From the engraving by R. Graves after Gainsborough's picture in the National Gallery, Edinburgh, showing the use of the single ostrich feather as fan.

quently found on the modern English fans. English sports, maypole scenes, and village-green revelries are favourite subjects. Scriptural scenes, bearing, it must be admitted, more or less on amatory subjects, were often employed for fans which were intended for use in church. This practice continued until the nineteenth century, and the old high-backed pew was a convenient screen, as shown in the illustration (p. 175). A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1753 complains against the fair sex for their abuse of fans in church. He declares he saw displayed by a row of ladies while kneeling at the communion table fans which exhibited the following subjects-Meeting of Isaac and Rebekah, Joseph and Potiphar's wife, Darby and Joan, Vauxhall Gardens, The Judgment of Paris, Harlequin, Pierrot and Columbine, The Rake's Progress, and others.

Among the unmounted fan leaves at the Guelph Exhibition in London in 1891 were the following : Trial of Warren Hastings, 1788, with view of House of Commons; Porto Bello, taken by Admiral Vernon, 1739, an engraved view uncoloured; "The Sentimental Journey" of Sterne, 1796, with three medallions showing incidents in the story; Bartholomew Fair, 1721, with view and history of the fair; Ranelagh, with engraved view of rotunda; The Harlot's Progress, after Hogarth; together with fan mounts having portraits of royalties or statesmen.

The mounted fans of the same period included

St. James's Park, 1741, coloured engraving ; Nelson and Victory, 1798; A Dance Fan, 1793, with airs and directions for dances; A Church Fan, 1796, with Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments, etc.; A Chapel Fan of same date with hymns and psalms; and a Balloon Fan.

An interesting English fan of the opening years of the last century is illustrated (p. 171). The mount is silk, printed in colours on satin with a figure group of women and children after Fragonard, the other groups show Cupids forging and sharpening arrow heads. There are spangled wreaths and medallions in imitation of Wedgwood's jasper ware. The sticks are carved ivory and the guards pierced steel with jewelled studs. This is imitative and meretricious as a work of art, but is interesting as representing the period.

The portrait of the Honourable Mrs. Graham after Gainsborough shows that the feather fan was fashionable in the eighteenth century. Later in the middle nineteenth century, when Japanese art was worshipped as something surprisingly new-an influence that more than tinctured Whistler's work, and that cast its spell over Aubrey Beardsley-a palm leaf and Japanese paper fans were the vogue. The illustration on page 175 shows a lady using the former type of palm leaf with a handle and tassel.

Connoisseurs of fans may approach the subject from different standpoints. They may admire colour and decorative effect and collect just what