will be realised. Happily for the student, who cannot hope to secure works of this kind on account of their rarity, they have been reproduced by the process of heliogravure, and a good set may be obtained for about 50s.

66

The artistic qualities necessary for the successful practice of Etching are many, and may be inferred from an article written for the Fine Arts Quarterly Review by M. Seymour Haden. "What, then," asks Mr. Haden, is the amount and kind of previous knowledge and skill required by the Etcher? It is an innate artistic spirit, without which all the study in the world is useless. It is the cultivation of this spirit, not arduously but lovingly. It is the knowledge that is acquired by a life of devotion to what is true and beautiful-by the daily and hourly habit of weighing and comparing what we see in nature and thinking of how it should be represented in Art. It is the habit of constant observation of great things and small, and the experience that springs from it. It is taste which, a celebrated painter once said, but not truly, is rarer than genius. The skill that grows out of these habits is the skill required by the Etcher. It is the skill of the analyist and the synthetist, the skill to combine and the skill to separate-to compound and to simplify -to detach plane from plan-to fuse detail into mass-to subordinate definition to space, distance, light and air. Finally, it is the acumen to perceive the near relationship that expression bears to form, and the skill to draw them-not separately-but together."

Men who possess these eminent gifts are born occasionally.

In the formation of a collection of Etchings taste and judgment are essential, if the collection is to be of real value. In their choice, few things require greater discrimination. As an Art, Etching appeals to the few, the charms it possesses are peculiarly its own; in its suggestive and autographic character it is most valued. In the past the genius of great artists has overcome the difficulties of the Art and won great triumphs, but its greatness belongs more to the past than to the present. We can hardly hope that the works of Rembrandt or Vandyke will ever be surpassed.

The illustration in this number is an Etching of a block of halftimbered houses in Lisieux. To those who have visited this charming Normandy town, it will recall the many quaint and beautiful specimens of half-timbered architecture to be found there. The houses, though bearing signs of great age, at present are free from any appearance of decay. The drawing was not intended as an illustration of this article, had it been, something of a less simple nature would have been attempted. It is but a sketch; at some future time we shall probably try to do something more worthy of the art, and more fit to occupy a place in the pages of the MAGAZINE.

T. C.

UNTIL quite recently, it has always been a source of wonder to me, a novel reader, that the novel writer should have so poor an opinion of the discernment and intellectual capacity of those for whom he writes, as to introduce into his works a variety of incidents and coincidences bordering so closely on the miraculous as to be justly pronounced absurd.

That the right personage should always turn up at the right time and in the right place, is, I believe, a legitimate situation in a novel, even though we may have been led to believe, in the previous chapter, that the said ubiquitous individual was ten thousand miles away from the scene. That the stern parent should relent at the last ecstatic moment; and that the rich old uncle from India should appear in the very nick of time, are incidents which form, I presume, part of the novelist's stock-intrade. All this I can forgive; but that which riles me to the quick, is, to watch the intricacies of a plot wherein two people, otherwise sane, sensible, and amiable-the hero and heroine-wilfully persist in misunderstanding each other and misconstruing motives, until they have

contrived to fritter away the best portion of their lives, and to make themselves and everyone about them supremely miserable; and all for want of a common-sense explanation at the proper moment; a fact which the reader discovers at the very beginning of this wretched game of cross-purposes.

I know, of course, that these complications are said to be the very essence of the novelist's art, and that there are plenty of reasons to be adduced why the reader can see at a glance that which the hero and the heroine are blind to for years. I am not going to dispute this assertion. I only know the effect of such complications on my own temperament and temper; and, until recently, to repeat the words with which I commenced, so strangely did they affect me that whenever I came upon a plot of this character I invariably closed the book with an emphatic bang, and accompanied the action with expressions more forcible than polite.

