that Booth had played but his own gentle, refined nature that had left its mark upon his face. Sargent saw it readily enough and had no need to plough beneath the surface for it. His method of procedure with women’s portraits is not different from that of men. He seeks the personal presence, sees keenly every physical peculiarity, and gives as truthfully as is consistent with pigments the facts as he sees them. There is no romance of mood, no reflective musing, no idealizing or prettifying of the likeness. All phases of fashionable life have come to his studio and he has painted a host of social celebrities, some of them more worthy of his brush than others. Many times he has painted the grand lady in flashing jewels and gorgeous robes and been accused of vulgarity in the doing of it. But the accusation will not hold. The vulgarity has been in the sitter and has been shown by the painter without feeling or perhaps quite unconsciously. Many times the lady, the robes, and the jewels have been given without a suspicion of vulgarity because there was none in the model. That wondrous creation that appeared in the. Salon so many years ago--the tall lady in the magenta gown--was something bordering on the bizarre; it was flashing, glittering, noisy, but not unrefined in any sense. The portrait of “Miss Terry as Lady Macbeth” is “stagey,” as perhaps it should be, for again the staginess was before the painter; but surely it is not wanting in taste. And for refinement, distinction, sensitiveness, what could be better than the beautiful portrait of “Lady Agnew”? Whatever may be the qualities or defects of the sitter, Sargent may be trusted to record the facts before him exactly as they are, and let the burden of their explanation fall on the friends or the family, if it must. [Illustration: “Carnation Lily, Lily Rose,” by John S. Sargent. In the National Gallery of British Art, London.]