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 pictures, for they are invented solely to recall and make permanent, for this lady's own delight, those moments of joy of which there must have been many if the gentleness and the clear quality of revery in them is to be taken; and these pictures are to be taken first and last as genuine works of art in their own way, which is the only way that true works of art can be taken seriously.