scriptive of a joyous and ephemeral mood.
A long step forward was taken in The Romany Girl, which immediately
followed,--a work full of fire and freedom, strongly personal in
suggestion, and marked by a wild and impatient individuality which
revealed in the girl the impression of a lawless ancestry, that somehow
and somewhere had felt the action of a finer strain of blood. The next
year Fuller reached the highest point of his inspiration and power in
The Quadroon, a work which is likely to be held for all time as his
masterpiece, so far as strength of idea, importance of motive, and vivid
force of description are concerned. Without violence, even without
expression of action, but simply by a pair of haunting eyes, a
beautiful, despairing face, and a form confessing utter weariness and
abandonment of hope, he revealed all the national shame of slavery, and
its degradation of body and soul. Every American cannot but blush to
look upon it, so simple and dignified is its rebuke of the nation's long
perversity and guilt. The artist's next important effort was the famous
Winifred Dysart, as far removed in purpose from The Quadroon as it could
well be, yet akin to it by its added testimony to the painter's constant
sympathy with weak and beseeching things, and worthy to stand at an
equal height with the picture of the slave by virtue of its beauty of
conception, loveliness of character, and pathetic appeal to the
interest. It was in all respects as typical and comprehensive as The
Quadroon itself, holding within its face and figure all the sweetness
and innocence of New-England girlhood, yet with the shadow of an
uncongenial experience brooding over it, and perhaps of inherited
weakness and early death. And the wonder of it all was that the girl had
no sign about herself of longing or discontent; she was not of a nature
to anticipate or dream, and the spectator's interest was intensified at
seeing in her and before her what she herself did not perceive. That art
can give such power of suggestion to its creations is a marvel and a
delight.

Following these two works--and at some distance, although near enough to
confirm and even increase the painter's fame--came the Priscilla,
Evening; Lorette, Nydia, Boy and Bird, Hannah, Psyche, and others,
ending this year with the Arethusa, whose glowing and chastened
loveliness makes it his strongest purely artistic work, and confirms the
technical value of his method as completely as The