a light greenish-blue, so smooth and delicate that it might be china. Above it are hung some notable etchings, some of them from Mr. Boughton's own work, one of them notably 'The Waning of the Honeymoon," auother "Hester Prynne," the latter the work of an American publisher, and an exquisite specimen of the art now once more popular, one of the many happy revivals of the time. Delicate sketches of lilies and other flowers and plants adorn 66 upon dado and walls, with here and there a paper panel deftly worked in. The general tone is a soft amber, though you are not conscious of any particular color that calls for notice; the effect is full of repose and rest, and this in spite of a large oldfashioned window, with panels of sunflowers and lilies on a rich blue ground. Up in the frieze of the room two painted circular windows are placed with excellent effect, especially as they appear to compete in form with the plaques that are hung here and there in well-selected places. The white cloth laid for luncheon upon an oval Chippendale table, with a tinted centre cloth in the middle, and a somewhat motley service of glass and china, with a bowl of daffodils on one side and a button-hole of hyacinths on the other; one of the illuminated panels of the window open, and the sun streaming in; a rich Persian rug by the fire-place absorbing all the bright light that reaches it-the picture is one to remember as a pleasant sensation. A few paintings adorn the walls, among them a fine por |