developed into a close and lasting friend. ship, which had a great influence on Artz's subsequent career. Israels was by some years the elder of the two, and had already laid the foundation of his reputation. He was brimming over with enthusiasm and earnestness, thinking no labor too great so that he might attain excellence in his beloved art. He was every night at the life-school, and by precept and example encouraged and strengthened his younger brethren. Acting on Israels' advice, Artz, in 1866, went to Paris to continue his studies. Two of his chief comrades in Paris were his own countrymen, James Maris and Kämmerer. For the first year, he worked in the same studio with Maris, and then he and Kämmerer occupied one atelier. Israels had given him a much-prized introduction to Courbet. To Courbet Artz mentioned his desire to become a pupil at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Courbet's characteristic advice to the young aspirant was to stay at home and work, "Prenez un modèle et fermez votre porte !"

Mollinger introduced Artz to Mr. (now Dr.) Forbes White, of Aberdeen - the well-known art collector and critic who happened to be on a visit to Paris; and Mr. White in turn, brought Artz into close contact with several young Scottish artists who were studying in France. Mr. (now Sir) George Reid, Mr. John Dun, Mr. Longmuir, among others, became intimates of Artz, and from them he learned to speak our language with great facility. Dun was one of his chief instructors in English. Another friend whom he made at this time, and of whom he always spoke very highly, was the accomplished decorator, designer, and art collector, Daniel Cottier, who died recently, and the sale of whose pictures has been one of the events of the 1892 art season of Paris. Artz declared that this shrewd Aberdonian, with his pawky wit and his keen artistic instincts, was, in his own line, one of the cleverest men he ever met.

The result of these pleasant communings in Paris with so many hearty souled Scotsmen was a visit of Artz to Scotland. This is how he, in a letter to a friend, sums up his impressions of our country: Leaving London on a wet, dark night, I awoke the next morning in a splendid landscape, with a fast-running stream close to the railway, and beautiful colored hills round me, shining in a bright sun. I shall never forget the impression of that morning after the gloomy day in London, nor shall I forget the kindness with which I was received by all my friends in Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh, who made me quite at home." Artz's own temperament was one that naturally called forth kindly feeling towards him in the breasts of all with whom he

Artz made many pleasant friendships in Paris, and grew, during the eight years he lived there, to be, as he said himself," "almost a Parisian." By Kämmerer he was introduced to a little literary and artistic club that numbered several distinguished men among its members. Of these I may mention the brothers Coquelin, the actors; Paul Deroulède and Paul Ferrier, men of letters; Saint Saens, the musician; Léon Glaize, painter; Croisy, sculptor; and Charpentier, the publisher. What a good time they must have had! Artz always looked back with great delight | to the pleasant hours he had spent in the society of these kindred spirits.

|

While Artz was in Paris, his fellow-came in contact. countryman, Alexander Mollinger, was also a dweller there, and the two were constant companions. Has the influence on his brother artists of Mollinger — too soon lost to this world and art yet been appreciated at its proper value? I know of two good men who hold him in reverent memory, Josef Israels and Sir George Reid, and remember another voice that bore witness to his worth. In my mind's ear I hear again George Paul Chalmers, as years ago I heard him, in his Edinburgh studio, grow eloquent in his own emphatic, hurriedly enthusiastic way, in praise of Mollinger, and of the great promise untimely marred. "The blind Fury with the abhorred shears" was even then lurking ready for Chalmers himself. So wags the world away!

