enlightened Frenchmen who invested fifty francs in the modest little portfolio of the young and unknown etcher. If they or "their heirs, administrators, and assigns" still possess them, they may have the satisfaction of knowing that they could sell them at nearly a hundred times the price which they originally cost. The "French Set " included some veritable masterpieces-such as the "Kitchen," the "Mustard Woman," the "Vieille aux Loques," and the "Street in Saverne," which last-named print must be about the first of Whistler's magnificent series of night scenes, or nocturnes as he called them. At about the same period he produced the "Rag Shop" and the two charming portraits of French children, Bibi Lalouette" and "Bibi Valentin."

From Paris Whistler went to London and made his home with Sir Seymour Haden, who was then an eminent surgeon, but who afterward attained to much wider fame as an etcher of landscapes. It was while he was living there with his halfsister and shall we say, his half-brotherin-law, that Whistler etched most of the magnificent plates which are known as the "Thames Set." It consisted of sixteen etchings, and although he did very beautiful things in later years, my own conviction is that the Thames Set includes several of his supreme achievements. This opinion is fortified by that of Mr. Pennell. In writing of one of them, the "Black Lion Wharf," he calls it "one of the greatest engraved plates that has been produced in modern times," and he adds, "I would even say that it is the greatest etching of modern times were it not for the fact that it is but one of a set." Mr. Pennell goes on to commend other prints of the series, such as the "Forge" and the "Limeburner," and he adds, "This series alone is enough to win immortality for any man.'

Mere verbal description of a picture cannot be otherwise than unsatisfying, but, fortunately for Americans in general and for New Yorkers in particular, probably the very best collection of Whistler's etchings which exists is on free exhibition to every one in New York. It can be visited at the Lenox Library, where

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the very competent curator, Mr. Frank Weitenkampf, will show to visitors the magnificent collection which was formed by the late Samuel P. Avery and donated by him to the Public Library. amount of money could duplicate it today; this could be done only in one way, and that is the way by which Napoleon Bonaparte enriched the gallery of the Louvre. He first conquered nearly all of the nations of Europe (England excepted), and he then carried off their finest art treasures to Paris. But this high-handed operation can never be repeated, and Mr. Avery was a man of peace; he made his living by buying and selling paintings, but whenever he bought a picture for himself it was pretty sure to be a simple etching in black and white and not a painting in oil colors. He already knew Whistler when the latter was a merry, harum-scarum young fellow in Paris, who took little care of the masterpieces he was producing. In those early and happy-go-lucky years Whistler would etch some great plate, and, not having the money to pay for the printing of a sufficient edition of proofs from it, he would pay for perhaps half a dozen. Then the etched copper would drift into the mysterious limbo whither all lost things disappear and whence they never return, or else—as plates of copper cost money—Whistler would have the surface of the plate planed off and use the old copper for a new etching. It was in these early years that Mr. Avery got possession of such rarities as the dry-point portraits of Riault the wood-engraver, and of

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Joe," the latter a beautiful portrait of a young girl. These two prints are now absolutely unprocurable, as is many another of which the noble-hearted Samuel P. Avery has made a free gift for the use of his fellow-citizens in New York and for the whole Nation.

When, in 1886, the distinguished London art critic and enthusiastic collector, Mr. Frederick Wedmore, undertook the making of a descriptive catalogue of Whistler's etchings, his first move was to call on the master himself. Whistler approved of the project, but said, in effect: "I can show you very little, but if you really wish to make