What a pretty picture it presents of those brave old colonial days, when simplicity and culture went hand in hand. It is very sad, of course, that the poor boy should have lived too early to enjoy the blessings of a school system, based on the strictest principles of pedagogy, graded to an average not inconveniently high, making much of words and relegating ideas to the proper limbo of things that are unpractical and, therefore, useless. How pathetic, too, the unique event of this paintbox in view of the profusion of presents which our children now enjoy! Truly, there is much room for complacent congratulation over improved conditions. Yet it is a little disconcerting to notice how much the less favoured children made of their meagre opportunities; and we may begin to wonder whether education--the leading of the child step by step to a fuller and fuller consciousness of the realities of life--and instruction--the laying of brick upon brick to build an edifice of character--may not be a thing outside of systems, and to be looked for rather in the daily contact of the child’s expanding personality with good wholesome personalities around it. Perhaps, after all, the quiet spaciousness of those old colonial days was a fine nursery for men, just as the western forests nurtured Lincoln and many a quiet home to-day is fostering the goodness and greatness of the future. Stuart’s earliest picture is said to be a portrait of Mr. Thomas R. Hunter, of Newport, and we read that when he was thirteen years old he received a commission to paint portraits of Mr. and Mrs. John Bannister. Two years later a Scotch painter, Cosmo Alexander, arrived in Newport and interested himself in the boy’s efforts, giving him instruction, and when he returned to Scotland two years afterward, taking him with him. One notes how readily the boy ingratiated himself into the hearts of those with whom he came in contact, a trait that marks each stage of his subsequent career. He had a quiet, self-contained demeanour, with a store of spirit that could flash out enthusiastically upon occasion and in a very tactful way; with humour, too, and satire as he grew older, and with a growing brusqueness and even intolerance, toward his later life. The urbanity, discreetness, and humour he would have inherited from his Scotch father, drawing from his Welsh ancestry on the mother’s side the ardour of his character and his love of music. For his education had included the practice of music--he could play the organ and was skilful on other instruments. He must have been, indeed, a personality of rare graciousness.