Probably three-fourths of the books that are read today for pleasure are fiction - that is, stories. Most of them are long stories in prose, called novels. The popularity of novels comes from the fact that theytell stories about imagined men and women; and that the reader can put himself in the place of an imaginary character, live the character’s life, go through peril anc suffering and joy and love. In short, while the reader is lost in the pages of a novel he is living another life, living at a faster pace than his real existence has, and feeling more keenly, yet with a delightful sense of unreality. Most novels have much to do with the emotion of love.

The novel, as we know it, is not two centuries old. Of course, story-telling is as old as civilization, by voice in narration, by acting on the stage and in books. But the novel as a distinct form of literary art is nearly new.

It is true that the prose tale was very well known through Lyly, Lodge, Greene and Sidney in the sixteenth century, through Mrs. Behn in the seventeenth century and Defoe in the early eighteenth century. But these early forms of novel were stories of adventure rather than studies of character under the influence of love. The novel as it exists today dates from 1740, when Richardson published his story PAMELA.

Samuel Richardson (168g-176x) was the son of very humble parents, his father being an ordinary carpenter in Derbyshire, where Samuel was born. The boy had very little education and at the age of seventeen he was
apprenticed to a London printer, who made Samuel work so hard that he had no leisure for reading or study. But he made up for the time of which his master robbed him by sitting up at night to read any books he could secure. The candles used for these midnight studies he bought himself, so that his master might not have to pay.

An unambitious, steady, plodding, honest and industrious, and perhaps a very commonplace young man was this Samuel; but after fifteen years he had some reward from the printer, for he married his master’s daughter, having now become a printer on his own account in a court off Fleet Street, close by the old Church of St. Bride. Here he continued for many years to carry on his business like any other printer of his time, living above his workshop and thus spending most of his time amid the smell of printer’s ink. We can well believe that he was a kind and considerate master, and it is said he used to hide a silver coin among the types at night so that the first man to arrive at the workshop in the morning might have it as a reward.

Richardson was not far short of fifty years old when he determined to make himself famous by writing a novel. He was perhaps somewhat vain of his literary powers—which at the early age of thirteen he had first exercised by writing love letters for some village girls. In fact, he continued to oblige with such letters for many years. At any rate, PAMELA was the result of the little printer’s resolution. He certainly succeeded in making himself famous. The rest of his days were spent with much satisfaction in writirig for the sentimental ladies of his time, to whom the pale and tearful heroines of his novels seem to have been strangely attractive.

Though so few of us read his writings today, the little printer certainly gave a great impetus to the art of fiction in England; and the careful and elaborate way in which he traced the natures of imaginary people was also imitated by writers on the Continent, chiefly in France. He died on July 4, 1761, and by his own request was buried in the Church of St. Bride, near to which much of his life had been passed.

Richardson’s three important works were PAMELA, CLARISSA and SIR CHARLES GRANDISON: and PAMELA deserves to he called great. An American critic, William Rose Benét, places it among the fourteen outstanding prose works of the eighteenth century. though OU might not find it very thrilling to read today. It is the story of a simple. unsophisticated  country girl, servant to a squire of doubtful morals. Pamela marries and reforms him.

PAMELA, like most of Richardson’s other stories, was written in the form of long-winded letters. The book was issued in “parts,” as they were called, somewhat as the continued stories in our magazines appear, spread over some months. Nowadays our lives are much too varied and active to leave time for reading such very long and unexciting stories as he wrote, but our great- great-grandfathers had more leisure and fewer interesting books, so that they could find time to follow the slow and steady unfolding of his appallingly lengthy tales. In country villages people used to wait anxiously for the arrival of the next “part” of his novels to find out what was to happen to the characters; and when the heroine of PAMELA married the rather unmanly hero, church bells were rung in some villages as though Pamela had been a real person.

When an author invents some unusual way of telling a story, it frequently happens that another author will turn it into ridicule by writing what is called a parody of it. So it happened with Richardson’s 1AMELA, which an abler and far more gifted man than Richardson, two years after its appearance, took as the idea of a very different sort of story called JOSEPH ANDREWS.

Henry Fielding, Whose Novels are Full of Life and Humour

The writer of this was a born story-writer, a man of great force of character, the son of distinguished parents, and well educated, His name was Henry Fielding, and he was born in Somersetshire, England, on April  1707.

Being fond of the pleasures of life and disinclined to work or to study too closely, Fielding left the University of Leyden, in Holland, and returned to London, when he was twenty. But he soon found that his father was not able to allow him so much money as he had expected, and he had to exercise his abilities by writing for the stage.

