The argument continually carries us away into a seeming denial to the graphic arts of all subject of any sort other than the painter's subject pure and simple, that is to say, form expressed on a flat surface, light and shade, tints and gradations, and color. And yet we cannot be quite satisfied with this conclusion in view of the fact that the great painters of the past, the men whom Mr. Moore cites throughout his article named above as regardless of "the subject in the modern sense," still painted humanity, and that with interest. The thought expressed in the discussion given above, if it stands alone and by itself, is likely to mislead the student in this way, that he will suppose that the artist in color or light and shade is indifferent to human interest. But this is not exactly so, and an anecdote, nothing in itself, may illustrate this fact. It is only a few days ago that a certain wide reader, one who has much knowledge of men and of affairs, a traveller, too, and a student, but an artist always and primarily, an artist of forty years' constant practice, meditation, and severe training, alone with a friend, was talking to him of Mr. Kipling's recent poem about the torpedo-boats, and the destruction of the enemy's ships by night—and, as this seemed to interest neither party very much, our artist's friend turned to that other poem of Mr. Kipling's which begins with the couplet: This 'appened in a battle to a batt'ry of the corps. Which is first among the women an' amazin' first in war. To the second poem the instantaneous response was made that that indeed was worth reading, that there was human interest in that. Now, this remark would have been of no special value to our present argument had it come from the lips of a literary man, or of a sociologist, a philanthropist, or what you please, except the man who did actually say it, namely, an artist with the brush and with colors. That this painter, living almost exclusively the life of a painter, should have felt the need of human interest in the one case and the presence of it, even in the rough soldiering and coarse-grained emotions of the other, is notable, in a way. But observe that the comment was made upon two poems and not upon two paintings. Had the same two subjects been painted, the case might have been very different, because the picture of the great fleet and the destroying torpedo-boats might have been immeasurably more powerful from every point of view from which a picture should be judged than the picture which would illustrate the incident on the battle-field. Nearer the wheeling beams that spell The council of our foes.——