35]"/> father and son, besides Anthony Smart and his two daughters.

I shall have something more to say later in this volume about several of the artists whom I have just mentioned, but here I may refer to a miniature painter who may well be placed in a class by herself, for she painted without hands or feet. This lady was a Mrs. Wright, née Sarah Biffin; nothing daunted by her apparently overwhelming physical disabilities, she learnt drawing, and in 1821 was awarded a medal by the Society of Arts.

I am not aware of other miniature painters handicapped as Miss Biffin must have been. But I know of several other artists who have worked without hands, e.g., C. F. Felu, a Belgian painter, who was a familiar figure in the Antwerp Gallery, where he painted for many years, and copied hundreds of the masterpieces therein. He held his palette with his left great toe placed through the orifice in which it is usual to put the thumb, and used the brush with his other foot with astonishing freedom and precision. I remember to have seen him fasten the small metal hooks of his colour box with the utmost ease and celerity. Then there was W. Carter, who, having neither hands nor feet, drew exquisitely with his mouth; and of late years Mr. Bartram Hiles, deprived of his arms by a tramcar accident, has shown what a noble enthusiasm to practise as an artist can enable a man to do.

ON THE CARE OF MINIATURES.

"First catch your hare," said Mrs. Glass in her immortal cookery-book. And now, the reader having collected miniatures, or being their fortunate possessor by inheritance or otherwise, it is not unimportant to know how to take proper care of them. These delicate works of art are always subject to the attacks of two enemies, and they are insidious enemies, although of widely different natures. The one is sunlight, and the other is damp, which brings mildew and disfigurement in its train.

It is really melancholy to see, as one so often does, the terrible destruction which has been wrought by these two agencies, a destruction the nature and extent of which are, perhaps, only fully realised when one is fortunate enough to come across a work by a fine miniature painter in anything like its pristine condition. I am talking of old miniatures, of course, and have in my mind as I write a portrait, by one of the Olivers, I think, of Henry, Prince of Wales, that I saw in one of those interesting historical exhibitions at the New Gallery; the Stuart it must have been. This miniature was surrounded by many others, ostensibly by the same artists, and by examples of contemporary painters. It doubtless had been kept covered up during the many years it had been painted, and thus had a freshness and vigour which was absolutely startling in comparison with the faded, ghostlike specimens to be seen around. Indeed, it is only when we see a good miniature in anything like its original condition that we can grasp and fully appreciate the strength and beauty of the earlier masters, and admit, without any doubt or qualification, their claim to our admiration.

R. COSWAY, R.A.