Chapter XXVIII: Part 28

This district is the only one in the United States where the man-engine has been used; but as the shafts were sunk deeper and deeper, it was found that even this method was not sufficiently rapid, and the men are now lowered into the mines by cages or skips. A “cage” is simply the miners’ name for the ordinary elevator when used underground, and has developed from the bucket in use at the beginning of the century. A “skip” is a car especially designed for use on an incline. The roadway upon which the skip runs is so planned, at the top of the shaft, that the rear wheels run upon a track raised above the one over which the front wheels pass, so that the rear end is elevated and the skip is dumped automatically. At the De Beers diamond mines in South Africa are two of these skips which hold nearly five tons of rock each. At the bottom of the shaft are chutes containing the rock, and when the skip is in position a man pulls a lever, allowing the ore to run into it. Another pull closes the chute, a button is touched which rings a bell in the engine-room, and the skip starts up the shaft. At the top it dumps itself and returns to be filled again. In the mean time the other skip has been filled and is going up while the first is coming down. With these two skips, making ninety-two trips an hour, over four thousand tons of rock have been hoisted in less than twelve hours, from a depth of 1250 feet.

To handle these enormous quantities tremendous hoisting engines are used. At the Calumet and Hecla mines is a pair of quadruple expansion engines which will lift cages, carrying six tons of ore, a mile in a minute and a half. The “Modoc” hoist, built for the Anaconda Mining Company of Butte, Montana, is the largest hoist in the world. It is a double compound beam engine, and is designed to be used in sinking to a depth of 6000 feet. This machine weighs four hundred tons, and has seven separate subordinate engines for use in operating it. Think of it! An engine so ponderous that smaller engines are necessary to apply the clutches that set the reels in motion; other engines set the brakes, and another reverses the action, if need be. All these are controlled by levers operated from the engineer’s platform, the “runner” having one foot and seven hand levers to handle. Besides these there are two indicator discs, directly in front, requiring constant attention, for these show the exact position of the cage in the shaft. Yet such wonderful skill have the runners in the control of these veritable flying machines that they instantly interpret the complicated signals, and drop the cage with such exactness that the car of ore is run from the track in the level to the track on the cage, almost without a jar.

Nor is the hoist the only large machine necessary in the equipment of the modern mining plant, for in sinking to great depths vast quantities of water have to be removed. The Chapin Mining Company, at Iron Mountain, Mich., have one of the largest pumping engines in the world. This engine is located on the surface, driving the pumps after the Cornish style, though it would be difficult to see much of the pump of 1801 in this magnificent machine. With a ten-foot stroke it conveys the power to the pumps through a walking beam weighing a hundred tons. In an hour it will raise nearly 200,000 gallons of water from a depth of a quarter of a mile.

Imagine the miner of 1800 “softening by fire” sufficient ore to supply a modern hoist. For the mines which now turn out 2000 tons a day can by no means be counted on one’s fingers, and 2000 tons means more than a foot deep over a whole city block. Before the middle of the century the use of powder and drill had largely increased, and in 1845 an attempt was made to aid the man behind the drill with a machine which swung a hammer by steam power. In 1805 a machine was invented using compressed air in a cylinder, and this was gradually improved until it became a success in 1861, in the Mont Cenis tunnel. As finally employed, the power drill is practically a small engine, the drill being attached to the piston rod and moved rapidly back and forth by compressed air or steam. The machine has three functions: to strike the blow, turn the drill, and advance it, as the hole is driven deeper and deeper.

Soon after the machine drill became a success dynamite was invented, and these two have been the greatest factors in bringing about that rapid development and production which is the most pronounced attribute of modern mining. Dynamite alone has doubled the amount of ore which can be extracted from a face in a given time. Le Neve Foster, in his work on mining, gives the rate of advance in driving a tunnel by fire setting at two fathoms per month. Compare with this the Niagara Falls tunnel, driven with power drills and high explosives, 342 feet in four weeks.

It is probably to the power drill more than to anything else that we are indebted for the development of the air compressor; the exhaust from a steam drill and the heat emitted from the pipes being very disagreeable under ground. As early as 1800 a Welsh engineer had attempted to run a blast by means of a water power a mile and a half distant, but it was not until 1865 that machines were operated to any extent by compressed air. The great difficulty had been the loss of efficiency, owing to the clearance spaces and the heating of the air. In driving the Mont Cenis tunnel but 16 per cent of the power developed was available, and up to 1880 the efficiency was extremely low; but to-day as high as 80 per cent is obtained. The air compressor is simply a force pump with ingenious devices to overcome the loss of energy. For ordinary use the air is compressed to a pressure of from 60 to 80 pounds per square inch. This is done in a single cylinder for low pressures, but for high pressures two cylinders are used. From the compressor the air is conducted to a reservoir, from which it is piped to the machine which it is to run.

