to soak in water for twenty-four hours; after the outer bark is scraped away with shells, the inner bark is rolled up lengthwise and soaked in water for a day. The too-too, or beating operation, then commences, and is performed with the mallet, which is the same throughout all Polynesia, having ridged sides to spread the bark and a smooth side to flatten the surface. A strip of bark three feet long and two or three inches wide is moved by the left hand to and fro, while it is beaten with the mallet in the right, and in half an hour it is about square, the length being slightly reduced. In this condition it is called fetagi. The printing process is similar to that of Fiji, but not identical. The pattern used by the Tonga islanders is made of dried leaves of the pavongo, embroidered with fibres of the cocoa-nut husk. A number of such patterns are attached to the convex side of a board, and the cloth is laid thereon and smeared with the dye, which sticks principally to that part raised by the stamp; another piece, of smaller size, is then laid upon the former one and rubbed, the two adhering from the mucilaginous quality of the dye; a third piece in the same way. When the gnatoo is shifted, pieces are attached to the patches, and the design is matched. Piece after piece is added, till the cloth is perhaps six feet in breadth and forty or fifty in length. It is carefully folded, and is baked under-ground to darken the color and remove the smell of the coca dye, and afterwards spread on a grass plat or on the sea-shore; and the finishing operation (toogi-hea) com

mences by staining the cloth a brilliant red on the lines of junction of the printed portion. Sundry dots and other ornaments are then added; it is exposed over night to the dew and one day to the sun, and baled till required for use.

The manufacture of a cloth from bark, so common throughout Polynesia, is practiced in some other parts of the world.

The Monbuttoo cloth is made from the bark of their fig (Urostigma kotschyana). When the trunk is about one foot in diameter, two circular incisions, five feet apart, are made around the trunk, and the bark peeled off entire. It grows again from the edge of the upper incision, and the operation may be repeated in three years. By maceration and pounding this is made like a thick, close fabric, known as rokko, from the tree, and constitutes the clothing of the

men.

The bark cloths of the rokko are prized by the Niam-niams of the Upper Nile more than the handsomest of skins. The Lake Nyassa natives make a cloth of the inner bark of a species of Casalpinea. It is stripped, steeped, and beaten, like the Polynesian broussonetia. The mbûgú is the bark cloth of the fig-tree, prepared in Uganda and Unyoro. It is stripped, steeped, and pounded, as before described, the mallet being grooved to give it ribs like corduroy. It is sewn into garments. In Madagascar, also, a cloth is made of the bark of a tree by beating it with a wooden mallet.

The Mosquito Indians prepare a cloth from the inner bark of the Ula, a caoutchouc tree.

Edward H. Knight.

Henry W. Longfellow.

II.

THE Society of Decorative Art, of which I spoke as a coming influence, made itself felt in December with much suddenness and force. It burst out of its narrow quarters in Twentieth Street, planted its loan exhibition in that artistic citadel the Academy of Design, occupied other strategic points with private collections opened for the occasion, instituted morning lectures, and was the subject of such a fusillade of newspaper comments that its objects in the community must have been greatly furthered.

The Academy presented a decidedly Cluny-ish appearance. The exhibition consisted, for the most part, of the highest types of decorative articles of the kind proposed for our emulation. We have had the exotic sensation of walking through rich, dark rooms littered with carved cabinets, keramics, enamels, ivory carvings, illuminated missals, armor, jewelry, and laces, and hung with old tapestries, Gobelin and other, such as figure in the backgrounds of pictures. This subtle infusion, combined of age and softened glitter and harmoniously faded color, does not fail to penetrate a little even into those who venture into it for the first time and are puzzled by

its unlikeness to the spirit of the fashionable furnisher. The notable aspect of the show, next to its educating influence, is its revelation of the extent to which the appreciation and acquisition of really precious rarities has already reached in New York. The contributors themselves, I think, were astonished at their consolidated affluence. The possession of these articles argues not only money but excellent taste, and the maintenance of a scale of living somewhat commensurate with them. I wish I could think the glimpse it gave into the private life of the first families did not have so much to do with its suc

cess.

This private life appears to have made a considerable approximation to the palatial scale. There are properties of noble and even royal personages in these American households, table ware of Napoleon III., laces of a duchess of Parma, others from the wardrobe of Queen Anne, duly authenticated by fascinating little seals. Out-of-doors the absence of a law of entail has hindered palatial development; our most ambitious dwellings hardly yet surpass the rank of large houses, but this luxurious development within will force its way outwards. The merchant princes will have, I doubt not, before long, porches to their homes, with

polished columns, as spacious as that of the Church of the Heavenly Rest, which juts out so quaintly among them on Fifth Avenue. They will welcome through such porches throngs of guests to apartments adorned in earnest with these tapestries, carvings, and plaques of majolica and Nuremberg brass.

The circumstances of the picture department gave occasion for an interesting contrast. The north gallery was filled with the choicest late acquisitions of friends of the exhibition. In the south gallery was shown for a while, free, preliminary to its sale by auction, the private collection of Mr. Robert M. Olyphant, apparently closed up long since. Thus could be seen side by side what a New York collector used to do and what he does now.

