died with the same quiet devotion as the male student they would be
more successful; but Mrs. Louise Jopling asserts that young girls show
quite as much disposition for art as young men do. I have no hesitation
in saying that the latter opinion is the correct one. The male art
student vies with the medical student in playing the fool. A friend of
mine has recently been driven out of his studio, which was situated next
to an art school, by the asinine behaviour of these "quiet devotional
students." But in any school I have been through I have noted with
astonishment the painstaking sincerity of the lady students.

[Illustration: THE BUTTERFLY.]

All that has been written on the subject from time to time seems to me
to be quite devoid of common sense. We all know what a delightful poet
Mr. Sterry is, and how fondly he sings the praises of women. Probably he
has been so engrossed in describing the grace of the girl that he has
failed to look for the natural elegance of the boy. Possibly no artist
admires the female form more than I do, but any artist will corroborate
me when I say it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to find a
graceful young female model, while you seldom find a youth who is really
awkward. The playground of a girls' school is a conglomeration of
awkward figures, awkward running, awkward gesticulating, enough to make
an artist shudder, while the cricket or football ground of a college is
the best study an artist can possibly have for the poetry of motion. Mr.
Sterry cannot be in earnest when he says that girls think the study of
anatomy tiresome, drawing from the antique a bore, painting from the
nude superfluous, and studies of the old masters uninteresting. An
afternoon round the art schools and art galleries will prove to him the
very reverse. But then the "lazy minstrel" cannot intend his readers to
take him seriously, for he says that women have greater delicacy of
touch and facility of manipulation than men, and that their hands are
less awkward and their fingers more lissom than those of the sterner
sex. In poetry, my minstrel, yes; in reality, bosh. Where are your women
conjurors? You say that their brain is not strong enough to second their
manual advantage, but that they can "knock off" a pretty water-colour or
oil study of flowers, or a graphic caricature! Caricature, indeed!
Perhaps no one has seen more caricatures than I have, but I have never
seen a caricature by a woman. If women have a