in which the
rhythmic dream of beauty and of style is aimed at; but works also, not a
few, of purely imaginative character--fanciful, mythological,
allegorical, symbolic--amongst which latter, one especially, I think, is
dominant in its powerful originality and the weird charm of its
decorative pomp. In the region of landscape, no less, every mood is
touched, and every association evoked, from the infinite solemnity of
the silent Arctic solitudes to the infinite sweetness of a Surrey
homestead nestling within its sheltered nook, or the laughter of the
flower-fields of the Alps in June. What various temperament, too, we
note in the expressional use of tone and color--here vivid and
vibratory; there grave and soberly subdued.

In sculpture, again, though the display is numerically small, there are
amongst various good works some that are salient. I will name one by a
late alumnus of these schools, which has passed into the hands of the
nation, and, in another room, the dazzling sketch of a monument deeply
pathetic in its occasion, and of which this country will, I believe, be
justly and lastingly proud. On all hands then, in sum, we are conscious
of Life. With it, we are aware in much of the art of the day of a
certain feverish tentativeness, groping, as it were, sometimes after a
new spirit, sometimes after a repristination of the old in a modern
form; but everywhere, I repeat, we see Life. And, gentlemen, to those
who, like myself, believe in the necessary triumph of the high over the
less high, in the eventual sure survival of the wholesome and the
strong, and in the falling away and withering of the vicious or the
morbid, this sign is the most welcome, the most inspiriting, and the
most hopeful sign of all. [Loud cheers.]

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

HANS BREITMANN'S RETURN

[Speech of Charles G. Leland at a dinner given in his honor by the Lotos
Club, New York, January 31, 1880. Mr. Leland had just returned from a
sojourn of eleven years abroad. Whitelaw Reid, the President of the
Club, introduced Mr. Leland, and said in part: "Well, his long exile
is over. With a true Philadelphian's fear of envious and jealous New
York, he stayed abroad till they started a Pennsylvania line of
steamers for him, and so smuggled him past Manhattan Island and into
the Quaker City direct. Captured as he is to-night, I will not abuse
his modesty by eulogy, yet this much I venture to say, and it is the
eulogy