I suppose it was his exquisite enjoyment of flowers, as he had lived amongst them, at all seasons of the year, in their natural place, that gave the first impulse to Francis James to render flowers in Art. Then, as to method in Water-colour painting, there came the influence of Dewint, and then the influence of some, at least, of modern French practice, and then the influence of his neighbour, down in Sussex--that sensitive Impressionist, H. B. Brabazon, with his mature thought upon the matter, and his delightful practice, his ‘blobs’ upon the drawing-paper--‘blobs’ which are so very few, and are so admirably right. James has become, of late years at all events, less purely an Impressionist than Brabazon. In his work, whatever be its theme, there is always more of positive and yet refined draughtsmanship. But the influence of Brabazon is there all the same; or, at least, is there from the first. An immense sensitiveness as to colour, a refinement of colour which does not preclude boldness, the cultivation of an alertness as to the most delicate gradations of colour--these things characterise Francis James. They are of assistance to him, even of incalculable assistance to him, in all the things that he depicts, in all the visions he realises. But I think they are of most use to him of all when it is flowers he is looking at; composing with grace, painting with ineffable charm. And, so far as I understand, flowers were the subject with which he chose to begin. It would, however, be now thoroughly unfair to Francis James to consider him only as a flower painter. Outside flowers altogether, there is a class of effect which he has made his own, and which is his by reason of his habitual command of colour--fearless, original, and gay. I am talking of the church interiors, beheld in keen, clear light; and interesting less it may be by their architecture--as to which, while John Fulleylove, and Albert Goodwin, and Wyke Bayliss, speak, who is there that shall speak with equal authority to-day?--interesting less by their architecture than by their hues and their illuminations, and their accidents and accessories; the ornaments about the altar, the wreath of flowers that encircle the figure of a saint, the bit of heraldic glass that recalls Nuremberg, the sacred piece hoisted above the altar; the banner, it may be, or perhaps only the pink cushion of the altar rail, or the little green curtain that gives privacy to the box of the confessional. At Rothenburg, as well as Nuremberg itself, Mr. James went in for very serious draughtsman’s study of statues in their niches, of the traceried wall, of plate upon the altar, of this and that little detail, of which the treatment remained broad while it became finished. At Nuremberg--to name two, that for excellent reasons I remember--admirable is the broad and luminous picturesqueness of his interiors of the Kaiser Kapelle and St. Sebald. At Rothenburg, as far