Artz saw Paris in all the flush of its splendor and outward-shining glory during the last years of the Second Empire; he endured the misery of the siege; he witnessed the horrors of the Commune, and his thoughts turned wistfully homewards to his own country of flat meadows, quiet canals, and long stretches of yellow sands. He had almost taken root in Paris during the eight years of his stay, but his first love for his "ain folk" and their douce, simple ways, so vividly in contrast with the madness and wild delirium of the experience he had lately passed through, came back to him with a persuasiveness not to be resisted. He returned to Holland in 1874, settled at the Hague, married, and spent the remainder of his days in earnest, honest work at his easel, painting

the subjects that lay nearest to his heart, "the toilers of the sea" and their homely

manners.

paper was sent by Artz to Sir George Reid, and safely reached its destination, and on the fly-leaf he wrote a letter, full Artz grew steadily in reputation. While of hope that, now that "hideous man Nain Paris he had contributed regularly to poleon " had altogether fallen, the united the Salon, but after his return to Holland, force of France would yet be able to resit was not until 1880 that he sent a picture cue Paris from the cruel clutch of the to Paris. That year he was represented Germans. A hope, as we all know, that at the Salon by the well-known "Orpheli- was not realized! In another letter, writnat de Katwyk," perhaps his best work. ten just after the siege, he declares that It has been exhibited more than once in during the siege "to be sure he must have this country. In the Salon it received eaten a whole horse," but that he had not Mention honorable. In every succeeding been forced to come down to cats or mice year his pictures were well hung on the as a means of support. He had had no Salon walls, and became widely known and fuel, however, and to keep himself warm highly appreciated in Britain. Of his im- during the dreadful winter, had been comportant works I may mention "The Old pelled to walk about and spend his prePeople's Home in Katwyk," "Chez les cious time in the streets and in cafés. Grands Parents,"" Son Trousseau de Ma- When the Communist troubles came he riage," "Une Haute Journée," "Le Pro- writes that Paris looks like a madpos d'Amour," and "Le Départ." His house." "I don't know what is right smaller canvases and water-colors are or wrong in it, but I am afraid it is all many in number, all dealing with incidents humbug. Everybody talks and screams, in the lives of the peasants and fisher people whose story he knew by heart. During the winter he lived at the Hague; his summers were spent at Katwyk, in a little cottage on the dunes, surrounded by the village huts and overlooking from every window his old friend the sea.

The end of this peaceful, happy, hardworking life came most unexpectedly. Artz died on 5th November, 1890, after a comparatively short illness, which no one at the outset thought would be of serious moment.

and nobody will ever hear the other's reasons. C'est triste! I stay quietly at home, and work and wait the end of all this misery, which must be near." In these letters there shines out the fine nature of the man-patient, enduring, and self-contained. In the midst of his own troubles, he never forgets one of his friends in far-away, peaceful Scotland. He asks after them all by name, he sends to each one kind remembrances.

I cannot better end this short tribute to the memory of a good man and a true The details of Artz's biography I have artist than by quoting his views upon art taken for the most part from letters I my- from a letter I received from him in 1889. self received from him. Sir George Reid I give the words as he wrote them; his has kindly put at my disposal several let- English, be it noted, was to the point and ters, written to him by Artz at various expressive, with a pleasant flavor in it of times from Paris, and these all bear wit- foreign idiom. "I never had the slightest ness to the guileless, gentle nature of the taste for historical subjects, nor to try it man. He was filled with kindliness to myself, nor for what I saw done in it by everybody, especially to those who had others. They never could suggest to me shown him the least spark of good-will. the feeling of truth and reality (Baron He never forgot a benefit received. He Leys perhaps excepted) which is for me was keenly sensitive to criticism, always the first condition of a picture. Everyready to take advice from his brother art-day people in their every-day ways is all ists, always anxious to know what painters that could speak to my heart and eye. thought of his work. Patient, earnest, simple-hearted, he bore himself nobly through the ordeal of the great siege. I have before me just now an interesting reminiscence of that trying time a copy of the little Lettre-Journal de Paris, Gazette des Absents, the tiny newspaper that was published in Paris to be carried out by "balloon post," when the iron ring of the Prussian beleaguerment had cut off all direct communication between the French capital and the outer world. The

