daily example of their own beautiful lives as by their words. These were no harsh censors, come to denounce and condemn from their lofty pedestals of virtue. They were the gentle, sympathetic friends of the people, with no end in view save the welfare of those for whom they labored. Would-be reformers of the poor and the dirty might do worse than imitate their methods.

The story of Foxford is interesting and at the same time instructive, showing as it does how a whole district was rescued from appalling destitution and the population lifted from the slough of hopeless apathy, so that where once poverty and her handmaidens, disease and dirt, stalked triumphant, industry and cleanliness now reign supreme. The story is rendered still more interesting by the fact that this was accomplished not by elaborate government measures nor munificent gifts from millionaires, but solely by the efforts of a few weak women whose lives were vowed to the service of their fellow-creatures.

Dublin, Ireland.

E. LEAHY.

JAMES BARRY.

HE inquisitive sightseer or critical dilettante, ubiquitous tourist or picture gallery lounger, loitering through the national portrait galleries in London or Dublin or the rooms of the Society of Arts, Adelphi, may have his attention arrested for a moment by a small but rather remarkable portrait, which a closer glance will discover to be that of James Barry, the celebrated Irish artist, the painter of the famous Adelphi pictures, the contemporary and rival of Reynolds. The portrait, painted by his own handthe hand that did enough for fame, if not for fortune, and left imperishable memorials of the genius that guided it and illustrated the dawn of British art-is only a head; but such a head! Eyes, deep-sunken under shaggy brows, gleam with the light of genius and seem to look out abstractedly from the canvas into vacancy, like one lost in thought; while a heavy mass of hair, rude and unkempt, frames a face which would have been a study for Lavater-a face in which those who run may read the mind's construction, and in which all the more striking characteristics of the Celt are strongly marked, revealing to the hastiest glance the nationality of the

original.

Barry was born on the 11th of October, 1741, in Water lane (now

called Seminary road), Blackpool, on the northern outskirts of Cork, not far from the Catholic Cathedral and at the base of a hill topped by the diocesan college and Bishop's house. A marble tablet inserted in the side wall marks the house, renovated and modernized, in which he first saw the light. The son of the captain of a small coasting vessel-who was also a publican1 on shore, had been a builder in a small way-and almost literally "cradled by the rude, imperious surge," since he was taken to sea at a very early age to be taught how to hand, reef, steer and box the compass, the young Blackpudlian was designed by his father-one of those travailleurs sur mer who cruise the Irish Channel-for a seafaring life. But nature had cast the plastic mind of Barry in a different mould, and fate had other designs in his regard than those entertained by the worthy "skipper." The bent of his genius soon revealed itself. A "life on the ocean wave," however inspiring a theme it may be for poets and songsters, is apt to lose much of its attraction when the distance. which "lends enchantment to the view" is decreased, and instead of

the pulse's maddening play

Which thrills the wanderer of that trackless way,

one is thrilled with quite other sensations. But young Barry found an antidote against seasickness in the art which had already captivated his youthful imagination, and relieved the monotony of the short voyages he made along with his father by sketching in red and white chalk bits of coast scenery and other subjects that accidentally attracted his quick, appreciative eye. His extraordinarily rapid progress in drawing, self-acquired, and certain very pronounced traits of character-the germs of that strong individuality that became developed or over-developed in after years-together with the fact of his running away from the vessel, his ardent, active, selfwilled nature rebelling against the tedium and restraints of life on board ship, convinced his father of his unfitness for that calling, and he was sent to school. The ripeness of his intelligence, which soon grasped all the rudimentary knowledge that his teacher could impart, and was cultivated and expanded by a private course of discursive reading every book he could lay hands on being quickly and eagerly devoured, and the contents transcribed or committed to memoryand a deep religious sense imbibed from his mother, who was a devout Catholic, suggested the propriety of having him educated for admiration and began to attract the notice of local connoisseurs.

Left free to follow his favorite pursuit, it absorbed all his attention, as the walls of his father's humble dwelling, chalked with

1 Barry painted the sign for his father's public-house on the quay-Neptune on one side and a ship of that name on the other.

figures and other al fresco traces of his juvenile pencil testified. So intense was his application that he used to lock himself into his room and prolong his studies far into the night, until his mother, fearing that his health would break down or the house would be burned, deprived him of his candle; but only to afford her resolute son another opportunity of breaking through every restraint that would fetter his mind and exercising his ingenuity in supplying the want. Knowing that art is long and time is fleeting, he anticipated Moore and thought it wise to lengthen his days by stealing a few hours from the night; and, with a keener appetite for food for the mind. than food for the body, contented himself with the coarsest and most meagre diet, and slept on the bare boards. Thus, endeavoring to make up for technical instruction in the mechanism of art by unwearied assiduity and a self-imposed discipline that savored of monastic austerity, he soon began to display a grasp of mind and a cunning of hand that filled his family and friends with ingenuous adminiration and began to attract the notice of local connoisseurs.