After a while he married a beautiful girl who had a small fortune; but this he soon contrived to spend, and at thirty-three he became a barrister (lawyer), though it was chiefly by writing hooks that he made his living. His wife died in 1743, and not long afterward he married a servant, who was a very good wife to him for the rest of his days. Poor man, he was not long to enjoy the success of the great books he had written or the advantage of the comfortable salary he received from a legal appointment given to him in 1749.

In that year Fielding wrote a very brilliant satire called MR. JONATHAN WILD THE GREAT, and in the same year appeared his most celebrated novel, THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, which is one of the great masterpieces of English fiction. (This is also on William Benét’s list of foremost eighteenth- century prose writings.) Fielding’s third and last novel was AMELIA, which appeared in 1751. All his stories are written with a fine, vigorous feeling of life and overflow with humor, a quality in which Richardson was utterly deficient.

In 1754, while on a visit to Lisbon, where he had gone broken in health, Fielding died, and was buried in Os Cyprestres cemetery.

Laurence Sterne and Tobias Smollett Wrote Lively Fiction 

Laurence Sterne was born in Ireland, though his ancestors were English. He was born on November 24, 1713, and educated at Halifax Grammar School and Cambridge University, becoming a clergyman in the year 1738.

For a good many years his life was, no doubt, that of an ordinary English country vicar, except that, being satirical and bitingly sarcastic in his speech, thin in appearance and poor in health, he was probably by no means so pleasant a companion as a country parson ought to be.

When he was forty-six years of age he published the first two volumes of his clever and amusing book, THE LIFE AND OPINIONS o TRISTRAM SHANDY. Very soon the wit and humor with which the characters in this great work were drawn had made the name of Sterne famous; and for years new volumes of the work continued to appear, until it was completed in 1767, just about two months before its author breathed his last.

On the whole, Sterne was not a pleasant kind of man to contemplate, and although his books are full of high spirits and laughter, it is not always the healthiest laughter, nor are his sentiments such as do credit to a preacher of the Gospel who during his later years may be said to have written under the shadow of death. His other famous book is called A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. It is very Witty.

Tobias Smollett was a Scotsman, born near the “bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond” in March 1721. He went to school at Dumbarton and to Glasgow University, and when he was about fifteen was apprenticed to a surgeon in Glasgow. He wished, however, to be a writer, and at the age of eighteen went to London with a play which he had written. But no one would buy the play and, as he had no money, he went to sea as assistant to a naval surgeon.

After his return to London he practiced as a surgeon. He married a lady who had some wealth, and he wrote for a time more for pleasure than for profit. Later he adopted writing as a profession. He became a journalist, wrote histories and books of travel, translated foreign stories and edited papers.

But, above all, he produced three novels very similar in style to those of Henry Fielding, and nearly always mentioned in company with them as the best examples of English novels written before the time of Sir Walter Scott. They are full of interesting and lifelike characters, and his sailors, especially, are the breeziest, saltiest sons of the sea to be found in English story-books. The names of his three famous books are RODERICK RANDOM, PEREGRINE PICKLE and HuMPHREY CLINKER, the first being written in 1748, and the last in in September of which year Smollett died at Leghorn, in Italy, and was buried in the English cemetery in that city on the Mediterranean.

Goldsmith’s Gentle Humour Still Charms His Readers 

Oliver Goldsmith, whose VICAR OF WAKEFIELD is one of the most beautiful stories in the English language. Although he was a dramatist (his comedy SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER is a perfect stage play) and a poet (Johnson called him “the greatest poet since Pope”), we must never forget the importance of Goldsmith’s work as a story-teller. No one reading this book today would realize that the writing of novels was so new when it was written. The narrative is easy, the plot is natural.

In 1766 Oliver Goldsmith published his VICAR OF WAKEFIELD, and in 1778 Fanny Burney published her EVELINA. These novels were free from the vein of coarseness that spoils Smollett and mars Fielding. Goldsmith did not again attempt fiction. Miss Burney, who had begun with great promise and won well-deserved popularity, spoiled her style in her later novels, CECILIA and CAMILLA, by imitating Doctor Johnson’s most formal compositions. Before the close of the eighteenth century the novel had been fairly started and had been purified from its first failures in good taste.

In less than fifty years there were many writers of novels, and a larger proportion of the honors began to go to women than had been gained by them in any other field of literature. As with the drama in Shakespeare’s day, fiction reached its greatest height of glory almost suddenly. Less than forty years lay between the coming of the better novel in the EvELINA of Fanny Bürney, and the capture of the whole reading world by the novels of Sir Walter Scott. This sudden collection of stories, so varied in time, character and subject, can only be compared with the abundance of Shakespeare’s plays two hundred years before.

