his studio. He lays his plans for one of familiar to him as Regent and Bond those remarkable studies of the ancient streets; his wharves and stores and boats life of Greece or Rome or Pompeii or are better known to him possibly than Egypt, which are the delight of students their nineteenth-century successors.

course the new works will receive their last touches, and go down to posterity among the best examples of his easel. Fancy that London cart linking to-day with the classic life of Pompeii!

"I put them in last week," said the artist, laughing. "It was in this way: driving in a hansom to Brompton, a greengrocer's cart came out of a street ahead, the horse galloping. I could only see the back of the cart and the lower part of the You might lose Mr. Alma-Tadema's horse's legs. I took note of it all the way. studio in one of the big studios in the It turned off into a street close to the house same way that Americans often say you I was going to. I jumped out, and I said, might drop England into one of their 'Give me a bit of paper'; I had a pencil. I lakes, or lose it in one of their forests-a put down the result of my observations as characteristic suggestion of comparisons fast as I could-my friends thought I had of size. It is a small square room with a gone a little mad-and the horse's legs be- bay-window to the north, and the easels fore you are those of the animal in the fixed right in the light, in the very eye of grocer's cart; but I think I must work day. The light is never too strong for them out a little more. Oh yes, and the Tadema. You may inspect his details floor in the foreground is not half done. with a glass, and find them clear and defiI fear I will never finish." nite; and though he paints his marble without reflections, you can see the very grain of it, and feel sure that if you broke it you would see the crystalline sparkle of the fragments. After passing up a staircase, which is decorated with a fluted dado of some soft material of a dull hue, above which hang photographs of many of the artist's works, you enter the studio. On your left is a white marble counter or

He speaks with lively animation and full of earnestness, the excitement of his drive behind the grocer's cart in his voice, the momentary dejection of his reflection that he will never finish his work also. But he is cheered by the encouraging words of a sympathetic friend whose own experience enables him to appreciate the difficulties already overcome; and in due

only among his colleagues, but in the art schools of Burlington House.

bench, on the right a bay-window rising | popular of the Royal Academicians, not upon several minor panels, beneath which is a convenient and pretty settee. Fronting you are the easels. The wall beyond is filled with shelves and drawers packed with draperies and artistic properties. On the other wall are a few pictures, and on a pedestal a bust of Mrs. Tadema. The room is decorated in Pompeiian designs in reds and yellows, the floor is inlaid and polished, and the entire surroundings are quite in keeping with his work.

A man of medium height, broad shoulders, light brown hair, large eyes and mouth, Alma-Tadema is a type of the sturdy Netherlanders from whom he sprang, and he may well find in his adopted country a congenial brotherhood. He is a naturalized Englishman, and regards himself as an English painter. His wife is English, the honors he most prizes are English, and he is one of the most

There are other quarters of London where art is establishing itself in red brick palaces, and inducing imitation on the part of outsiders, which must in time bring about an entire change in the appearance of the English metropolis. There are two very notable houses Hampstead-way-one in the little suburban town, the other on this side of it. The first, Mr. Long's, in Fitzjohn Avenue, is well known to the art world. The other, Mr. Pettie's, is one of the most recent of the new houses, and has a studio which for size and scientific arrangements of light is almost unique. The tapestry over the fire-place is Flemish, and designed by Rubens. The arms hung upon it are those of Scotland and England. Being a Scotchman, Mr. Pettie

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his pictures. He took new ground not | literature of "self-made men," the story only as to living, but painting. The new of his early hard-earned successes-how height scaled, he still looked upward, and every year brought to the front a new triumph of his patient genius. "What d'ye lack, Madam?-what d'ye lack?" was one of the freshest and most characteristic of his works in his early London days. It represented one of the London apprentices of the picturesque time described by Scott, and also by Dickens, offering his waresan incident from The Fortunes of Nigel. This was in 1862, since which time one looks back over a perfect gallery of masterly works, in which "The Trio," "George Fox refusing the Oath," Arrested for Witchcraft, 'Scene in Hal o' the Wynd's Smithy, Hunted Down, ""A Sword and Dagger Fight," "The Death - Warrant," "His Grace," and "Before the Battle" hold leading places. Square-headed, of the Burns and Scott type, Mr. Pettie is of medium height, and speaks with the accent of his country, as men do who love it. By the side of his palette on the floor, beneath the unfinished picture, you will see his pipe, his constant companion. In his studio and throughout his house there is noticeable a characteristic solidity and plainness—not the plainness of a Puritanical taste, but the undemonstrative air of a modesty that is inclined to repress its love of form and color. The result is a restful atmosphere of repose, represented in the half-tones of the decorations and in the simplicity of the general arrange

ments.

While English art is nobly represented by the painters who are now in middle age, the succession promises to be, if possible, even more brilliant. The career of Hubert Herkomer, A.R. A., is hardly less remarkable than that of Millais himself, though in the case of the former there are incidents of trial and hardship which did not belong to the young life of the last-mentioned artist. Mr. Herkomer is still comparatively youthful, and yet he has tasted the bitterness of "bread-winning" under difficulties, and also the glory of an art success which has even been indorsed by France. Mr. Herkomer is not only a painter, he is master of many arts, and his studio and art school at Bushey suggest the range of his subjects and of his enthusiasm. He has himself told, in an autobiographical lecture which is one of the most interesting contributions to the

at the start of the Graphic he ventured nearly all his money in buying a page wood-block, which began his successful relations with that successful journal, and how with the money earned by this drawing he "purchased leisure" to look around for subjects, and so drew for the Graphic "The Chelsea Pensioners," which afterward, painted as "The Last Muster," won him the grand prize at Paris in 1878. This artist is another example of the cosmopolitanism of artistic London, for he was born in Bavaria, and lived as a boy in America, where he has been gaining new triumphs. His chief purpose is now the building up of his art school at Bushey, and the modest studio of old days has already developed into grand things. The studio itself is a room of noble proportions; in one corner Mr. Herkomer does, as a play from heavier work, the mezzotint engraving which he has revived; the mantel is in beaten brass worked by himself; the richly carved screen is the work of the venerable father from whom the artist inherits his various dexterity of hand. In a separate building is the printing-room, where workmen print the engravings under the watchful care of the artist himself, and about the studio other buildings are to afford facilities for the colony of art students this enterprising master means to gather about him.

To do anything like justice to the subject of "artistic London," one ought to visit many houses and many studios, to spend an evening at the Arts Club, describe a Burlington House soirée, an Academy dinner, a Press Day and a Private View, enter into particulars of the course of study at the Royal Academy schools, discuss the art features of South Kensington, interview the management of the various galleries, take note of the interesting revivals in the graphic arts, examine the work and prospects of the tapestry looms at Windsor, and record the successes of women, more particularly in the decorative arts. But art is long," and one may almost say of artistic London as of great London itself, that no traveller can traverse all its streets. The reader has been asked only to take a few glimpses as he passed, and from these to imagine for himself the wealth of art which is the fair possession of the great metropolis.