We say a "qualifying" title, because within its covers we find only a one-sided and partial view of both life and landscape. None of the sterner realities of either are presented. In strong opposition to the tendency of the art of the later years of the nineteenth century, the baser side of life has been studiously avoided, and nature has only been put down on paper in its happiest moods and its pleasantest array. Storm and stress in both life and landscape are altogether absent. We say, further, a "commendatory" title, because as regards both life and landscape it is, throughout, a mirror of halcyon days. If sickness intrudes on a single occasion, it is in its convalescent stage; if old age, it is in a "Haven of Rest"; the wandering pedlar finds a ready market for her wares, the tramp assistance by the wayside. In both life and landscape it is a portrayal of youth rejoicing in its youth. For the most part it represents childhood, and, if we are to believe Mr. Ruskin, for the first time in modern Art; for in his lecture on Mrs. Allingham at Oxford, he declared that "though long by academic art denied or resisted, at last bursting out like one of the sweet Surrey fountains, all dazzling and pure, you have the radiance and innocence of reinstated infant divinity showered again among the flowers of English meadows of Mrs. Allingham." This healthiness, happiness, and joy of life, coupled with an idyllic beauty, reveals itself in every figure in Mrs. Allingham's story, so that even the drudgery of rural life is made to appear as a task to be envied. And the same joyous and happy note is to be found in her landscapes. Every scene is Full in the smile of the blue firmament. One feels that Every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. Rain, wind, or lowering skies find no place in any of them, but each calls forth the expression What a day To sun one and do nothing! No attempt is made to select the sterner effects of landscape which earlier English painters so persistently affected. With the rough steeps of Hindhead at her door, the artist's feet have almost invariably turned towards the lowlands and the reposeful forms of the distant South Downs. Cottages, farmsteads, and flower gardens have been her choice in preference to dales, crags, and fells. And in so selecting, and so delineating, she has certainly catered for the happiness of the greater number. What does the worker, long in city pent, desire when he cries 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven? And what does the banished Englishman oftenest turn his thoughts to, even although he may be dwelling under aspects of nature which many would think far more beautiful than those of his native land? Browning in his "Home Thoughts from Abroad" gives consummate expression to the homesickness of many an exile:-- Oh! to be in England Now that April's there! * * * * *