"How do you account for it," I continued, "that this particular English School of Art painters, which you are so fond of, is of such supreme excellence?"

"Well," he replied:

You see, men like Reynolds and Gainsborough led very different lives to what artists do now-a-days. They threw their whole heart into their work, and even when they were most productive they were imbued with sincerity and a rare power of concentration. Theirs was a dignity which is foreign to our impressionable, noisy age. Thus, somehow, they possessed the secret of creating the beautiful.

It was one of Lenbach's pet ideas that there is little character in our age, which is bereft of color, costume and symbolism. Fashion forces us all to don the dull, featureless garb of mediocrity -so that the Pope and the chimneysweep are the only two people left whose dress bespeaks the character of their calling.

In the course of our wanderings we I went to look at the house once inhabited by Sir Joshua Reynolds in Leicester Square, the dilapidated condition of which (it was tenanted by an auctioneer) saddened him. "How such a wealthy country thus neglect the mementoes of her great men?" he exclaimed. Passing along Piccadilly

can

One day we visited Mr. G. F. Watts' studio in Melbury Road. On leaving I asked Lenbach what might be his opinion of Mr. Watts as an artist? He replied, "Reynolds was a child of nature, Watts is one of nature's nephews": a differentiation which still placed Watts in Lenbach's estimation far above the most popular contemporary art, among the immortals. What particularly excited Lenbach's regard for Watts, and also for Burne Jones was, that neither of them had ever swerved a hair's breadth from their artistic ideals for the sake of making money. They stood above the mere pursuit of gain. Lenbach had made too much money himself to think unkindly of others who had been equally successful; but he believed that there was a point beyond which no artist can go in the pursuit of gain without jeopardizing whatever chance he might possess of producing work of lasting

To be "Zu sehr Kauffmann," too much of the huckster, was the danger: "the rock of the Charlatan," he said. "For in Art as in other imperative matters the Biblical words applied with peculiar force: 'For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'"

The London crowd excited the interest of this close observer of human character; but the sight of the number of dirty, shabbily-dressed people we met in the streets repelled him. It filled his sensitive nature with pain. The slums within a few minutes' walk of Westminster Abbey drew from him the remark that it was hard to believe that such ugliness could have existed at all at a time when architects lived capable of creating such beautiful structures, of composing in stone with such sincerity and reverence.

One night we went to a music-hall. The place called forth the dry comment: "Cads on the stage-cads in the audience." The vulgarity of the crowd shocked him. The squalor of the tenement dwellings of the working classes, as seen from the railway-carriages on the South London lines, had such a saddening effect upon him, that he could not get over the memory of it for days. He even recurred to the subject long afterwards when I visited him in Munich:

There must be an untold amount of misery amid all this wealth. But after all, the English have done great work They in the past, not only in Art. have given much humor to the world. (Sie haben der Welt viel Humor gegeben.) A pity they seem to want everything for themselves and begrudge us Germans our rising commerce, our insignificant Colonial possessions.

In the month of October, 1903, I spent a few days with Lenbach in Munich for the last time. He had almost recovered from the partial seizure of twelve months before, and had just finished a portrait of General Woodford, United States Ambassador at Madrid. And according to all accounts his powers of portraiture showed no decline whatever. One afternoon we went together by train to the Starnberg Lake, on the beautiful banks of

which, in sight of the snow-clad Alps, he was having a stately villa built after the design of his friend, Gabriel von Seidl. He told me that he thought he was now on the point of realizing the supreme ambition of his life-namely, of devoting himself entirely to Art for its own sake-that is to say, to work without thinking about money: to paint landscapes and beautiful children. For this strong man, who had stood erect in the presence of more monarchs than many a high-born courtier crawls before in a life-time, had always remained "ein Natur Kind," an unspoilt child of nature. And in the evening of his life a voice seemed to call unto him and inspire his artistic soul with the words of Our Saviour: "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of God." Alas! it was ordained not to be; for Lenbach was shortly afterwards struck down by the illness of which he died.

I have left myself no scope to dwell upon the varied intellectual gifts of this favored son of the Bavarian hills. To tell of the humor which sparkled from his lips and found a lasting record in hundreds of vivacious anecdotes; how, whilst disdaining the arts of an orator, he yet succeeded in swaying an audience as few trained rhetoricians could do, and impressed his strong will upon his surroundings. But above all, his powers of organization during the last years of his life made him the centre -for or against-of every Art movement which agitated the Bavarian capital. To him was mainly due the conception, as well as the erection, of the beautiful Munich Künstlerhaus.