Fiction broadened out, after the domestic stories of Richardson, into wild and romantic fancies. A fashion was set by Horace Walpole in his CASTLE OF OTRANTO, a fearsome, supernatural story. Walpole put his talents into all kinds of things, and of course he had to try story-telling.

He was followed by other writers bent on making the reader’s flesh creep with mysteries. For a time, too, the novel made a fashion of using fine language that was quite unnatural. The most popular writer of that day was Mrs. Ann Radcliffe. Her ROMANCE OF THE FOREST is still worth reading as an illustration of a kind of fashion that, under various forms, creeps again and again into fiction and is thought by the uncritical to be thrillingly fine. Being unnatural, it fades away and is only smiled at by a later generation of readers.

Maria Edgeworth, Who Wrote About Life in Ireland 

Two other women novelists who wrote in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen. Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) began the localizing of the novel - that is, the special study of the character, manners and speech of a district. Her ground was rural Ireland, and her success probably had some effect in prompting Sir Walter Scott to present to the world in fiction the Scotsman, past and present.

The Edgeworths were an English family made Irish by living in Ireland for two centuries. They kept up a constant connection with England, where Maria was born, and while they were quite Irish in their ways they were able to see Ireland from the outside as well as the inside.

Maria Edgeworth’s father was a wayward man of genius, fanciful, masterful and full of fads, and one of his fads was to regulate the writings of Maria according to his own ideas. As his ideas of writing a novel were clumsy, his admiring daughter was handicapped by his interference; but her pictures of the Ireland she knew, in CASTLE RACK- RENT, THE ABSENTEE and ORMOND, are the best pictures we have of it in her day.

Miss Edgeworth brought fiction back to real life; and because she makes us feel she is writing about men and women as they are, her stories will live as pictures of life in the past that have a historical as well as a human value.

Jane Austen Makes Quiet, Dull Lives Seem Exciting

And so it is in an even greater degree with Jane Austen’s novels. These are of a far choicer workmanship. Jane Austen was a Hampshire girl, daughter of the rector of Steventon, where she was born on December i6, 1775. Her first complete novel, but one that was not published till after her death, NORTHANGER ABBEY, was a mixed description of Bath, then the chief health resort and social center of England, and a clever exposure of the style of Mrs. Radcliffe’s tales, in the height of their popularity. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY (1811), PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813), MANSFIELD PARK (1814) and EMMA (1816), make up a complete study of life in rural England.

Readers who want sensation, high-flown sentiment, an exciting or involved plot, stirring adventure, problems of passion or boisterous laughter need not trouble themselves with Jane Austen. But Jane, writing only about a quiet life which she knew very well, gives us a picture of the thoughts and ways of English gentlefolks a the end of the eighteentn century. It is faithful in drawing and delightful in its quiet humor.

Of the life of the poor and humble, we scarcely have a glimpse in her books, and the governing class that circled round the court is equally left alone. She seems even to be unaware of earth-thaking events of her day - the Napoleonic Wars, for instance. It is the comfortable landed gentry to whom Jane Austen introduces us. Her writing gives us the most finished picture of a section of English society that any novelist has drawn.

It has been said, and there is some truth in the criticism, that the men and women in any one of her stories are much like those of any other story, but with their circumstances and aims somewhat changed. That is natural since a rather narrow round of country life is shown with no sensational characters or incidents introduced. But this only makes the quality of her skill the finer when she holds our interest.

She fully understood her own limitations and never tried to do what was beyond her power. She wrote herself of “the little bit of ivory, two inches wide, on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect - after much labor.” But that fails to do justice to her method, though it suggests it. Scott was nearer the truth when he spoke of “the exquisite touch which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment.”

Miss Austen lived a very quiet country life, with gradually failing health before she reached middle age. She died at Winchester in her forty-first year on July 18, 1817, and is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

A List of the Greatest Prose Works of the Eighteenth Century

A few words more about William Rose Benéts list of the fourteen greatest prose works in English published in the eighteenth century. All but one are by British writers— the one exception is Benjamin Franklin’s PooR RICHARD’S ALMANAC. Nine are novels: ROBINSON CRUSOE, by Daniel Defoe; PAMELA, by Samuel Richardson; THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, by Henry Fielding; THE ADVENTURES OF PEREGRINE PICKLE, by Tobias Smollett; THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO, by Horace Walpole; THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD, by Oliver Goldsmith; TRISTRAM SHANDY, by Laurence Sterne; EvELINA, by Fanny Burney, and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, by Jane Austen. GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, by Jonathan Swift, is not really a novel, though it is imaginative writing.

Many amateur gardeners prefer to do their planting in the spring of the year, although certain plants are set out in the fall. Yet even if you prefer to plant in the spring, you must not neglect your gardens in the late autumn and winter months, or your plants will be sure to suffer. Here are some useful suggestions.

