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here in packing-cases, each part marked ready for laying down. This preliminary work is done by prisoners in Italy; the finishing process, as I said before, by noblemen, who sing entire operas during the process.'

the window-panes, and the blinds are blue silk. Striking effects are got out of deep blue plaques on the fire-place, and on a side table there is a handful of wall-flowers in a delf bowl. Chippendale and Adam furniture prevails, the latter being more particularly prominent in a couple of china cabinets and a handsome bookcase. Possibly, in considering this kind of inventory, which only sets forth points of note, the reader may imagine that I am describing what is, after all, only a room for show, and not a room for use. This is not so. You never lose the idea of comfort in Boughton's house. The sofas are made to loll upon, the chairs to sit in, and there is no suggestion that you may spoil anything. Beauty goes hand in hand with usefulness in every room, and the owner might have spent double the money upon both furniture and decorations without inspiring half so much confidence in this respect, and certainly without adding to the picturesqueness of this suite of rooms, elegant enough for a prince, useful enough for the humblest of his ménage.

The hall is panelled in wood painted two tints of Indian red, the wall above being a pale dull salmon-color. There is a velvet couch in the hall, an ornamental heater or stove, a cabinet of old china, a palm in a delf pot, and a few etchings and monochromes upon the walls. The general effect is cool and pleasant. The three rooms which open from the hall may be, and often are, used en suite, being separated by doors or curtains which are arranged in such a way as to make artistic breaks upon the whole when opened as one long saloon. The first is the Yellow, the second the Blue, and the third the Gold Room. Let me say at the outset that in mentioning these primary colors the reader is not expected to think of them in their positive boldness. Neutral tints are chiefly meant, though here and there crops out a bit of strong color. The first room is a successful attempt to deal The third, or Amber Room, is the dinwith pinks and blues, which predominate ing-room. Having regard to the har in frieze and wall, held in check by gold-monious effect of the decoration, an inen panels with decorative sketches of the vestigation of the details of it is full of Seasons. The furniture is black, picked surprises. Spanish leather, old oak, Inout lightly with dull gold, and the orna-dia matting, gold and brass, are all used ments are chiefly Venetian glass. The upon dado and walls, with here and there dado is painted a brown amber, the tones a paper panel deftly worked in. The genof which are repeated in various cushions eral tone is a soft amber, though you are and in the portière. The furniture is not conscious of any particular color that chiefly Chippendale. Drawing aside a calls for notice; the effect is full of repose pair of yellow satin hangings embroid- and rest, and this in spite of a large oldered in Japan, you step into the Blue fashioned window, with panels of sunRoom, which is one of the most charming flowers and lilies on a rich blue ground. of bijou parlors, with a fire-place that is a Up in the frieze of the room two painted delightful combination of the useful and circular windows are placed with excelthe beautiful. You go to it at once. It lent effect, especially as they appear to is practically a cabinet for bric-à-brac, compete in form with the plaques that with a fire-place in the centre of it. The are hung here and there in well-selected wainscot is high, and, like the fire-place, is places. The white cloth laid for luncheon painted on the flat a light greenish-blue, upon an oval Chippendale table, with a so smooth and delicate that it might be tinted centre cloth in the middle, and a china. Above it are hung some notable somewhat motley service of glass and etchings, some of them from Mr. Bough- china, with a bowl of daffodils on one ton's own work, one of them notably side and a button-hole of hyacinths on "The Waning of the Honeymoon," an- the other; one of the illuminated panels of other Hester Prynne," the latter the the window open, and the sun streaming work of an American publisher, and an in; a rich Persian rug by the fire-place exquisite specimen of the art now once absorbing all the bright light that reaches more popular, one of the many happy re-it-the picture is one to remember as a vivals of the time. Delicate sketches of pleasant sensation. A few paintings lilies and other flowers and plants adorn | adorn the walls, among them a fine por

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window of a pretty design, and such furniture as the room contains is old marquetry.