When visiting famous picture-galleries, overwhelmed by the power and talent of the great old masters, I always find myself at last sitting before some little old Dutch picture with a feeling of refreshment such as one has on a cool spot after a tiresome walk in splendid scenery. I always come back to the old Dutch masters, and never can find anything going beyond them except in the landscape. In the latter I think that Constable, and after him the Frenchmen Rousseau and Corot made a

great progress, and painted pictures finer than any of the old masters. I only make an exception of Hobbema." Could there be a much sounder artistic creed than this professed by Artz? His practice was in keeping with his creed. He lacked intensity, it is true, and dealt only with the simpler and more obvious phases of human nature and experience, but his style has in it a graceful and gracious individuality; his color is sweet and harmonious, and his composition almost always both unaffected and effective.

From Temple Bar.

WAYFARING IN THE ROUERGUE.

but the next morning's sun finds most of us sluggards again.

I returned towards the tarn which I had left the day before, but with the intention of keeping somewhat to the south of it for a while. However beautiful the scenery of a gorge may be, the sensation of being at the bottom of a crevice at length becomes depressing, and the mind, which is never satisfied with anything long, begins to wonder what the world is like beyond the enclosing cliffs, and the desire to climb them and to look forth under a wider range of sky grows stronger. Such change is needed, for when there is languor within, the impressions from without are dull. The country through which I now passed was very beautiful with its multitude of chestnut-trees, the pale yellow plumes of the male blossom still clinging to them and hiding half their leaves; but here again was the sad spectacle of abandoned, weedy, and almost leafless vineyards upon stony slopes which had been changed into fruit-bearing terraces by the long labor of dead generations.

The first village I came to was Coupiac, lying in a deep hollow, from the bottom of which rose a rugged mass of schistous rock, with houses all about it under the

THAT district of southern France so celebrated in the history of the Middle Ages as the Rouergue is now shown on the map as the department of the Aveyron, but its old name has by no means passed out of use with the inhabitants. In the twelfth century Henry II. of England, Duke of Anjou and Normandy, laid claim to it by reason of his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine. It was ceded to England by treaty after the battle of Poitiers, but the nobles and the people were never reconciled to British rule, and they strug-protecting shadow of a strong castle with gled against it intermittently and with varying success for nearly three hundred years. What with wars of succession and religious wars the Rouergue was one of the most disturbed and blood-drenched regions of France. Great political changes, however, have cut it off more than any other, lower Brittany excepted, from the movement of the modern world. It is a wild, rocky, thinly populated district, with many stern and some beautiful landscapes, but with little left save its ruined castles to confirm the stirring records of its stormy mediæval history.

I had passed the night at the village of Plaisance on the western boundary of the Rouergue, and having made up my mind to reach St. Affrique in a day's walk, I set out on my journey at an early hour in the morning. There were some thirty miles of country to cross, and I had, moreover, to reckon with the July sun, which shines very earnestly in southern France, as though it were bent on ripening all the fruits of the earth in a single day. By getting up earlier than usual I was able to watch the morning opening like a wild rose. When we feel all the charm that graces the beginning of a summer day, we resolve in future to rise with the birds,

high, round towers in good preservation. It was a mediæval fortress, but its mullioned windows cut in the walls of the towers and other details showed that it had been considerably modified and adapted to changed conditions of life at the time of the Renaissance. A troop of little girls were going up to it, and teaching sisters, who had changed it into a stronghold of education, were waiting for them in the court. Hard by upon the edge of the castle rock was a calvary. The naked schist, ribbed and seamed, served for pavement in the steep little streets of this picturesque old village, where most of the people went barefoot. This is the custom of the region and does not necessarily imply poverty. Here the sabotier's trade is a poor one, and the cobbler's is still worse. In the Albigeois I was the neighbor of a well-to-do farmer who up to the age of sixty had never known the sensa tion of sock or stocking, nor had he ever worn a shoe of wood or leather.

