yet, throughout these busy twenty-five years and more, it is evident that when an extra "good" day came to him he was pretty sure to make an etching, and that etching was pretty sure to be full of the painter-etcher's prime quality, namely, spontaneity and freshness. Speaking on this subject, the great landscape etcher, Sir Seymour Haden, has said to me: "An etching which occupies the artist for, say, three days, is in fact the work of three different men; the artist's mood is one thing on Monday, another on Tuesday, and still another on Wednesday; but the freshness and unity of an etching cannot be maintained unless the artist knows exactly what he intends to do and then does it at once." And in Sir Seymour's pamphlet, About Etching, he writes: "The painter, by overlaying his work, may modify and correct it as he goes on. Not so the etcher. Every stroke he makes must tell strongly against him if it be bad, or prove him a master if it be good. In no branch of art does a touch go for so much. The necessity for a rigid selection is therefore constantly present in his mind. If one stroke in the right place tells more for him than one in the wrong, it would seem to follow that that single stroke is a more learned stroke than the ten by which he would have arrived at his end." "The faculty of doing such work supposes a concentration and a reticence requisite in no other art."

Whistler was of the same opinion, and although it was not his habit to praise the work of his

brother artists, yet in London, when Mr. Pennell made an exhibition of his own lithographs, Whistler contributed to the catalogue the following characteristic little note of introduction: "There is a crispness in their execution, and a lightness and gaiety in their arrangement as pictures, that belong to the artist alone.' I may add that Mr. Pennell's work in lithography well deserves to be treated in a separate article.

As a writer, Mr. Pennell's latest work-which was written in collaboration with his wife-is perhaps the most important among their notable writings. It is their "Life of Whistler.

The greater part of the two large volumes is the work of Mrs. Pennell, and it was a very difficult biography to write worthily; but if ever such a book came straight from the heart-as well as from the intellect of its authors-this one did. Mr. and Mrs. Pennell knew Whistler long and intimately; better, perhaps, than he was known to any of his other friends.

To have seen Mr. Pennell at work etching a plate is a thing to remember. He loves to depict the towering buildings of crowded city streets. Most etchers of such subjects would make a preliminary sketch on the spot and afterwards toil laboriously over the copper plate in the retirement of their studios; but Mr. Pennell takes a far more direct course, and one which would disconcert almost any other artist. He chooses his place in the crowded street, and stands there quite undisturbed by the rush of passers-by, or