hundred earls; probably more so, although her race had never before shown either great beauty, or blood, or breeding. Her teeth, that seal of perfect beauty, were a row of Orient pearls, and as shining as they were delicate and even. Her hands were long, supple, and refined.

She early manifested a talent for music. She sang, she played at nine years of age, and having, fortunately, a great musician for a friend and patron, she was not allowed to misuse that nightingale hidden in her throat, as some gifted singers are.

Mrs. Rutland reserved the right to give Mimie her musical education, and Signor Ceccarini, "the Eyetalyan " whom Ira Sprague scorned, was a good teacher; when Mimie had reached her fifteenth year he came to Mrs. Rutland, and with many Italian gestures told her that Mimie had one of the rarest contralto voices in the world, and that he could not attempt to train it as it should be done, but that she ought to go to Europe; that here was a gem for the opera, an unknown Grisi, a budding Malibran. The child was an artist, too; she apprehended at once all the dramatic purpose and meaning of the music he taught her; in fact, Signor Ceccarini, a poor old broken-down opera singer himself, was half crazy with joy over the diamond which he had found in Dicksonville.

George, meantime, honest man, had not accumulated a cent. He now oiled the engines and worked on the railroad and did odd jobs for everybody, and was only able to support his family and to give Mimie very good dresses and bonnets, although none were so splendid as that poor old dusty bonnet which hung on a nail in his bedroom, L the one he had bought for dear Jemima in Boston so many years ago, and which remained, as old bonnets will do, to testify how poor a thing fashion is.

There was therefore many a consultation as to what was to be done about Mimie's education. In spite of aunt Sophronia's misgivings, Ira Sprague, dragging slowly along through the old-fashioned consumption, a disease which gratified Roxy and herself, because it was

the good old inexorable kind, and not this modern fraud which can be cured by whisky and cream and cod-liver oil, - Ira, shorn of his beams as a destroyer, and simply appearing in the more mournful light of being destroyed, had finally drifted into George's cottage to die.

He had taken a great pleasure in hearing Mimie sing and play. He had made her a great many appropriate presents, one a very good piano, but he had shown no desire to make love to her, and what was worse, none whatever to make love to aunt Sophronia, who made him excellent broths and puddings. George's good heart and Mimie's good sense were equal to the occasion, and the pure and honorable sentiments which survived the gambler's mistaken life were entirely appreciated by them.

"I tell yer what it is, George," said Ira, with what was left of a voice, "I hain't hearn all this talk o' yourn and Mis' Rutland about Mimie for nothing. Now, George, I'm considderble forehanded, and some of my money's honestly made. When I come home from the Mississippi River, I paid off them mortgages on father's farm, and I come into possession. Two years after, they found a marble quarry on it, and I'm doin' a first-class business up there a-making grave-stones. I shall want one myself pretty soon, and our head workman, says he, I'm a-goin' to carve on to it, Here lies Ira Sprague, a-waitin' for the last trump.' He is pretty good at a joke, Hen is, I tell you! And sez I,' Carve on to it what yer a mind ter. I expect I'll git on better up there than ever I did here.' There was One, George, that took in even a thief with him; and I never was that! So now I've left Mimie, in my will, a nice little sum, and there's five thousand in the bank for

her now. Now, jest you and Mis' Rutland cook that thing up between you, and if it's a-going to do Mimie any good, or make her sing a bit sweeter 'n she does now, to go to Europe, you jest take that 'ere money and let her go long."

Hen Thompson, the wit of the gravestones, was somewhat astonished when he learned that a young girl in Dickson

ville was a stockholder in the quarry, and that Ira had left her all his money, which had been going down to the bank pretty regularly; also, he received a very different order for the modest monument which was erected over poor Ira in the new Dicksonville cemetery than that which he had designed. Mimie took the Bible which she had been reading to the poor dying man, and searching in it, through her tears, for an appropriate and not too ambitious text, it seemed to open of itself (as the blessed book often does) at these words, which still shine out above the violets and buttercups, the clover and green grass: "I will sing unto thy praise, O Lord, for thou hast redeemed thy people!"

IV.

And so one fine day, George, who had washed the railroad grease from his hands and put on his Sunday coat, went up to the cars, in other than a fiduciary capacity, to bid good-by to his little girl, who was going to Europe with Mrs. Rutland and her daughters to study music at Leipsic and Paris, and to return a great singer. Many of the people who came and waited at the Dicksonville Junction (for we are a first-class town now, and four railroads have nearly ruined us) wondered as they looked at the homely laboring man, on whose arm hung a proud and perfect beauty, nearly as tall as he was. They walked up and down, not daring to look at each other, George and Mimie, until Mrs. Rutland said it was time for them to part. Then two beautiful, shapely arms were thrown around George's neck, and a dear voice said, "Father, father, good-by, goodby!" and the too well-oiled engine bore her off, bore off" George's little girl," and left him to walk home, the most miserable man in Dicksonville.

