The ladies named all entered upon their profession with a due sense of its importance. Many of them may perhaps be counted fortunate in having commenced their careers before the newer ideas came into vogue, by virtue of which anybody and everybody may pose as an artist, now that it entails none of that lengthy apprenticeship which from all time has been deemed to be a necessary preliminary to practice. Even so lately as the date when Mrs. Allingham came upon the scene, draftsmanship and composition were still regarded as a matter of some importance if success was to be achieved. Nature, as represented in Art, was still subjected to a process of selection, a selection, too, of its higher in preference to its lower forms. The same pattern was not allowed to serve for every tree in the landscape whatever be its growth, foliage, or the local influences which have affected its form. A sufficient study of the human and of animal forms to admit of their introduction, if needful, into that landscape was not deemed superfluous. Most important of all, beauty still held the field, and the cult of unvarnished ugliness had not captured the rising generation. The endeavours of women in what is termed very erroneously the higher branch of the profession, have not as yet received the reward that is their due. Placed at the Royal Academy under practically the same conditions as the male sex whilst under tuition, both as regards fortune and success, their pictures, when they mount from the Schools in the basement to the Exhibition Galleries on the first floor of Burlington House, carry with them no further possibility of reward, even although, as they have done, they hold the pride of place there. It is true that as each election to the Academic body comes round rumours arise as to the chances of one or other of the fair sex forcing an entrance through the doors that, with the two exceptions we have named, have been barred to them since the foundation of the Institution. The day, however, when their talent in oil painting, or any other art medium, will be recognised by Academic honours has yet to come. To their honour be it said, the undoubted capacities of ladies have not passed unrecognised by water-colour painters. Both the Royal Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours have enrolled amongst their ranks the names of women who have been worthy exponents of the Art.