At seventeen he began to paint, being already "master of a rough, bold and not inexpressive delineation of the linear elements of form." Five years later, in 1763, he sought a larger arena for the employment and display of talents, for the culture and utilization of which his native city afforded but few opportunities, and went to Dublin with several paintings, opportunely on the eve of an exhibition of pictures by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures in Ireland, subsequently known as the Royal Dublin Society. These results of his industrious pursuit of art under difficulties comprised "Eneas Escaping with His Father from the Siege of Troy,' a "Dead Christ," "Susanna and the Elders," "Daniel in the Lions' Den," "Abraham's Sacrifice" and "The Baptism of the King of Cashel." The last named was a pictorial reproduction of the wellknown legend of the baptism of Ængus, King of Cashel, by St. Patrick. The saint was represented leaning upon his crozier, with the point of which he has inadvertently pierced the monarch's foot; the King's guards, about to rush at the Apostle, are restrained by the heroic calmness of the young sovereign, who, thinking it is part of the ceremony, remains unmoved, while the bystanders gaze upon the scene in silent wonderment. The subject was a very happy selection, and at his own solicitation the picture was hung near two historical paintings by two eminent contemporary Irish artists, one of whom had studied in Italy. Barry's estimate of his own work, which thus challenged comparison with that of the best artists of the day, did not deceive him as to its intrinsic merits, which were readily recognized by the visitors to the exhibition, whither he hastened on the opening day to drink in with delighted ears the

applause lavishly bestowed upon his performance and see with his own eyes surprise and admiration depicted on the eager faces of those who thronged round his picture. Admiration soon gave rise to curiosity, and speculation was rife as to who was the artist-none could tell when Barry, unable to contain himself any longer, came forward and said: "It is my picture." The gaze of the spectators, averted for a moment from the picture to the painter, lighted upon a youth whose rough, homespun garb and unsophisticated appearance seemed to cast a doubt upon his assertion, which was received with a laugh or a smile of incredulity. "Why do you doubt my word?" he added, full of the pride of conscious power. "I can paint a better.' "But they only smiled or laughed the more or turned aside with a shrug of the shoulders, until a person who knew him came up and established his identity. He was voted by the society a premium of twenty pounds, and the picture was purchased for presentation to the Irish House of Commons, where it was lost forever in the fire which shortly after occurred.

But the "open sesame" that unlocked for Barry the cave of fortune was a letter of introduction from Dr. Sleigh, of Cork, to Edmund Burke, then private secretary to William Gerard Hamilton—“single speech Hamilton"--who had come over as chief secretary with Lord Halifax in 1761. Their acquaintance from first to last was cemented by a feeling of mutual esteem characteristically displayed by an incident related as having occurred at the time. They were discussing the principles of art in relation to taste, when Barry, happening to quote from a recent treatise published anonymously, Burke affected to speak slightingly of it. Barry warmly defended the conclusions of the anonymous writer, and a protracted discussion was beginning to develop a spirit of combative partisanship, when Burke closed the controversy by acknowledging that he himself was the author. It was the "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," with which Barry had been so struck that he had copied it from beginning to end, as he told Burke, with many expressions of delighted appreciation. The philosophic and penetrating mind of the statesman-litterateur at once discerned in the painter a kindred spirit, and doubtless saw, with a kind of prophetic insight, that a distinguished career was opening before the young aspirant after fame.

No capital in Europe, perhaps, could boast of a more brilliant and intellectual society than Dublin at this epoch; and admitted to the inner circle, of which Burke-then entering on that sphere of action in which he was destined to achieve the highest distinction as an orator, a philosopher and a statesman, and to command "the applause of listening sensates"-was the bright, particular star, the self-taught son of the southern coasting captain, the struggling young artist

who, without any of the adventitious aids that social position supplies, had overleaped the artificial barriers that conventionalism interposes, and made his way to the front solely by the aid of the great gifts with which God had endowed him, continued for the eight months that succeeded his arrival in the Irish metropolis to mingle in the social reunions where such men as Grattan, Flood, Burgh, Langrishe, Lucas, Charlemont and other illustrious wits, orators, statesmen and scholars whose names belong to Irish history were a frequent and familiar presence. In such a congenial atmosphere— in a society to which intellect, and not mere fashion, gave the tonethe nascent genius of Barry, which would have been dwarfed by provincialism and chilled or stunted by poverty and neglect, grew and expanded. But while his intellect was rapidly ripened and polished by association with men of high culture, his pencil was not likely to find sufficient employment, at least in the branch of art which he essayed, and, encouraged to seek a still wider field, he went to London in 1764 with Burke's brother Richard. There, sojourning occasionally with the Burkes and Reynolds, he enjoyed all the advantages that the best literary and artistic society of the English metropolis-a society more numerous, but not more brilliant than that which he had just quitted-afforded. Although he is only mentioned twice in Boswell's gossiping biography of the great lexicographer, it is safe to assume that he was often one of the set of wits and worthies who foregathered in the Mitre tavern and took part in the discursive table talk of the select coterie of which Dr. Johnson was the moving spirit and Burke and Goldsmith2 the decus et tuta

men.

In October, 1765, he proceeded, at the suggestion of Reynolds, to Italy to complete his art studies, Burke, Reynolds and the Marquis of Rockingham supplying him with funds, for as yet no prejudice or jealous rivalry on either side had arisen to transform Barry and Reynolds from friends into foes. A sojourn of ten months in Paris was chiefly spent in drawing from the life in the Academy of St. Luke and inditing in his letters to Burke sharp criticisms on academies in general and French artists in particular, foreshadowing that propensity to be captious and critical which, later carried to excess, was his bane. On the 7th of September, 1766, he set out for Rome, that Rome of art "when art was still religion." In a letter to his generous fellow-countryman and patron giving an account of his journey, in which he showed that he could be as graphic with his pen as with his pencil, he writes: "My friend Barret was exceedingly out in his notions of Savoy and the Alpine country. The drawings.

2 Goldsmith used to engage in art discussions with Barry, disputing the subtlest dogmas with the pugnacious painter.