The chimneys and the door hinges, the broken-down carriages and the railroad jobs, were very imperfectly done for a while. George had lost his inspiration. In fact, the village choir and the village street missed Mimie dreadfully.

Poor old Roxy died, and George was left to the tender mercies of Sophronia, who grew thinner, more suspicious, more coquettish, with every advancing decade.

However, George bore it all with a sublime patience, and life became for him only a measuring of time between post-days. The steamer had no more accurate time-keeper than this poor man up in Dicksonville, who watched for his daughter's letters and for the news of her work and her success as his only pleasure. He counted the moments with heart beats, and his prayers for her were as constant and as ceaseless as the pulses in his brawny wrist.

She told him everything, his beautiful, gifted, rare child! She told him everything save the compliments which were paid her. These she did not mention. Perhaps aunt Sophronia's early lessons had made her reticent on this subject. Perhaps a girl cannot tell these to her father. But they passed over the head of this daughter of art; she cared nothing for them. Two passions possessed her fine soul: the one was duty, and the other was her art. Her father and her duty were synonyms; she never was able to separate the two; and her art, how sacredly she served it! How pure a vestal at that altar she stood! Aye, and in that temple she serves still!

The

and she sang like the angel that she will be. George, your daughter is one of the great singers of the world. old members of the Conservatoire, those who have heard all the great voices, shouted and applauded as she finished, and they crowned her with a wreath of beautiful fresh flowers, as they once did Christine Nilsson, when she sang in this same place. In a month I shall bring her home to you, -you of whom she said, as she came to my arms, “Oh, if my father were here!"

which he had, with the tact of a sincerely sympathetic nature, so tenderly and so carefully broken to him. And now a white-haired man, bent and broken with age, but with a great light in his face, accompanies the singer wherever she goes. He never calls her anything but my little girl," although Miss Mimie Ball is a very sizable person.

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People ask why she does not love, why she does not marry. Some people say she would sing better if she could have a great heart-break. Others say that she sings quite well enough as it is. Beautiful and famous as she is, followed and admired, the breath of scandal never touches her name. Is it that old father, who begins to look like a fine study for a patriarch or an evangelist, who protects her? She loves him dearly, and her way of saying "father" is thought, by some, to be her best musical effect.

No, the protection emanates from herself; it is the native purity of a sincere and honest soul. She is the daughter of the most passionate and the most comprehensive of all the arts; she has sprung from the people; she knows all the alphabet of poverty, of self-renunciation, of prudence, of humble service, and of gratitude. Mrs. Rutland has been her tutelary angel. She knows by intuition the gamut of love and pity and heroism and piety; she can sing all the changes with that magnificent voice; she has the clairvoyance of genius.

M. E. W. S.

THE industrious Signor Brumidi at Washington has grown gray in the service of art while covering the walls of the National Capitol with Italian decorations, carried to a point of manual perfection which leaves nothing to be VOL. XLIII. NO. 259.

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desired as regards technical qualities, but which has proved itself absolutely barren of results. The art of the country is no better for it, and possibly no worse. When we are told that the aged artist is now crowning his long labors

by painting upon the frieze or belt which encircles the rotunda, under the dome, the history of American civilization, in an imitation of bas-relief so admirable as to deceive even the elect, we can comprehend the mechanical spirit which underlies his work; we can understand why the excellent conventionalities which occupy the walls and vaults of the corridors and committee-rooms, — here in one style, there in another, and all correct ly set forth, have not served as fruitful examples of high inspiration. They were born of a cold artisan spirit, which has not in it any principle of life. Each example of strong, original artistic convictions in history has given direction more or less sensibly to the currents of contemporary art. But such work as this is not inspired by such convictions; it has therefore furnished to the art of mural decoration in this country no impulse and kindled no enthusiasms.

Our opportunities for heroic work in this department of art have been frequent enough, but few intelligent efforts have been made to improve them until within the last two years, when Mr. John La Farge, at Trinity Church in Boston, and Mr. William Hunt, in the Assembly Chamber of the State Capitol of New York, have for the first time given to the country examples which may prove to be the seed planted upon good ground. It is a duty of civilization to subject such examples as these to serious critical examination. The results of good examples of mural decoration are so beautiful and so profuse, and bad examples, if they are inspired with any strength of enthusiasm, are so fruitful in errors, that to suffer them to fructify in either direction without a word of thoughtful praise or blame would be the loss of a golden opportunity. Indifference is a quality of barbarism.

We propose, therefore, to study these examples of mural decoration candidly, to the end that we may awaken a spirit of inquiry, that we may know in what direction they are apt to lead us, and that we may be duly forewarned if they have in them any element of danger.