No female beauty did I see here, nor elsewhere in the Rouergue. Plainness of feature in men and women is the rule throughout this extensive tract of country. But there is this to be said in favor of the girls and younger women, that they gen

to be turned half-way to one village and half to the other.

the interest of peace, to allow the statue | clean and creditable. On the ground were large tubs of milk, and on tables were spread many earthenware moulds pierced with little holes and containing the pressed curds.

The postman was a little reserved at first, not knowing to what country I belonged, but, when he was satisfied that I was not a German, he let his tongue rattle on with the freedom which is one of the peculiarities of his class. He confided to me that the best help to a man who walked much was absinth. It pulled him up the hills and sent him whisking across the plains. "I eat very little," said my blackbearded, bright-eyed fellow-tramp ; " but," he added, "I drink three or four glasses of absinth a day."

"You will eat still less," I said, "if you don't soon begin to turn off the tap."

Considering the hard monotony of their lives and the strain imposed upon physical endurance by walking from twenty to twenty-five miles a day, in all weathers, the rural postmen in France are a sober body of men. This one told me that he walked sometimes twelve miles out of his way to carry a single letter.

The hostess was a buxom, good-tempered woman with rosy cheeks. She told me that she could not give me anything better than ham and eggs. She could not have offered me anything more acceptable after all the greasy cooking, the steadfast veal and invariable fowl which I had so long been compelled to accept daily with resig nation. By a mysterious revelation of art she produced the ham and eggs in a way that made me think that she must surely be descended from one of the English adventurers who did all manner of mischief in the Rouergue, some five or six centuries ago. Such ham and eggs in her case could only be explained by the theory of hereditary ideas. Nevertheless she had become French enough to look at me with a dubious, albeit a good-natured eye. My motive in coming there and going farther without having any commercial object in view was more than she could fathom. After my visit to the dairy I fancy her private notion was that I was commissioned by the English government to find

with a view to competition. At length as we talked freely she let the state of her mind, with regard to me, escape her unawares by putting this question plump: — "How is it the gendarmes have not stopped you?"

Thus gossiping, we reached Montclar on the plateau, a little to the south of the deep gorge of the Tarn. Here we entered an auberge, where the postman was glad to moisten his dry throat with the green-out how Roquefort cheese was made, eyed enemy. This inn was formerly one of those small châteaux - more correctly termed maisons fortes, or manors — which sprang up all over France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The inhabited part of the building was reached by a spiral staircase enclosed by a tower. A balcony connected with the principal room enabled me to read an inscription cut in a stone of the tower: "Tristano Disclaris, 1615." But for this record left by the founder, his name would probably have passed, long ago, out of the memory of men.

I found that the chief occupation of the people in this house was that of making Roquefort cheeses; indeed, it was impossible not to guess what was going on from the all-pervading odor. And yet I was still many miles from Roquefort! However, I knew all about this matter before. I was not twenty miles from Albi when I found that Roquefort cheesemaking was a local industry. In fact, this is the case over a very wide region. The cheeses having been made are sent to Roquefort to ripen in the cellars, which have been excavated in the rock, and also to acquire the necessary reputation. While my lunch was being prepared I looked into the dairy, which was very

"That I cannot tell you," said I, much amused by her candor; "but you may be sure of this, I am not afraid of them."

Her husband was listening behind the door, and I observed an expression of relief in his face when I took up my pack and departed. If I was to be pounced upon, he preferred, for his own peace of mind and the reputation of his house, that it should be done elsewhere. All the vil lage had heard of my coming, and when I reappeared outside there was a small crowd of people waiting to have a good look at me. I thought from these signs that I was likely to be asked to show my papers again by some petty functionary; but no, I was allowed to pass on without interference. Perhaps the postman had given a good account of me, the absinth having touched his heart. There is much diplomacy in getting somebody on your side while travelling alone through these unopened districts far from railways. Wandering among the peasants of the Tarn and the Aveyron teaches one what