Monet is a lyrical poet, singing the joy of life and nature. The decadence of modern France in literary circles finds no reflection on his canvas. Strongly opposed by personal temperament to the ugly and morbid, he allows his brush to touch no subject at all allied to such themes. In every picture he paints we seem to hear Pippa singing: “The year’s at the Spring, And day’s at the morn; Morning’s at seven; The hill-side’s dew-pearled; The lark’s on the wing; The snail’s on the thorn: God’s in His heaven All’s right with the world!” A happy serenity is his great charm, and it has been arrived at by temperament, not by training. At the beginning of the Impressionist movement the nightly meetings at the Café Guerbois became the centre of a small band of innovators and iconoclasts, attracted by the sympathy of a common aim, the necessity of mutual encouragement, and the prescience of the evolution of a new idea. The first public exhibition of the works of these painters was held in the spring of 1874 at Nadar’s, in the Boulevard des Capucines. It created an uproar in the art world, which culminated in several scenes of personal violence between over-excited critics. Other exhibitions, chiefly devoted to the works of Claude Monet, may be roughly summarised as follows: one in 1876; at the galleries of M. Durand-Ruel in 1877; in 1880 at the offices of “La Vie Moderne,” Boulevard des Italiens; in 1889 in conjunction with Rodin at the gallery of M. Georges Petit. Monet exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1865. The two marine pieces drew from Edouard Manet the remark, “Who is this Monet, who looks as if he had taken my name, and happens thus to profit by the noise I make?” He exhibited for the last time in 1880. In 1882 he forwarded _Glaçons sur la Seine_, a remarkably beautiful conception of an illusory effect, the rejection of which finally ended all relations between the artist and a too conservative body. With the exception of a semi-private show at Dowdeswell’s of Bond Street in 1883, Monet made his début in England at the Winter Exhibition of 1888 of the Royal Society of British Artists, then under the presidency of Mr. Whistler. That careful critic, Mr. H. M. Spielman, of the “Magazine of Art,” wrote the following lines in his journal: “He who contemplates these distinctive pieces of arch-impressionism, without prejudice, without ‘arrière pensée,’ must own that for strength and brilliancy of general tone and for decorative effect, they have few, if any, equals.”