Suppose that two or three new rose trees and perhaps some rose cuttings have been planted in our garden. Suppose now that a spell of frost comes, and after that, naturally, a thaw. The ground becomes quite soft and loose. The plants - whether roses or anything else, for that matter - that are not firmly established in the soil, become loosened with the soil, and lose the little grip they had obtained upon it.

This is the one thing to fear, for if it happens and is not remedied, without a doubt the plants will die. But, fortunately, it is a state of things quite easy to remedy. It simply means treading or otherwise making the soil firm and close about the plants, as it was before the frost acted upon it. The loose soil danger is then avoided.

Action of Frost

Though the action of the frost on the soil may be a source of danger to newly planted trees and cuttings, we must bear in mind that, apart from this, the frost does a great deal to sweeten the soil and to put it in excellent condition. For this reason any bit of the ground that is not occupied by plants should be dug up so that the frost may penetrate and do the utmost good.

How does a gardener regard a heavy fall of snow over his many plants? As Nature’s wisest and best protection from the bitter winds and frosts. No wind can hurt our plants when they are safely under their snow blanket. But often the winter winds and frosts are keen and biting when there is no snow upon the ground. This is the hardest trial our plants have to bear.

If we are able to gather a few armfuls of fresh straw, we may put it round such plants as the rhododendron, and even round about a rose tree that is unusually fragile and anything else for which we have reason to fear. If some of these rather tender subjects die down completely, and are below ground for the winter, we may cover the earth above them with dry leaves or with ashes. Either of these is very helpful in keeping the frost from reaching them.

Violets in Cold Frames 

We have hitherto dealt with plants that grow in the open. Even in the case of violets or other flowers that grow in cold-frames or hotbeds (beds of earth covered with glass tops) there are some simple rules that should be observed if these flowers are to thrive when the cold weather comes.

Never coddle violets; they are hardy, brave little plants, and they strongly object to being treated as if they were tender and fragile. If they could speak, how often they would plead for air, air, air, more air! You ought to have gathered many pretty blooms from the violets before the cold weather sets in. They will be protected by their frames when sharp autumn winds threaten. You will continue to pick pretty bouquets and have the prospect of gathering a fine bunch on Christmas morning, though the time the plants flower will, to a certain extent, depend upon the variety which is being grown.

Very little water - generally none at allis needed for weeks at a time at this season. Unless the thermometer shows that it is freezing, or there is a sharp wind, raise the lid during the warmest portion of the slay. Even at night, unless very cold, the lid need not be closed entirely, but the opening can be covered with a bit of sacking, and in this way there will be a slight amount of ventilation.

You will think, perhaps, that great importance is being laid on giving plants sufficient air. But there is nothing like it to keep them healthy. Insufficient air generally means that leaves become affected with mildew, and whole plants may “damp off,” as it is called. But in really severe weather, we must run the risk of that for a short time. During sharp frosts the lids go down, and mats or anything we can lay hands on may be used to cover them. Do not forget to remove the coverings when warmer weather sets in.

Potted Plants

Our pot plants that we are sheltering in the house or in a greenhouse will now need less water than at other seasons when they are growing freely. In the winter a great many of them go almost to rest; at any rate, they are not pushing out new growths unless kept at a high temperature. Never let a pot plant stand in a saucer of water.

Certainly all flowers once were wild - and all animals, too. There are certain kinds of flowers and animals which men have developed by choosing the kind of thing they wanted and leaving the rest, and so gradually getting such things as the garden rose, the pouter pigeon, and so on.

These are what we call cultivated varieties, but all of them, even the most curious and newest orchid, or pigeon or breed of dog, have been made from wild or natural forms. Even now, if we are careless, our garden plants will return sometimes more or less completely to their natural state, and so will domestic animals.

Plant breeders can do wonderful things in the way of developing new varieties, and it is now possible for them to secure patents on their new specimens. One of the most interesting patented flowers is the super-double nasturtium, holding flower patent 141. The ordinary single nasturtium has five petals; the ordinary double blossom has ten or twelve. The super-double nasturtium has about fifty petals. Mr. Joseph Simson, president of the W. Atlee Burpee Company which owns the patent, tells you the story.

“Nasturtiums were first found growing wild in South America over three hundred and fifty years ago and seed was taken to Europe. They became favorite garden flowers, and as time passed, many new colors were found, but until ‘93’, all of the garden nasturtiums had only five petals, just like the wild ones first found in South America. Then some plants were found in Mexico whose flowers had from ten to twelve petals. Seed of this new double nasturtium called Golden Gleam was brought to the United States.