The architecture of Trinity Church is

particularly hospitable to high decorations in color, because it affords large interior surfaces, and because its features of construction, unlike the conventional Gothic of the churches, do not make too large a demand upon the decorative scheme. When the architect was permitted to call Mr. La Farge to his assistance in completing this work, the latter found at his disposal, in the first place, ample dimensions and broad, suggestive spaces; and, in the second, he had the intelligent sympathy of those for whom and with whom he worked. He undertook, however, a heroic task, with limitations of time and means, such perhaps as no painter of monumental art had ever subjected himself to in previous works. He brought to this labor a genuine artist's spirit, strong in its convictions and brave in its hopes, but unused either to the study or to the production of architectural effects.

Let us now consider the architectural conditions of his work; for without a thorough comprehension of the theme as affected by the spirit of the place, we can arrive at no just conclusion regarding the result. The church is cruciform, nave, transepts, and chancel being each about fifty feet wide within the walls, and the interior dimensions being about one hundred and forty feet in extreme length and one hundred and fifteen feet in extreme width. The interior height is somewhat more than sixty feet. The tower which arises over the crossing of the nave and transepts is nearly fifty feet square within, and its ceiling, which is open to view from the interior, is one hundred feet from the floor. The ceilings of the auditorium are of light furrings and plaster in the form of a continuous barrel vault of trefoil section, abutting against the great arches of the crossing, which are furred down to a similar shape, with wooden tie - beams encasing iron rods carried across on a level with the cusp of the arches. The four great granite piers which sustain the weight of the tower are encased with furring and plastering, finished in the shape of grouped shafts with grouped capitals and bases. The whole apparent

interior is thus, contrary to the convictions of the modern architectural moralist, a mask of the construction. We do not propose here to enter upon the question as to whether or to what extent the architect was justified in thus frankly denying his responsibility to the ethics of design as practiced and expounded by the greatest masters, ancient and modern; it suffices for our immediate purpose to note that the material of actual construction being nowhere visible in the interior, to afford a key of color to the decorator, or to affect his designs in any way, he had before him a field peculiarly unembarrassed by conditions.

The exterior architecture of the church is a very vigorous and masculine form of round-arched Romanesque, affected by traditions from Auvergne and Salamanca, and with a good deal of later mediæval detail, the whole well amalgamated and a proper work for an architect of the nineteenth century. Thus, even in respect to style, the painter had no reason to yield anything of his freedom to archæological conventions; he was left at liberty to follow the same spirit of intelligent eclecticism which had guided the architect.

The tone of the interior, as regards color, being thus left open to some arbitrary solution, the desire of the architect for a red effect was accepted as a starting-point, and this color was adopted for the walls throughout, its quality being solemn and neutral. Either in fact, or by effect of light, or by variation of surface, this color submits to variations in tone, so that it really has different values in different parts of the church; and thus, in the very beginning, we seem to be spared the homely virtue of mechanical correctness and equality of workmanship. The vaulted surfaces of the ceiling are divided into narrow cross-sections by small moldings of black walnut or black walnut color, and these sections very properly receive the complementary color of red, namely, a greenish blue, with the value of bottle green. These sections or strips are cut up by transverse lines into quarries or squares, each of which is occupied with a form or de

vice of conventional character, appealing rather to the imagination than to the intellect, rather to the material than to the moral sense. There are perhaps a dozen of these devices, some of them apparently cabalistic or vaguely mysterious in character, distributed among the quarries with a certain Oriental irregularity, and carefully avoiding geometrical recurrences. These forms are in various shades of olive, brown, and buff, here and there accentuated capriciously with gold. Out of this complication results a very rich, quiet, and original effect, an effect cunningly conceived and artfully executed, but legitimate and worthy of study by all decorators who know not how to be sober without being wearisome. It is really surprising to see with how many elements of color and form this serious result is achieved. It indicates a very intelligent study of Oriental methods. The same colors are used in the decoration of the four arches of the tower, so that their important representative function of support is not defined and recognized with that force and dignity which the circumstances require; but the four great grouped piers at the angles of the intersection of nave, transepts, and chancel have received a treatment in dark bronzegreen, very broad and simple, with gilded capitals and bases, an arrangement remarkable alike for its reserve and its strength, and for its harmony with the prevailing tones around. The cornice which forms the important line of demarcation between the dull red of the walls and the dark green of the ceiling is weak and insufficient, and it encounters the moldings of the capitals of the great piers in a manner which would be called artless and innocent if this were the work of an architect of the twelfth century, but which under the present circumstances must be considered careless or defiant. As regards color, which might have been so bestowed as to condone these faults of weakness and insufficiency in the cornice, it rather enhances them by emphasizing and separating its unfortunate details.

The decoration of the walls of the