Lenbach was of stately stature and powerful build. In fact, I once shocked his devoted wife by comparing him to a gorilla. But he understood my playful reference to the fierce, broad-shouldered king of the African forests, and smiled. Everything about the man de

noted strength, and yet refinement. Particularly the powerful forehead, the piercing expression of his luminous eyes, which at times took a haze of tenderness rare even in a woman. His smile was set off by the possession of faultless white teeth, of which he had not lost a single one. He used to call himself ugly, for there was a certain The Contemporary Review.

ruggedness about his strong features which one finds among portraits of the Dutch masters. But for those who can read aright the outward expression of great qualities of heart and mind, the proud dignity of manliness, Lenbach looked what he was: "Every inch a King' among men!"

Sidney Whitman.

The

We were encamped in the Khan, the native inn at Severek, a dismal town in the wilds of Mesopotamia. weather and the depth of mud made it impossible for us to pitch our tents outside, and the dirty, windowless sheds round the courtyard, which afforded the only sleeping accommodation, were not inviting, so we had fixed our tent in a covered passage by tying the ropes to the pillars supporting the roof. The Zaptiehs deputed to guard us for the night hung about the door plying our Turkish friend Hassan and the Armenian cook Arten with questions as to our sanity. Why should two foreign ladies choose the depth of winter to travel between Ourfa and Diarbekr along the caravan route, which had been long deserted owing to the raids of the Hamidiyeh Kurds? had often asked myself the same question during the last few days, but had not yet thought of an answer.

I

A pale, dishevelled young man in semi-European clothes slouched into the courtyard and joined the group. Zaptiehs spoke roughly to him, and he gave a cringing reply; he forced his way past them up to me.

"Moi parle Français," he said, with an accent corresponding to his gram

mar.

"So it seems," I answered in the same language.

"To-morrow I travel with you," he went on.

"Indeed!" I answered, with more of interrogation than of cordiality.

"Yes, you and my mother and sisters will go in an araba" (a native cart), "and I and my brother will ride your horses."

I made a closer inspection of the individual, but could detect no signs of insanity to harmonize with his utter

ances.

"Who are you?" I said.

"I am an Armenian," he answered. "I have a travelling theatre; we want to get to Diarbekr, and have been waiting here for weeks for an opportunity to join a caravan. The road is so unsafe that no one dares pass this way now, and if we do not go with you we may be here for months yet. You will start at seven to-morrow morning, and we shall do thirteen hours to K-"

"We shall start when it suits us," I replied, "and stop when we have a mind. We never travel more than eight hours, and shall not do the regular stages to Diarbekr. We shall be three days on the way."

"You must go in two days," he per

sisted; "we cannot afford to be so long on the road."

I began to get angry.

"Go away, strange young man," I said, "and don't bother me any more." "I will have everything ready," he said.

"You may make your own arrangements for yourself," I rejoined; "if you wish to follow us on the road it is a public way, but understand that we have nothing to do with you; we start when we like, stop when we wish, ride our own animals and call our souls our own."

"My soul is Christian," he said anxiously, as I moved off; "are you not my sister?"

"Young man," I said, sternly, "we may be brothers and sisters in spirit, and although we may be travelling along the same road to heaven, please understand that we travel to Diarbekr on our own horses and not in our sisters' arabas."

Next morning we left the Khan at sunrise, and outside the town we found the whole of the Armenian theatre party ready to accompany us. A covered araba concealed the mother and daughters; we caught glimpses of tawdry garments and towzelled heads. Another araba was piled with stage scenery and cooking pots; three or four men were riding mules, and there were an equal number on foot. The men were dressed in flimsy cotton coats showing bright green or red waistcoats underneath, and tight trousers in loud check patterns; they wore Italian bandit-looking hats, and their shirts seemed to end in a sort of frill round the neck, suggesting the paper which ornaments the end of a leg of mutton. The whole get-up seemed singularly inappropriate as they plunged ankle deep through the mud. Patches of snow lay in the hollows of the road, a furious gale was driving sleet at right-angles into our faces, it was bitterly cold.

