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 har

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 gold-monious effect of the decoration, an inen panels with decorative sketches of the Seasons. The furniture is black, picked out lightly with dull gold, and the ornaments 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 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," another "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 re-it-the picture is one to remember as a vivals of the time. Delicate sketches of lilies and other flowers and plants adorn

vestigation of the details of it is full of surprises. Spanish leather, old oak, India matting, gold and brass, are all used 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

pleasant sensation. A few paintings adorn the walls, among them a fine por

window of a pretty design, and such furniture as the room contains is old marquetry.

Boughton's is just the studio we can imagine it to have been the dream of his life to build and to furnish. His art is human and tender; it deals chiefly with the gentle and domestic side of life; it has in it an element of the poetry of Longfellow, and is capable of portraying the patient sweetness of Hawthorne's woman of The Scarlet Letter; it is in sympathy with the gray English landscapes and village comedies, and is at home with the simple humor and humble courtships of Dutch fishermen and Friesland maidens; it revels in the detail of a Hollander's costume as well as in the grass-grown wharves and picturesque barges of the dead cities. Comedy and tragedy go on close together in real life, and if Boughton steps aside from the bowl and dagger, he has nevertheless shown sufficient dramatic power for a strong theme, as witness his "Pilgrims going to Church," the sedate force of several of his illustrations of peasant life in Brittany, and the gloom of his Hester Prynne on a mission of mercy to a house stricken with the plague.

at work," I remark, for want of a better thought at the moment. "What a delightful contrast to that of an author at work, or a poet, even when his eyes are in a fine frenzy rolling!"

"But the author has the advantage," he answers, "in having people all over the world contemplating his pictures at the same time."

Boughton works as though he is indeed engaged upon a labor of love, stepping back now and then to see the effect of those touches he is pleased to call accidental, but which are strokes of technical skillfulness.

"And in the case of a landscape," he says, taking me by the arm, "look here. I open the door; I walk out to the very head of the staircase; and I can see my work as far away as you can get from it at the Academy."

This is a great advantage, and it is only one of the points which have entered into the artist's calculation in the designing of his workshop. There is no kind of light he can not command-north or south, high or low, straight light or cross light. The walls of the room are a warm gray in color, not distempered, nor painted, nor As I enter his studio, one end (the papered, but the plaster colored in process north) nearly filled with a window, the of mixing-the artist's own idea, and one other with a gallery, like the place for the that may yet lead to some interesting musicians in an old banqueting room, and changes in regard to the decoration of an alcove of cushions beneath it, I find the walls. On the west side of the room is an master intently at work, his model for the alcove just sufficient to hold a comforta Friesland skating girl posed more particu-ble settee, and display some fine rugs upon larly for the head. His touches were of the lightest and finest, and as often made with the tip of his little finger as with his brush. "The finger is sensitive," he says, as if I had asked a question. "There can be no rule for its application; just a touch and go, the effect of which is more or less accidental, more or less knack, a sort of instinct."

the floor and a golden ceiling. The most gratifying bits of color in the studio are seen in the Persian, Turkish, and other rugs that find suitable places for both use and ornament on floor, couches, and chairs. A small but well-filled book-case. a writing-desk, and shelves full of pamphlets, papers, magazines, works in miscellaneous literature, French and Eng

"Something more than instinct," I sug-lish, give an air of sociability to the room. gest, "is required to deal with a palette so full of color."

"There is nothing that requires so many colors for its representation as the human face," he answers. "You can not lay the brush upon a part of this palette that has not been used on this face."

A bust of Dante on a pedestal, a rough sketch of the bird sacred to Minerva, a Japanese cabinet, a bit of old blue from Delft, and other miscellaneous incidents of decoration are accidentally, as it were, dropped here and there into the general story; and the tapestry of the staircase is He was putting in the shadow of the repeated here and there in the gallery at dainty under lip, and it was a lesson to the south end and on the eastern wall. A see how deftly he flecked off its redun- work-room, living-room, recreation-room, dance and softened the edges of it with reception-room, is this sensibly furnished his finger. studio, in which Mr. Boughton gives form "It is very entertaining to see an artist and color to his elaborate studies.

"I notice that you make many and tries claim. He was brought from Engcareful sketches," I remark. land to Albany, New York, by his parents when four years old, opened his studio there at sixteen, and grew up as an Amer

"Yes, I have note-books full of themsketches, studies, and memoranda, though

al distinction of being an N.A. and an A.R.A.

I rarely refer to them afterward," he re- | ican artist. He enjoys thus the unusuplies. "The fact that I have them, can lay my hand upon them at any time, seems to be sufficient; and in treatment, though perhaps not in spirit, I invariably depart wholly from my first suggestions and sketches for picture subjects."

Boughton is an artist whom two coun

At work Boughton as a rule wears an ordinary gray suit of clothes with a velvet cap, and is never put out by the companionship of a familiar friend, even when absorbed in one of the difficulties of his