“It became so popular that seedsmen immediately wanted to get doubles in other colors. To get these, David Burpee had over 40,000 crosses made. Golden Gleam was crossed with all the different colored singles known. Mr. Burpee knew that it would take at least two generations to get the colored doubles he wanted, so the work was speeded up by shipping the valuable crossed seed by airplane to parts of the world where the winters were warm. All of the plants in this first generation were single, like their parents.. The seed was carefully saved, and planted and the second generation watched carefully. When the plants came into bloom, about one out of every four had double flowers.

“One evening Mr. Burpee was walking through the greenhouses looking at his new double nasturtiums when all at once he noticed one that was different from all the rest. Instead of having ten or twelve petals, like the other doubles it had about fifty petals and looked like a begonia. This new super-double nasturtium was watched with the greatest of care, but it would not set any seed because the flowers did not have any pistils.

“New plants could be grown, however, by cutting off pieces of the branches and sticking them in wet sand, where they would take root. Although the super-double nasturtiums did not give any seed, the flowers had some pollen, and this was used to make crosses on ordinary doubles.

“Finally, by making many crosses and taking cuttings, success was achieved.”

Young as was British art in the eighteenth century, during the second half of the century England’s portrait painters held a place in the very front ranks of contemporary European art.

Their fresh, unworn lustre shone the more brightly in a period that elsewhere was rather dim. Foremost on the roll of these painters of portraits stand two names side by side - Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough - for the owners of the names lived near together and knew each other, and painted famous likenesses of many of the same famous men and women. Reynolds was four years old when Gainsborough was born, and he lived four years after Gainsborough’s death.

The genius of Reynolds and the genius of Gainsborough were of such different strains that they seem each to supply what the other lacks. While Reynolds was an eager student of art in books and in the works of the greatest painters, traveling abroad and copying their pictures in foreign galleries, until he became a truly learned connoisseur, Gainsborough gave himself to nature as to the supreme teacher and never traveled outside his native island, going back again and again to the woods and fields he loved best. Reynolds was a thinker, of keen, acute, well-balanced mind. He sought and learned how to get the results he wished. Gainsborough felt what he wished to express, and it came through his brush naturally or not at all. Reynolds was systematic and industrious, planning out his time and carefully observing his own regulations. Gainsborough followed his impulse; he might stand unoccupied for hours looking from the window of his studio, dreaming of beauty. His muse would not be driven. Therefore, although Reynolds left about four thousand paintings, Gainsborough can be accredited with not more than three hundred, and of these about eighty are landscapes. To both men we give our admiration - to Reynolds for his fine, deep color, his warm but subtle tone, his skillful and understanding way of presenting the figures and the personalities of his sitters; to Gainsborough for the soft, elusive, haunting beauty of scenes and forms in which we perceive his own tender wistfulness mingling with the unspoiled charms of nature’s self.

Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) was the son of a learned clergyman of Devonshire who kept a grammar school. It was there that Joshua studied as a boy, although he spent much of the time that was due to Latin and mathematics in dreaming or eagerly getting all that he could out of a few books on the principles of art. And because his drawings showed unusual skill and a mastery of the points he had studied out for himself, he went at the age of nineteen to London to study with a painter who was then a favorite but whose work has no value to us now. In a few years the young man confidently established himself in an independent studio. Then he had the great fortune to be offered a trip to Italy.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, First President of The Royal Academy 

Among the paintings of the Italian masters in the galleries the young Englishman walked, disappointed and dismayed because he could not feel their force and beauty as be had anticipated. But devotedly he studied and copied until he gained what he had lacked, and when he returned to England his knowledge of European painting was broad and discriminating. He was an authority. Immediately favor turned toward him. People flooded him with requests for portraits, and it was not long before he had a large house in London, with a luxurious studio, where he painted industriously from eleven until four every day. From that hour on be gave himself to social life, entertaining freely the most interesting and distinguished men of the time. Garrick the actor, Goldsmith the writer, Burke the statesman, and Dr. Johnson the philosopher were a few of his intimate friends, portraits of whom he has left us. At his balls the best society of London came together, for he was as noted for his distinction of manner as for his excellence in his art.

In 1768, when the Royal Academy was instituted, he was at once chosen as its president. Then he was knighted by George II, who later made him painter to the king. The last word of his last public address was by intention the mighty name of the artist who was his greatest admiration - “Michelangelo.” When Sir Joshua died he was honored in every possible way. He was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, in London.

