painter exhibited of a certain Mr. Grant as he appeared when skating attracted the attention of kindly Sir Joshua Reynolds, who praised it highly. Thus was Stuart's position made at London, and very soon he was as successful as any portrait-painter in the great city, excepting only Gainsborough and Sir Joshua. none the less he had the soul of one of Charles Stuart's Cavaliers in his breast. As a boy, he painted with one Cosmo Alexander, a Scotch artist with whom he went to Scotland, returning after a disastrous journey. As boy and man, Stuart was indolent. For weeks together he idled, and he was one of the sort that are always poor: the aristocratic and artistic natures, warring in one man against the Philistine virtues, produce similar results in all ages. In London, whither he went poor as ever, his talent as an organist gained him a livelihood. Thirty pounds a year was no great sum, but it kept him until West took him by the hand, accepted him as a pupil, and gave him employment as an assistant. But Stuart's talent was of a rarer and finer order than good old Benjamin West's. It was not long before a portrait the young American A pity there was no King Charles for him to paint! With such a theme his loyal brush would have beaten Vandyck on his own ground. His Stuart sentiment scarcely found favor with Hanoverian George. His loyalism showed itself after his return to America, when he painted Washington with the touch of a royalist, giving to him a dignity, a stateliness and a courtly grace which the Stuart-lover would fain have bestowed elsewhere, had not Culloden ended Jacobite hopes. Thus Gilbert Stuart's Washington is a Stuart in more senses than one-a shadowy republican realization of a hopeless, yet heroic ideal of vanished royalty! The social atmosphere of the American Revolution was very favorable to the development of professional beauty. Women craved for excitement and hubbub of various sorts, probably because their men-kind would like to have kept them tied to spinning-wheels and picklejars. Now it is very possible that the American Revolutionary War was actually welcomed by women weary of monotonous domesticity and tired of being sniffed at by their English cousins as "colonial" and "provincial" and "oldfashioned" and "behind the age." What are irreverently called, in modern parlance, "social scratchers," were doubtless as prevalent then as now. a more attractive person than the humdrum queen of George III., although she had been a baker's wife, and was so shockingly improper! And thus she continued to set the fashions in hoods and sacks for Philadelphia loveliness until King Death forced her to yield her sceptre to the fair young Austrian dauphiness. Then the Revolutionary War, with its influx of French allies, served to unite Philadelphia still closer with Paris in the beaten way of fashion. It is said that Queen Marie Antoinette herself listened with pleasure to the tales of the pretty women of the Quaker city which were brought to her court by the officers just returned from the American war. There is nothing more charming nor characteristic in the whole range of Chroniclers Philadelphia portraiture than the two inform us that before the Revolutionary beauties whom Charles Wilson Peale War there were two great social pedigree divisions in Philadelphia society, and after it there were three! Even before the actual outbreak of the war, the external aspect of the city had changed considerably. The political hatred toward England had brought about a reaction in favor of French manners, customs and follies. The fads and frailties of the court of Louis XV. were ingrafted upon the sober and pious enjoyments of Philadelphia's Quakers, producing an extraordinary effect of contrast. Madame Pompadour giving the social tone to the beauties of Philadelphia presented a peculiar and significant picture! The wicked French woman was certainly has set before us as Mrs. Beveridge more. And they make such a capital foil and Mrs. Rush. Peale was by nature for each other-as female friends should, respectable and somewhat heavy. He or what would be the use of friendship? was first an excellent workman, and Mrs. Rush's portrait is pitched in a low afterward an artist. He reminds one of key. There is something romantic about a London alderman turned painter; but her an undertone of melancholy which in these portraits he shows a lightness goes hand-in-hand with music; and we and gayety--one might say a Frenchi- may be sure that the mandolin she holds ness-which he must have gained by so gracefully will presently be attuned the study of Watteau. It embodies ex- to a pathetic ditty of lovelorn swains and actly the spirit of the early Revolution- deserted maidens-Phyllis and Amaryllis ary period of Philadelphia society. and the god Amor decorously clothed in the poetic proprieties! She has soft, dark eyes and dark hair, rolled high, wreathed in the French fashion; and the tender oval of her face seems made for caresses. They are both so pretty, so deliciously worldly, and so suggestive of Gallic naughtiness, these dainty dames, that I hardly know which fascinates me the This lady's husband was Dr. Benja- Princeton College. A son of Doctor and min Rush, a signer of the Declaration Mrs. Rush, was James Rush, who beof Independence and an ardent patriot. came famous in science and wrote a As a physician, he enjoys a high place book on "The Philosophy of the Huin the history of his profession in this man Voice," which remains a classic