We rode for hours through a dreary country of broken gray stones with no sign of vegetation or life of any kind. At last we arrived at a collection of tumble-down deserted huts, built of the stones lying round, and hardly distinguishable from the rest of the country until we were actually amongst them. We were cold and wet, and had hardly come half-way to our destination, but as neither of us could stand long hours in the saddle without rest or food, we called a halt here to recruit. The Zaptiehs forming our escort begged us not to stop; they could not understand the strange ways of these mad foreigners, who not only travelled in such weather, but sat down to picnic in it instead of pushing on to the shelter of the Khan at the journey's end. But we were inexorable, and they reluctantly fas tened the horses on the sheltered side of remaining walls, against which they stood with their backs tightly pressed, drawing their ragged coats closely round them. The village had been but lately ransacked and destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha, the redoubtable Kurdish chief; he was still abroad in the neighborhood, and any detention on the road increased the chances of our falling in with him or some of his stray bands.

The knowledge of this and the discomforts of the journey made the men fretful and anxious. We picked out the least dilapidated-looking house, and clambered over fallen stones and halfrazed walls until we found a roofless room which boasted of three undestroyed angles. In one of these the cook tried to make a fire with the last remnants of charcoal; we huddled in another to avoid, if we could, the blast which rushed across the broken doorways and whistled through the chinks of the rough stone walls. The arabas, accompanied by their bedraggled followers, rumbled heavily past us; the noise gradually died away as they dis

appeared in the distance; desolation reigned on all sides; the howling blast moaned weird echoes of destruction round the ruined walls.

We managed to boil enough water to make tea; and then, yielding to the men's protests, we mounted and rode on. Hour after hour passed; the driving wind hurled the hailstones like a battery of small shot right into our faces; the rain collected in small pools in the folds of my mackintosh, and I guided their descent outwards and downwards with the point of my riding-whip. The drop which fell intermittently from the overflowing brim of my hat had been the signal for a downward bob to empty the contents, but now the wet had soaked through and I let it run down my face unconcernedly. We were a silent and melancholy band. X. rode in front with her chin buried in her coat-collar. face was screwed up in her endeavor to face the elements; the hump in her shoulders betokened resigned misery. The soldiers' heads were too enveloped to allow any study of their expressions, but the outward aspect of their bodies was a sufficient indication of their inward feelings: the very outline of their soaked and tattered garments bespoke discomfort and dejection.

Her

The pale-faced little officer, straight from the military school at Constantinople, urged his horse alongside mine. "Nazil," he said. It was a laconic method, essentially Turkish, of saying "How"-i. e., "How are you?" "How's everything?" "Khassta" ("Ill"), I answered. "Aman," he groaned. "Kach Saat daha?" I asked ("How many hours more?"). "Yarem Saat, Inshallah. Bak, Khan bourada" ("Half an hour, Inshallah. Look, the Khan is there").

I raised my head to follow the direction of his pointed whip; the jerk sent a trickle of wet down the back of my neck and the rain blinded my eyes. I dropped my head again: it was not

worth while battling the elements even to look upon our approaching haven of rest. I was too familiar with the aspect of the country to be particularly interested in the scenery; it had not altered at all for many days. If you looked in front you saw an endless tract of slightly undulating country, the surface of which was a mass of stones; there were stones to the right, there were stones to the left, there were stones behind; you rode over stones, slippery, broken, loose, sliding stones; and now stones, stones of hail were hurled at you from the heavens above. The very bread we had eaten for our midday meal seemed to have partaken of the nature of the country; I had accidentally dropped my share, and had to hunt for it, indistinguishable among the other particles on the ground. We were rapidly turning into stones ourselves; one seemed to be riding on a huge, dry river bed, the waters of which had been drawn up into the heavens and were now being let down again by degrees.

The officer gave an order to a Zaptieh; the man tightened the folds of his cloak round him, wound the ends of his kafiyeh into his collar, and digging his heels into the sides of his white mule, darted suddenly ahead. The crick in the back of my neck made it too painful for me to turn my head to look, but this must mean that we were near the Khan, and that he had gone on to announce our arrival. Visions of being otherwise seated than in a saddle faintly loomed in my brain; I hardly dared wander on to thoughts of a fire and something hot to drink. We turned at right-angles off the track and plunged into a bed of mud which led up to the door of a great square barrack-looking building with a low flat roof and a general air of desolation. The Zaptieh stood grimly at the door. "Dolu" ("Full"), he said. Nevertheless