Reynolds had remained a bachelor, with a sister to help keep his house; but who has painted pictures of childhood that we remember better or more affectionately than some of his? Groups of little ones with their mothers, like thatof Lady Cockburn and her children; portrait studies, like Master Hare and Little Miss Bowles with her dog; and others, like the Age of Innocence, and the cluster of Angels’ Heads, which are really five different studies of the one darling little head of Frances Isabella Gordon. Both of the last two pictures are in the Nationai Gallery, London. The painting of Master Hare can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where there are several other Reynolds portraits. Many of his works are in the Royal Academy and the National Portrait Gallery in London; but numbers of them are in private collections in both Europe and America.

Sir Joshua, by experimenting in the production of the colors he most desired - warm browns and reds - used some materials that were not lasting, so that in some cases the paint cracked and sometimes even fell from the canvas. Thus a few of his paintings have been lost. He loved to give his portraits a grand manner, with heroic or historic feeling. And for pleasure he painted historic compositions. In the portrait of the actress Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse we can trace his intelligent admiration for Michelangelo’s style. In others we can feel the influence of Correggio, Raphael, Leonardo, Murillo and others. He did not imitate, but he had absorbed. Hogarth said: “There is only one school, that of nature.” Reynolds said: “There is only one doorway to the school of nature, and of that the old masters hold the key.”

Thomas Gainsborough, Who Loved His Native Countryside

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) was another English lad who neglected study for love of drawing and for love of the outdoor world, though he won greatest fame as a portrait painter. Always a dreamer and impulsive in his tendencies was Gainsborough; and his expression in line and color was spontaneous and free. Reynolds had moved with ease in a sphere of large experience in life. Gainsborough, more shy and retiring, had to be drawn into prominence. Although at fifteen he went to London to study, when three years afterward he began his career as an independent artist it was back in the retirement of his old haunts.

He loved a quiet life in his own home, with his wife and his music and his dreams. He loved the familiar countryside of his boyhood, where meadows, trees and streams had sung to him and given him his first visions of beauty. There he lived and worked for fourteen or fifteen years before going to Bath, where he became popular as the portrait-painter of fashionable beauties and of royalty.

When he painted his rare portraits of lovely women he set them in an atmosphere of naturalness, for he seems to have perceived within them the impulses and feelings that belonged to them as human beings. His own sensitiveness helped him to catch vibrations from their hidden selves. A gentle melancholy and a brooding tenderness breathe lightly through the delicate colors with which the artist made his record of the impressions that came to him from his sitters. His pictures of children - whether peasants or gentler-born-show them moving with natural freedom through the light and air of out-of-doors. Among the most valued of his portraits are that of Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire (now in America) and that of the Honorable Mrs. Graham (in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh). For the most part his works are in private collections on both sides of the Atlantic.

Characteristics of Two Great Portrait Painters Compared

Sir Joshua Reynolds held that “the chief masses of light in a picture should always be of warm, mellow color, and that the blue, gray or green colors should be kept almost entirely out of these masses.” Whether or not, as has been said, Gainsborough deliberately took this as a challenge, he produced some most striking and beautiful pictures in which blue, gray and green form the central and dominant notes. Of these the most famous are his portrait of Mrs. Siddons in a blue-and-gray-striped gown and the picture known as the Blue Boy. In the latter - now in California - a charming boy in a costume of rich, pure blue stands out engagingly before a background of brown and green landscape.

As a rule, Gainsborough’s color is tender, soft and cool, greens and blues and grays and delicate yellows predominating; although in his landscapes - which he loved best of all to paint - he introduced warmer tones, rich browns and sometimes red. The landscapes show the same natural way of looking at things that we have noted in the portraits, the same originality of treatment. They are quiet in tone and feeling, with something of mystery or melancholy in their clouded skies or in the forest shade. They were made for his own pleasure, and few of them were sold during his lifetime. Appreciation of their value has grown with time, and they are considered the first examples of landscape showing a modern realistic treatment.

Gainsborough had not the reliable and cultivated correctness of Reynolds; but grace and spontaneity are in all his works - a peculiar distinction due to his faculty for seeing beauty in all simple things. “He had beauty in himself, and all his life it fed on simple delights.”

Sir Joshua Reynolds’ tribute in an address after Gainsborough’s death held a prophecy which has been fulfilled. “If ever this nation,” he said, “should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honorable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of the art, among the very first of that rising name.”

George Romney, Greater in Gift than in Character 

In George Romney (1734-1802) we come to an artist whose gift was great enough to make him a rival of Reynolds, but who had not the steady will, the resolution, in using his gift to carry it to the high performance for which it was fitted. In control of line he surpassed even the greater men, and his color and vivacity give his pictures true charm. While he did not make elaborate plans of composition, he had a natural ability for placing his figures so as to give a beautiful arrangement of masses and lines. The background is usually plain, laying the more emphasis on the portrait itself.