One of the advantages of air-driven machines under ground is that the exhaust furnishes fresh air to the miners and cools the atmosphere. The result has been that in metal mines, where there are no noxious gases escaping from the ground, the exhaust from the air-drills, together with the natural air currents, has supplied sufficient ventilation. In the coal mines, however, it has been necessary to employ other means. After it was found that, even with the safety-lamp, gas would be exploded if a large amount of it had accumulated, more attention was paid to ventilation. Levels and shafts were divided to produce a natural current; the size of the drifts was carefully figured in order to regulate it; doors were put in to compel it to follow the faces; devices were adopted to split it, a part going to one room, the remainder to a second; and boxes were built to carry one current across another. Early in the century hand fans run by a wheel and pinion had been employed for forcing the air down the shaft, but it was soon found that the circulation produced in this way was inferior to the result of eduction. Large furnaces were then constructed at the bottom of the upcast shafts, in order to cause a strong upward current. Again, huge air pumps, run by machinery, were tried for exhausting the air. By 1850 exhaust fans were coming into use, and these, occasionally replaced by blowers, also used for exhausting, are now generally employed. The Guibal, which has been the most prominent of the fans, has been made as large as forty-six feet in diameter. The Capell, which is an improved form of the Guibal, has six curved veins, or blades, and is made from eight feet to fifteen feet in diameter. It is driven quite rapidly, making from one hundred and eighty to three hundred revolutions, and having a capacity of from one hundred thousand to three hundred thousand cubic feet of air, per minute. The result of this thorough ventilation is that the gas is removed from the mine almost as rapidly as it enters, and often the safety-lamp is no longer needed by the common miner. Nevertheless, it has by no means become useless, since as an indicator of the presence of gas it is invaluable. The action of the different lamps in the presence of gas varies, but in general the size of the flame increases in direct proportion to the increase in the amount of gas mixed with the air. Each morning, before the men go to work, the fire boss takes his safety-lamp and makes the round of the mine. When he goes into a room he watches the flame, and if it burns up to the point which indicates that it would not be safe to enter with a naked light, he makes a mark on the wall which serves as a danger line beyond which the men do not go.

Another machine, which, like the fan, has been developed by the demands of the coal mines, is the coal-cutting machine. Probably the lot of no man was as hard as that of the coal-digger at the beginning of the century. After he had performed the dangerous task of exploding the accumulated gases, he was often forced to work all day lying in the most constrained attitude. Applied in this manner, his power was largely wasted, and much useless dust and small coal was produced. The first effort at relief was a machine which imitated the miner, striking a blow with a pick worked by a lever, and making as high as seventy blows a minute. These have been generally replaced by quite another type of machine, one which depends on the action of either a rotary bar, a rotary wheel, or a chain cutter. These machines are operated by either air or electricity. The Jeffrey rotary bar cutter will undercut a block of coal thirty-nine inches by fifty-four inches in six minutes. The chain-cutter is an endless chain carrying cutting knives and traveling horizontally. It is claimed that these machines will effect a saving of about ten cents a ton in the cost of mining.

When in 1848 the finding of gold in California was reported, followed in 1851 by the discovery of the Australian fields, large numbers of men were attracted to the placer mines, who later, as the placers became exhausted, turned their attention to vein mining. Nor did hydraulic mining itself fail to progress. When the placers were first discovered, the miner, standing in the shallow stream, washed the gravel, a panful at a time, and secured from fifteen to twenty-five dollars a day. As the placers became poorer he built sluices, and, shoveling in his gravel, turned the stream in to wash off the light rock, while the heavy gold was caught in the interstices between the blocks with which he had paved the bottom. If the ground became clayey, he brought part of the water through a hose and used it to break up the lumps in his sluice box. Then as he gradually removed the gravel and the banks about him became higher, he turned his hose toward the bank and brought more water from a higher level, until, to quote Bowie, “a forty-inch wrought-iron pipe has been substituted for canvas hose and a stovepipe, and an inch stream replaced by a river of water discharged through a nine-inch nozzle under a four-hundred-foot pressure.” By this means, at North Bloomfield, Cal., nearly a million yards of gravel, containing but two and nine tenths cents per cubic yard, was moved in a single season, and at a profit.

As the banks became poorer, the miners turned their attention to the river beds. In New Zealand, in the early days, they worked the banks as far down into the river as they could reach with a spoon dredge. Then a dredge was made resembling a ladder of buckets, continually revolving, and operated by wheels driven by the current. When the river got low the current became too weak, and a steam engine was substituted. Then a revolving screen was put on to separate the large rocks from the fine sand, and gradually the modern dipper dredge has been evolved, with its pumps, screen, distributors, and tables and sluices, handling 2000 yards of gravel a day at a cost of three cents a yard.

In 1859 the Comstock lode in Nevada was discovered, and it is to this district that we owe the “square set” method of timbering, so largely in vogue in wide veins to-day. Some of the “bonanzas,” that is, pockets of rich ore, were of enormous size. For example, one found in the “Gould and Curry” was 400 feet long, 80 feet wide, and 400 feet deep. As the walls were not sufficiently solid to stand unsupported, and a single stick of timber was too short to reach across, splicing was tried. It was soon found that this weakened the timber too much, and the method of square “setting” was invented. This consists in framing timbers together in rectangular sets, having a square base of four pieces, usually six feet long, placed horizontally as sills. Into these are framed posts, surmounted by a cap of four additional timbers which become the base for the next set. The timbers are usually twelve inches square, and cost on the Comstock about $10 a set. From 1870 to 1891 there is said to have been used up on the Comstock 200,000 acres of forest, valued at $45,000,000.