The loaned pictures were foreign, of course. The rainbow brightness of a Rossi, a strong representative of the Spanish-Italian school, newer than most of his contemporaries, in these parts, with a Pinchart above it, reduced almost everything else in the room to comparative middle tint. The Rossi showed one of the characteristic luxurious scenes of the school. It chooses them not for splendor alone, but splendor accompanied by a certain piquancy. This is the rococo magnificence of Louis Quatorze. In a great saloon with gilt and sprawling scroll - work decorations, an old prince, surrounded by courtiers like porcelain figurines, watches with a senile interest the dancing of a minuet, for his amusement, by two girls, one habited as a boy and one in the high heels and flowered farthingale petticoat of the date. The figures are small and flatly painted, and, the heads especially, like bits in a mosaic. Or they recall those embroideries on silk, in which the faces are painted while the garments are wrought with the needle. This came from Mr. J. J. Astor's; the Pinchart - another variation, in colors pure and unmixed to the point of chilliness, upon the classic maiden swathed in scarfs of white, pink, yellow, and violet embroidered in red, whom he is so fond of depicting from Mr. Benjamin J. Arnold's. The critics cannot

attack the respectability of their refer

ences.

There was another smaller Rossi sent by Mr. W. B. Dinsmore, peculiar even for this peculiar kind. It is called The Picnic, though it is certain that only the briefest sort of a picnic, as we understand it, could ever have taken place under such circumstances. A little party of antique fashionables in Watteau costumes have thrown themselves upon a Geordez rug spread upon the ground of a sterile upland for an informal repast. Tufts of grass and a wild flower here and there spring from the poor soil, but no tree or shade of any kind. · The edge of the moor is at half the height of the canvas. There is a deliciously grateful sky of rolling cloud masses about it. Two dark figures, one near and one distant, stand boldly up against it. A white umbrella, connecting with the sky, cuts a circle out of the group, and serves to bring down the lighter upper tones to the front. Minute reminiscences of the principal colors in the dresses and the carpet are distributed about in the flowers, a pale blue hill rising over the edge of the moor, and patches of blue sky showing through the gray. There is none of the seriousness of life here. The people are thoroughly artificial, and they know it so well that there is a humor in their being there instead of the honestly lumpish peasants in whom the Millets, or Frères, or Bretons would have enlisted our sympathy. But for the moment they bloom there as bright and cheerful to look at as if they had been some evanescent product of nature, like the flowers and the passing shadows.

You next turn toward a number of small pictures, under glass to enhance the idea of their preciousness, Meissonier, Gues, Steinheil, — exquisitely finished works, with rich, dark tones suggestive of the flavor of old wines. They are archæological, but of an archæology that revives not only the externals but the human nature of bygone periods. There was a Doré, which would go far to convert you to the estimate that he is a great book illustrator but cannot paint, and two Gérômes, L'Almée and the

Egyptian Butcher, familiar from Goupil's photographs.

Bouguereau seems to me to pursue an ideal policy which is worth pointing out to aspirants in other fields as well as art, who are desirous of substantial returns together with the appreciation of connoisseurs. He has great ability, and he knows just where to put it. He chooses a subject that appeals to the nine tenths who care nothing about art, and then he captures the remainder, who care about nothing else, with his treatment. His Maternal Solicitude, from Mr. T. R. Butler's, is a mother bending over a naked infant. The rose tints and pearly grays of the tender flesh are wonderfully delicate and correct. As if the normal difficulties of the task were not enough, the soft shadow of a curtain is thrown over half the little body, and in this there are reflected lights and reconcilements of shadow with local color of astonishing subtlety. The atmosphere and roundness are almost illusive. It is not a startling projection, but winning in its soft naturalness.

You, my dear madam, would buy this picture in a minute for the consummate skill you would discover in it, and your neighbor just as quickly for the surprising likeness it bears to the latest addition to her own interesting family. When I write a book, that is what I purpose to do, I shall bear Bouguereau in mind. I shall strike a subject that will draw the populace away from the RedHanded Avenger of the Spanish Main, and I purpose to treat it in a manner that will awaken the respectful attention of Mr. Henry James Jr. himself.

I have said that the Olyphant collection bore the air of having been completed some years back. It goes withbut saying, therefore, that it was American and mainly landscapes. How helpless our poor early attempts at genre looked, coming away from the modern splendors in the other room! In Huntington's Counterfeit Note, one of the first, you know it by engravings, everything else is positively slaughtered and jumped on afterwards in the eagerness to tell the story.

Mr. Olyphant seems to have had a penchant for Kensetts; there were no less than thirty. The largest of them brought the highest price at the sale, though it had the competitorship of the very much more important figure - piece of Henry Peters Gray, the Judgment of Paris. One could not much disparage this taste, however he may have been dazzled in the north room. The Kensetts have genial qualities that endure. He loved gray rocks and blue skies and water and simple lines of composition, avoided florid greens, and maintained a sobriety in the midst of his richest autumn woods. He was contented to be a poet in his landscapes, and did not try to be a fiveact tragedian or a Fourth of July orator. It cannot be done. A dismal Hurricane of Thomas Cole and an expansive composition of faded topography of the oldfashioned sort by Church-so like to Cole, his master, that you could hardly trust the signature—were there to prove it. Landscapes breathe a varied sentiment, it is true, but local pride and all that kind that inheres in convulsions of nature is much better to be got out of the human figure. Perhaps with a fuller equipment in its use, fewer attempts in any other direction would have been made. As our life schools increase, an abatement in the spread-eagle style may be confidently looked for. The mission of landscape, meaning now landscape and not water, which is incarnate restlessness any way, is peace. This implies no restriction upon conceptions of grandeur. The gentlemen who desire to show that we are the greatest nation that ever trod shoe leather, by the exploitation of our Western frontiers, need not find their mission gone. But mere topogra phy will not do it. There is simplicity and idyllic peace in the desolation of the Yellowstone, and sunshine and shadow play as softly on the dizzy heights of the Sierras as on the flesh of Bouguereau's baby.

In Henry Peters Gray, who died the other day, departed "the American Titian." His Judgment of Paris showed the sort of work from which he derived his sobriquet, and its validity. Should