Romney’s faults are due to defects of character and to insufficient early training rather than to lack of genius. He had a tendency to lay plans larger than he could carry through, and in his later life this became almost a form of insanity. With one undertaking partly accomplished, he would turn from it to some new delightful project that beckoned. Had he possessed a firmer will, he would no doubt have reached great results.

Although his best work is to be seen in some of his portraits (chiefly in private collections), he painted, besides, historical and ideal scenes. His interesting and sad story is told elsewhere.

In Scotland’s Allan Ramsay (1713-84), a contemporary, you see, of the English painters of whom we have been thinking, painted portraits of many Scottish gentlemen and ladies which made his name well- known in England as well as at home. While his color is sometimes hard and opaque-looking, his drawing of the features is fine, and his pictures are marked by a grace that is characteristically his. The portrait of his wife is one of his most charming portraits. The latter part of his life was spent in England, where he became court painter to King George Ill.

Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), another Scottish painter, in childhood left an orphan and early apprenticed to a goldsmith, learned for himself the arts of miniature and oil painting. Possessed of the very qualities that Romney had not, he lost no opportunity of improving his knowledge and technique.

Scotland owes to this son of hers admirable portraits of many others of her honored children, including Sir Walter Scott. They are sincere and forceful likenesses, broad and well handled, somewhat crude in color and tone, but interesting in their vigor and power of characterization. Of Raeburn’s romantic marriage, which opened the way to study on the continent, you may read elsewhere. He became president of the Society of Artists in Edinburgh and, before his death, was knighted by the king. His portraits are in the National Galleries of Scotland and England and in a number of other public and private collections. One of the finest is that of Sir John Sinclair.

Among the lesser portrait-painters of the period in England we shall speak of three - Hoppner, Opie and Lawrence.

John Hoppner (1758-1810) confessed himself to be a follower of Reynolds; and though he painted some landscapes and pictures on ideal subjects, his portraits, especially those of women and children, are considered his most successful works. They are still sought and treasured, although time has dimmed the beauty of their coloring. An attractive example of his portraiture is the group of the Sackville children. Hoppner was a man of social accomplishments, who could count among his sitters members of the royal family and such celebrated persons as Sir Walter Scott, Wellington and Lord Nelson.

John Opie (1761-1807), when as a young man he went to London from his native Cornwall, became the fashionable portrait painter of the town, hailed as the self-taught, independent artist. After the wonder had subsided and he was less pressed with orders, he worked hard to learn how to overcome his faults, and divided his time between portraits and historical canvases. His pictures have far more vigor of treatment and more individuality than elegance and grace.

In Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) we come to the successor of Sir Joshua Reynolds in the post of painter to the king. Lawrence showed unusual talent as a boy and won fame while still in his teens. When he was only twenty-one years old, he was elected to the Academy by especial favor. Having started so young to observe and record the forms and features of society, he became very skilled in reproducing the airs and graces of its ladies and gentlemen. He drew well and painted in an easy manner, using a brilliant coloring that was sometimes hard in effect. Of all that he produced his pencil and crayon studies are rated as the most successful.

There are two kinds of balls that bounce, those that are solid, like a solid rubber ball or a golf ball, and those that are hollow, like a tennis ball.

No matter whether the ball is solid or hollow, its bounce is due to the fact that it is elastic. A thing is said to be elastic when it tends to return to its former size or shape after being pressed down or stretched. Rubber is a very elastic substance, as you know. Press a rubber ball on the ground. It loses its perfect roundness, but the instant you take away the pressure of your hand, it springs back into shape. Throw it sharply on the ground; it loses shape against the ground but springs back so sharply that it bounces.

Now a great law of science is that nothing is ever lost and that everything has to be paid for.

When the ball starts bouncing it has a certain amount of motion in it, which is force, or power, or energy. When it stops, that has gone. Either we must show that the energy has gone somewhere and has not been destroyed, or, according to the great law of the persistence of power, the ball should bounce forever. If it did not bounce forever, the law would be false. It is, however, quite easy to show that the ball does lose the power with which it started. What, then? Why does it stop bouncing? And what happens to the energy when it stops?

To begin with, the ball is moving, both up and down, through the air, and forcing millions of particles of air aside. All the motion it gives to the air it loses.

If a ball were bounced in a space as far as possible emptied of air, it would bounce far longer than it does in the atmosphere, just as a top will spin longer in the same circumstances. Suppose that, instead of bouncing the ball on something hard, we bounce it on a pillow or on loose sand. It will not bounce long in such a case. Its power has gone to move the pillow or the sand as well as the air. The ball itself is not completely elastic, nor is the ground. If the ball and the ground were completely elastic, and there were no air to move, and the ball never turned and rubbed the ground in falling, it would bounce forever.

