ciousness of everyone, to offset the tedium of common
experience with some degree of poetic sublimation. With the result
that many of them find their way out by taking to paints and brushes
and canvas, astonishing many a real painter, if not the untutored
layman, who probably expects to be mystified in one way or another by
something which he thinks he does not understand. It is of the
charming pictures of Jennie Vanvleet Cowdery that I wish to speak
here.

Mrs. Cowdery is a southern lady, and of this fact you become aware
instantly you find yourself in conversation with her. She evidences
all the traits and characteristics of a lady of her period, which is
to say the late mid-Victorian, for she must have been a graceful young
woman herself at the close of this fascinating period. And you find,
therefore, in her quaint and convincingly original pictures, the
passion for the charms and graces that were consistent with the period
in which she spent her girlhood, and which has left upon her
consciousness so dominant a trace. The pictures of Mrs. Cowdery,
despite their remoteness of surrounding--for she always places her
graceful figures, which are no less than the embodiments of her own
graceful states of being, in a dense woodland scene--bring up to the
senses all the fragrances of that past time, the redolence of the
oleander by the wall, of the camelia in the shadow, and of the pansy
by the hedge. You expect these ladies to shake gently upon the air,
like flowers in the morning, their own fascinating perfumes, as you
expect them to recite in the quietude of the wood in which they are
walking those sentiments which are appropriate to the season and of
other soft remembrances.

Mrs. Cowdery might have taken to needlework, and sat like many another
young woman of that time by the window with the sunlight streaming in
upon the coloured stitches of her work, or she might perhaps more
strictly have taken to miniature painting, the quality of which style
is so much in evidence in these pleasant pictures of hers. The
pictures of Mrs. Cowdery will not stimulate the spectator to reflect
with gravity upon the size of the universe, but they dwell entirely
upon the intimate charm of it, the charm that rises out of breeding
and cultivation, and a feeling for the finer graces of the body and
sweet purities of mind. Mrs. Cowdery is essentially a breather and a
bringer of peace. There is no purpose in these gracious and
entertaining