Boughton's is just the studio we can imagine it to have been the dream of his life to build and to furnish. His art is human and tender; it deals chiefly with the gentle and domestic side of life; it has in it an element of the poetry of Longfellow, and is capable of portraying the patient sweetness of Hawthorne's woman of The Scarlet Letter; it is in sympathy with the gray English landscapes and village comedies, and is at home with the simple humor and humble courtships of Dutch fishermen and Friesland maidens; it revels in the detail of a Hollander's costume as well as in the grass-grown wharves and picturesque barges of the dead cities. Comedy and tragedy go on close together in real life, and if Boughton steps aside from the bowl and dagger, he has nevertheless shown sufficient dramatic power for a strong theme, as witness his "Pilgrims going to Church," the sedate force of several of his illustrations of peasant life in Brittany, and the gloom of his Hester Prynne on a mission of mercy to a house stricken with the plague.

at work," I remark, for want of a better thought at the moment. "What a delightful contrast to that of an author at work, or a poet, even when his eyes are in a fine frenzy rolling!"

"But the author has the advantage," he answers, "in having people all over the world contemplating his pictures at the same time.”

Boughton works as though he is indeed engaged upon a labor of love, stepping back now and then to see the effect of those touches he is pleased to call accidental, but which are strokes of technical skillfulness.

"And in the case of a landscape," he says, taking me by the arm, “look here. I open the door; I walk out to the very head of the staircase; and I can see my work as far away as you can get from it at the Academy."

This is a great advantage, and it is only one of the points which have entered into the artist's calculation in the designing of his workshop. There is no kind of light he can not command-north or south, high or low, straight light or cross light. The walls of the room are a warm gray in color, not distempered, nor painted, nor As I enter his studio, one end (the papered, but the plaster colored in process north) nearly filled with a window, the of mixing-the artist's own idea, and one other with a gallery, like the place for the that may yet lead to some interesting musicians in an old banqueting room, and changes in regard to the decoration of an alcove of cushions beneath it, I find the walls. On the west side of the room is an master intently at work, his model for the alcove just sufficient to hold a comfortaFriesland skating girl posed more particu-ble settee, and display some fine rugs upon larly for the head. His touches were of the lightest and finest, and as often made with the tip of his little finger as with his brush. "The finger is sensitive," he says, as if I had asked a question. "There can be no rule for its application; just a touch and go, the effect of which is more or less accidental, more or less knack, a sort of instinct."

the floor and a golden ceiling. The most gratifying bits of color in the studio are seen in the Persian, Turkish, and other rugs that find suitable places for both use and ornament on floor, couches, and chairs. A small but well-filled book-case, a writing-desk, and shelves full of pamphlets, papers, magazines, works in miscellaneous literature, French and Eng

"Something more than instinct," I sug-lish, give an air of sociability to the room. gest, "is required to deal with a palette so full of color."

"There is nothing that requires so many colors for its representation as the human face," he answers. "You can not lay the brush upon a part of this palette that has not been used on this face."

He was putting in the shadow of the dainty under lip, and it was a lesson to see how deftly he flecked off its redundance and softened the edges of it with his finger.

"It is very entertaining to see an artist

A bust of Dante on a pedestal, a rough sketch of the bird sacred to Minerva, a Japanese cabinet, a bit of old blue from Delft, and other miscellaneous incidents of decoration are accidentally, as it were, dropped here and there into the general story; and the tapestry of the staircase is repeated here and there in the gallery at the south end and on the eastern wall. A work-room, living-room, recreation-room, reception-room, is this sensibly furnished studio, in which Mr. Boughton gives form and color to his elaborate studies.

"I notice that you make many and tries claim. He was brought from Engcareful sketches," I remark. land to Albany, New York, by his parents when four years old, opened his studio there at sixteen, and grew up as an Amer

Yes, I have note-books full of themsketches, studies, and memoranda, though

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