mysteriousness of nature, and this makes his pictures as it were types of her different moods more than views of particular places.

How do the pictures of Mauve affect those who only know him by his works? Well, we do not go to them to see the cheerful side of nature, as we do to William Maris, although he does not feel the intense gloom that oppressed J. F. Millet, nor are his types of labourers in the fields so devoid of intelligence nor so borne down by a relentless fate as are those painted by the French artist. The Dutch peasants are painted in more comfortable surroundings, but they are still governed by the same immutable laws; and the impossibility of warding off suffering and sorrow, and the quiet endurance of them when they come, are shown by Mauve in the resigned and pathetic figures that do their day's work on the farms, or guide the flocks of sheep from one pasture to another. We cannot look at his pictures without noticing that very often he finds reflected in nature, and unconsciously records in his paintings, his own rather sad turn of mind, which grew more melancholy when he was

under the influence of those times of mental depression which occasionally came over him.

Fifth

Listening in the same fields and meadows in which William Maris finds the symbols that reflect the contented happiness of his own disposition, Mauve hears only the minor chords of earth's music, a tender, beautiful, but sad strain. Like Beethoven's question, Andante. repeated again and again, but always in vain Symphony. (for all the different forms of art seek to get beyond the phenomena of the world around us, and to find some solution of the problems that are met at every turn), Mauve's questionings of nature have no reply save the answer of his own sad heart that comes echoing back to him. So truly has Coleridge told us:

"We receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does nature live."

Mauve's pictures give back his own thoughts. They have in them no restlessness, nor discontent with the beautiful world, whose loveliness he well understood and described so charmingly; the pearly grey spring, with its delicate blue sky, as if just newly created,

"The

Youth of
Nature."
Matthew
Arnold.

the fuller if less subtle colouring of summer, the rich deep tones of autumn, and the white harmony of winter. Rather do they show that "the tears of things" sadden him, as he sees that man moves through this life like a shadow passing over the ground, and like it disappears and is forgotten, while nature is permanent and enduring. Hear her speaking:

"Will ye scan me and read me and tell

Of the thoughts that ferment in my breast,
My longing, my sadness, my joy?
Will ye claim for your great ones the gift
To have render'd the gleam of my skies,

To have echo'd the moan of my seas,
Utter'd the voice of my hills?

Race after race, man after man,

Have thought that my secret was theirs,

-They are dust, they are changed, they are gone!
I remain."

Mauve is an artist and not a philosopher, and we do not expect any theories of life from him; but he cannot help expressing in his art what he feels, when he looks out on the varied phenomena of the world, and this seems to be the burden of it: the earth is beautiful in itself, but sad in relation to man, for he lives