In the case of a hollow rubber ball, it is not by any means the rubber only that explains why the ball is so elastic. The ball is filled with a mixture of several gases, which we call air. The air is elastic. It is pressed in upon itself when the ball hits the ground, but quickly tends to go back to its old space in the ball. We can see how much the air bounces if we compare an ordinary soft rubber ball with another one which has a small hole in it.

The air is expelled from the hole when the ball is bounced, and we find that the ball bounces very little, because its elasticity is so poor. But the other ball bounces exceedingly well, because, when it is bounced, the air in it is not squeezed out, but only compressed for an instant.

To Whom All Things Were Kin

In a green Italian field one summer day, almost seven hundred years ago, a small man, clad in a worn, patched robe, raised his head to the sky and called to the birds flying above him. Hearing his voice, they paused in their flight and glided to earth. Birds from the trees flew down to gather at the feet of this man. They seemed to bow and nod as he spoke to them.

“My little sisters the birds, much do you receive from God your Creator, and always and in every place you ought to praise Him. He has given you freedom to go into every place, and also did preserve your seed in Noah’s ark, so that your kind might not perish from the earth. Again, you receive from Him the element of air which He has made for you.

God feeds you and gives you the rivers and the fountains to drink from; He gives you the mountains and the valleys for your refuge, and the tall trees wherein to build your nests.

And as you can neither spin nor sew, God clothes you, you and your children.

Your Creator loves you much, since He has given you so many marvelous gifts. So beware, little sisters of mine, of the sin of ingratitude, but ever strive to praise God.” When the preacher had ended his sermon, the air filed with the glorious songs of the birds.

They soared into the sky, then divided into four parts like a cross. One group flew to the north, another to the south, the third to the east, and the fourth to the west, bearing the message they had heard to the four corners of the earth. The shabby little man left the field and continued his journey.

This man had not always been such a picture of poverty. Once he had been the most elegantly dressed young mati in Assisi. His father, Pietro Bernardone, a wealthy merchant, hoped that his son Francis would also become a merchant. Francis did not object to this and started working for his father. He loved fun and was a leader of the young people at the feasts and festivals. He wasted a good deal of money on rich dress, yet he always could spare a coin to any poor beggar who crossed his path. Francis had a careless, kind heart. He was afraid of only one thing, lepers.

One day, as he rode through the countryside, he saw a figure walking toward him on the road. Suddenly he realized that the man was a leper. With a start Francis spurred his horse to avoid meeting with this fearful being. Then, a new courage filled his soul. He sprang from his horse and threw his arms about the leper.

This incident marked a change that was taking place deep within Francis’ spirit.

This man who loved gaiety and laughter and freedom so well had to spend a miserable and lonely year as a prisoner of war, and his imprisonment was followed by a period of illness. He had time to think, to become acquainted with his own soul. When he came back to the busy life of Assisi, his family and friends soon learned that Francis had turned a very important corner. Forgotten were the parties, and the beautiful clothes and the wasted hours.

There were at this time in Italy many small old churches falling into decay— people were growing worldly and selfish and had little time for the simple, sincere devotion of the early Christians. Francis went from town to town, repairing the old churches with his own money and his own labor, aided by a few friends. When his father refused to give him any more money, he and his little band lived as beggars. They even took a vow of absolute poverty, promising to own nothing, lest the love of possessions corrupt their shining purpose.

Many people laughed at Francis and his band; but he preached in the market-places, begging men to be true to their own highest natures. He touched the hearts of multitudes. Singly, by tens and by hundreds, his band grew, until 5,000 men from all walks of life - rich and poor, young and old, ignorant and learned - put on the beggarly robe and became followers of Francis. The Pope blessed the rule of life which Francis planned, and the Franciscans, as they were called, formed the Friars Minor (Little Brothers).

A lovely girl, Clare Ortolana, under his advice, organized a women’s branch of the order: these women became known as Poor Clares.

Some there were who listened to Francis and almost wanted to follow him; but they could not say farewell to their homes or their dear ones, or their duties. For such Francis suggested a rule less rigid. This membership became known as the Third Order of Saint Francis. It, too, grew and flourished.

Francis of Assisi lived from 1182 to 1226. The religious orders that he founded have since spread over the globe. They have made many contributions to the world’s knowledge and civilization. Yet it is not as rounder of the Franciscans that Francis is most widely known today. He is remembered for his love of nature. The birds were his little sisters, the sun and winds were brothers, the moon and waters were sisters, and all created things were kin. He found a joy on earth more real and lasting than men can ever know who give their hearts to possessions. The poet Emerson might have been thinking of Francis when he said:

Cheerily know, when half-gods go The gods arrive.