There are painters and draughtsmen of all periods, before whose work you are well content to cease from criticism, and to enjoy simply, with all their imperfections, the qualities that attract you. Passionate intensity, the perfection of academic draughtsmanship, dramatic composition as it is usually understood, may, or may not, be always evident. Whether they are or not is in this case of entirely secondary importance. Certain indefinable qualities, lovable and lasting, are sure to be the most noticeable, whether you light on a print that has escaped you hitherto, or turn up one that you have known since the day it was published. Like caters for the like, and this love which the work provokes from those to whom it appeals seems also its chief characteristic. In the whole mass of pictorial art you can hardly find its equal in this particular respect. The care and sorrow of life, its disillusions and injustice, are not so much forgotten, or set aside thoughtlessly, as recognised at their relative unimportance when contrasted with the widespread, yet absolutely indefinable thing, which it is convenient to term Love. Not, be it explained, Love in its carnal sense, but, in an abstract spiritual way, which seeks the quiet happiness in adding to the joy of others, and trusts that somehow, somewhere, good is the final end of ill. It may be that this attempt to explain the impression of Mr. Hughes's work is a purely personal one, but it is one that intimate study for many years strengthens and raises to the unassailable position of a positive fact. At the risk of appearing mawkishly sentimental, even with the greater risk of reflecting sentimentality upon artistic work which it has not, this impression of Mr. Arthur Hughes's art must be set down unmistakably. Looking upon it from a purely technical aspect, you might find much to praise, and perhaps a little to criticise; but, taking it as an art addressed often enough to the purpose of forming artistic ideals in the minds of the young, you cannot but regret that the boys and girls of to-day, despite the army of artists of all ranks catering for them, cannot know the peculiar delight that the children of the sixties and early seventies enjoyed.