hung attract fully
as much as the walls with their more ambitious freight; and Jenkin's
rustic lasses, and Topham's Irish groups, and Alfred Fripp's dark-eyed
Italian monks and Campagna peasants, are as much gazed at as
Richardson's sunny landscapes or Bentley's breezy seas.

Five minutes' walk takes us to the new society. No lack of landscape
here; but it is inferior to that in the rival institution, and its
attractions are eclipsed by ambitious pictures of historic or
fictitious interest; the scene almost always laid in the picturesque
streets or rooms of a mediaeval city, and the groups marvels of display
in the matter of the painting of armour, arms, and the gorgeous
velvets, minivers, and brocades of feudal _grande tenue_. See Mr
Edward Corbould. He is sure to be as picturesque and chivalrous as
possible. There is the very ring of the rough old times in his
caracoling processions of ladies and knights, or his fierce scenes of
hand-to-hand fight, with battered armour, and flashing weapons, and
wounded men drooping from their steeds. Or he paints softer
scenes--passages of silken dalliance and love; ladies' bowers and
courtly revels in alcoved gardens. Mr Haghe is equally mediaeval, but
more sternly and gloomily so. He delights in sombre, old Flemish
rooms, with dim lights streaming through narrow Gothic windows, upon
huge chimney-pieces and panellings, incrusted with antique figures,
carved in the black heart of oak--knights, and squires, and priests of
old. Then he peoples these shadowy chambers with crowds of stern
burghers, or grave ecclesiastics, or soldiers 'armed complete in
mail;' and so forms striking pieces of gloomy picturesqueness.
Figure-paintings of a lighter calibre also abound. There is Mr John
Absolon, who is in great request for painting figures in panoramic
pictures; Mr Lee, whose graceful rural maidens are not to be
surpassed: Mr Warren, whose heart is ever in the East; and Mr Mole,
who loves the shielings of the Highland hills. Landscape, though on
the whole subordinate to _genre_ pictures, is very respectably
represented; and the lady-artists usually make a good show on the
screens, particularly in the way of graceful single figures, and the
prettinesses of flower and fruit painting.

We can merely mention the Society of British Artists and the National
Institution of Fine Art. Both are mainly composed of the natural
overgrowth of artists who prefer a speedy and favourable opportunity
for the