country. A medical college in Chicago on the subject. He married Miss Ann bears his name at the present day. It Ridgeway, who was a fashionable Philis only eighteen months since the Med- adelphia beauty in a later generation. ical Convention at Washington chose Benjamin Rush to be the representative of the profession in sculptured form at the National Capitol. John Adams said of Dr. Rush that his labors in the cause of the Revolution were second to those of Washington alone. Mrs. Benjamin Rush was Miss Julia Stockton, daughter of Richard Stockton, of New Jersey, who likewise was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and also one of the founders of Another son of Mrs. Benjamin Rush, the Hon. Richard Rush, was for eight years American minister at the Court of St. James's, and held the same position in France for three years, beside being Secretary of the Treasury and AttorneyGeneral in his own country. Mrs. Benjamin Rush died in 1848. She was either the last, or the last but one, of the widows of the signers of the Declaration. I am not surprised that Mrs. Beveridge was turned out of meeting. She is the sweetest bit of millinery that ever waited for the spirit to move! Peale put his best work into the painting of her crisp, fresh, charming costume, in which the latest Paris mode is cunningly adapted to Philadelphia Quaker notions of simplicity. It was, doubtless, very expensive simplicity! Yes, both Mr. and Mrs. Beveridge were expelled from meeting for gayety of life and attire. A nice reputation to leave to posterity! But I do not think they were much ashamed of it, especially Mr. Beveridge, as he joined the Society of Friends only in order to marry that sly Quaker coquette, Sister Mary Emlen. He was a rich, fox-hunting Englishman, who came to Pennsylvania in 1750, and kept up his English pastimes in America. He lived on the Schuylkill, near Belmont, and his house was the scene of many festivities, which caused scandal in the congregations. Mrs. Beveridge looks as though she took her ecclesiastical slatings with placid and philosophic unconcern, and loved new quillings better than old Quakers. So much eighteenth-century aroma still haunts the streets of Philadelphia, that one would not be surprised to see Mrs. Beveridge's Watteau-Quaker skirts shining against the low-growing foliage of the magnolias in the gardens, or to spy Mrs. Rush's mobile face on the balcony of a white-trimmed mansion, while the tinkle of her mandolin met the ear. I cannot walk down that splendid avenue, South Broad Street, without peopling it with a changeful procession of ghosts, and especially such shapes as the French Revolution cast like drift-wood on the Schuylkill shores, not to mention their native imitators. There were the French royal ist emigrants, the Jacobin sympathizers, the dark-eyed beauties from the French West Indies, the muscadins, the incroyables and the merveilleuses, keeping pace in opinions and attire with the political changes in France, and making of Philadelphia the most picturesque of all American cities. French influence prevailed in Philadelphia until Napoleon's star began to set; and then there came a reaction in favor of the mother-country, against which the popular feeling of the young nation had so long been bitter. English fashions, after nearly half-a-century of ignominy, again came to the front and replaced the more tasteful French modes. The nation began to have a character of its own, and a distinctly American school of manners and dress arose. A portrait by Bass Otis of Margaretta M. Meeker gives a very good idea of the exaggerated styles of the early years of the present century. It was at this time, according to the old writers, that Philadelphia female fashions and folly reached their most abnormal heights. The American tendency to extremes showed itself in the dress of the women. Emancipated from their position as colonials, no longer restrained by either French or English dicta, their fondness for extravagant and grotesque attire knew no bounds. Many were the satirical poems written on the subject of the female headgear of that time. Particularly obnoxious was a large hat known as the "skimmer." An example of this sort of covering for beauty's head is presented in this portrait. It is an ingeniously constructed affair, in which lace, feathers and ribbons are used with an effect more striking than artistic. The costume is in dark-brown, with touches of pink, and the scheme of color is well handled. This Bass Otis was very popular as a portraitpainter during our grandfathers' days. He first made scythes, and then painted coaches; and with slight preparation for professional art, he established himself successively at New York and Philadelphia as a portrait-painter. In the year 1792 a company of equestrian performers was brought out to Philadelphia, from England, by a theatrical manager. Included in the list of members was one Lawrence Sully, who was accompanied by his whole family. They were all of a theatrical and artistic bent. One son, also called Lawrence Sully, became a portrait-painter, and settled at Richmond and Norfolk; a daughter married a French artist of considerable ability: and these two men were the early instructors in art of Thomas Sully, son of Lawrence Sully the elder. He assisted them in their labors, and painted portraits on his own account; and, later, he received some instruction from Turnbull and Jarvis. As a young man, Thomas Sully enjoyed nine months' study at London, |