But now, I am candid enough to confess, I am become wiser, or rather, more charitable. I have realized thoroughly the force of that platitude of platitudes "Truth is stranger than Fiction;" for I have had confided to me an incident in real life exemplifying the propensity for misconception to such an extent as, in my opinion, to absolve the average novelist from the charge of exaggeration. But I am not a novelist, and, therefore, I cannot pretend to do more than give the reader an outline of the circumstances in my own brief and simple way, premising that for obvious reasons I have adopted fictitious names.

In the spring-time of the year 185-, Charles Wyndham, Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and as fine a young fellow as ever paced the deck of a man-of-war, having fallen desperately in love, as is the wont of fine young fellows generally, and naval officers in particular, came to the inevitable conclusion that he ought to get married without further delay; and Miss Myra Vane, the charming young lady whose beauty had bewitched him, being nothing loath, and her father's consent being duly accorded, the course of true love, in this case, ran smooth enough, and so his wishes were realised.

Lieutenant Wyndham having recently returned from a long cruise in the Mediterranean, had obtained a six month's leave of absence, a period of time which then seemed almost an eternity to the devoted young couple.

After spending the honeymoon in Switzerland, they settled down in a modest little villa in Southampton, a locality in which many of Wyndham's friends resided; where, with boating excursions to and from the ships in the harbour, and dancing parties on shore, the time passed pleasantly enough, and all too quickly. At length Charley's leave expired, and the dread summons, bearing the well-known superscription "On Her Majesty's Service," duly arrived, requiring him to join his ship for a cruise in the Pacific without delay.

I need not attempt to describe the sorrowful parting, nor how bravely each tried to cheer the other in this supreme moment. Enough that Wyndham presented himself in due course on board the Wasp, which was then lying at Southampton. Charley's most intimate friend there, a retired merchant named Acland, or, as he was more familiarly called, "honest Tom Acland," had taken a fatherly interest in Myra from the first, and for more reasons than one; and no sooner was Charley on board ship, than he, accompanied by Miss Ellen Acland, his eldest daughter, called upon Mrs. Wyndham in order to divert her thoughts, and, as he expressed it, prevent her "moping." With this object in view, and with the best intentions in the world, he had also made arrangements for a dancing party at his house that evening, and he was astonished, and a little vexed as well, when Myra firmly refused his invitation. She felt, not only that enjoyment was out of the question for her, but that it would seem cruel even to enter a ball-room whilst her husband might be pacing the solitary deck with a sorrowful heart.

Happy for her, happy for both, if she had adhered to her refusal ! Later in the day her brother arrived from Liverpool, and being the accepted suitor of Ellen Acland, proceeded at once to her father's residence, where, being apprised of Wyndham's departure, as well as the projected ball, he undertook to induce his sister to accompany him later on. Overcome by his plausible reminders that by fretting at home she could not possibly make her husband any happier, and that her brother was now her best protector, she yielded though with great reluctance.

In the meantime Wyndham, who had been on board some hours before his captain arrived, was chafing at the loss of so much precious time that he might have spent with Myra. When, however, Captain Stewart at length made his appearance it was nearly 10 o'clock, but he immediately sent for his Lieutenant, and with a thoughtfulness which was, I believe, characteristic, informed him that the ship would not sail until daylight, and intimated that Charley might, if he chose, spend the few remaining hours on shore. Charley soon availed himself of this permission, and in half-an-hour was back again at his own home.

His astonishment may be imagined when he found the house in darkness, and his wife missing. Mastering his emotion for a moment he ascertained from his servant that Mrs. Wyndham had gone to Mr. Acland's, but his pride would not allow him to question her on the subject. As he turned away from his own door strange feelings arose in his heart such as he had never before experienced. He knew not, of course, how sorely his wife had been pressed, how long she had resisted, or how reluctantly she had consented to leave; he only tried to persuade himself that her affection for him could not be very deep; and his first impulse was to return to the ship without any further attempt to see her. In this unhappy mood he made his way to the house of his friend, nor stopped until he found himself at the door of the ball-room. As illluck would have it, Myra, who had hitherto refrained from dancing, had