The amount of timber which is consumed under ground in a single year must be enormous. Mr. C. W. Goodale estimates that in Butte alone, in 1895, 37,500,000 feet, equal to 3750 carloads, were used in the mines. As the timber decays in from five to fifteen years, and has to be replaced, efforts are constantly directed toward decreasing the large expense which is thus continually recurring. In shafts and levels for permanent use iron is an economical substitute. Wherever possible, new methods of mining are being introduced. Thus in the Lake Superior iron regions, the mine development is planned along lines almost unheard of ten years ago. In the first place the gravel which overlies the ore is stripped off, even if it is fifty feet thick. This is done with steam shovels, which load the gravel upon cars. These are then pulled away by one locomotive while a second places new “empties” in position to be filled. One shovel will load from 150 to 175 cars a day; that is, will take from 3500 to 4500 tons of dirt from the sides of the pit and put it upon the cars. This method obviates the use of timber for holding up the surface.

After the overlying gravel is removed, should the conditions be favorable, the ore is taken out with a shovel. If this cannot be done, some method depending on rock-filling is adopted. At the Auburn mine, after stripping and driving the levels, raises are made to the surface at intervals of about fifty feet, the ore broken down around them, starting at the surface, and dropped down through them. This leaves openings in the shape of inverted cones, having their bases at the surface. Additional raises are then made halfway between the others, and the remaining material extracted.

At the Fayal mine they take out rooms twenty-four feet wide by three hundred feet long, with a twenty-four-foot pillar between them. These rooms are carried up from the first level to the surface, and filled with gravel which is run in from above. Then the pillars are mined by “slicing and caving;” that is, by running drifts along the sides of the pillar and caving the ore down from the roof. After removing this ore another drift is run, the roof caved, and another slice taken off. It is claimed the saving in timber by using this method amounts to ten cents on each ton of ore mined.

All of these, and many other inventions, have constantly tended to decrease mining costs. Yet the industry is carried on to-day in so many out-of-the-way places, and under such varying conditions, that the cost per ton of the ore mined vacillates between wide extremes. As an example of what can be accomplished, working on a large scale, and where supplies are easily and quickly obtained, the Atlantic mine, in Michigan, may be mentioned. This mine produced, in 1898, 370,000 tons of ore, at a cost of sixty-six cents per ton.

With all these wonderful advances in mine mechanics, engineering, ventilation, and lighting, have come the foundation and development of mining schools, the rise of technical societies, and a general governmental recognition of the importance of the industry. It is not so very far back in the preceding century that we find among the statutes of England the following: “Stealing ore out of mines is no larceny, except only those of black lead, the stealing ore out of which is felony without benefit of clergy.” It would be interesting to know the name of the gentleman who owned the black-lead mine, for, in modern parlance, he certainly “had a pull.” By 1833 mining legislation had so far progressed in England that laws were enacted regulating the employment of children under ground. In this country, in 1830, a state geological survey was inaugurated by Massachusetts, and this institution has since been copied by many States. The majority of the States where mining is carried on have passed laws tending to increase the safety of men working under ground.

Abroad, carefully prepared codes describe the method of lease or sale of mining rights, and define the rights of owners of ground. In this country the first legislation of this character was in 1807, when the government mineral bearing lands were withdrawn from sale and ordered leased. In 1834 the miners refused to pay the royalty, owing to the large number of illegal entries, and in 1847 the lands were opened to sale. It was not until 1866, after fifteen years of self-government among the miners of the West, that Congress earnestly undertook to regulate the acquisition of mining titles on the public domain. Leagues beyond the towns, miles from the nearest roads, hurrying from the scene of one excitement to another, pushed by the crowd of constantly arriving adventurers, with surveyors unobtainable and courts not accessible, almost without time to measure, and in a region absolutely unlocatable, it had been impossible for the miner of the West to secure a legal title to his land as contemplated by the act of 1847. Accordingly, there had grown up the custom which gave to the discoverer of a lode the right to a certain length of it, and it was this right which was recognized by Congress, and became the basis of the law of 1866.

So far our story has been of progress, but what shall we say of the action of Congress, which, in 1872, abrogated this law and substituted for it the prolific breeder of litigation called the law of the apex? To quote Dr. Raymond: “The leading characteristic differs from all previous mining laws of this or any other country. The old right of discovery, which was the basis of the miner’s title down to 1872, has dwindled under the present law to a nominal importance. It is true that the discovery of the lode within the claim is made a prerequisite to location. But the right to follow the lode in depth beyond the side lines of the claim depends no longer upon having discovered it, but on having included its top, or apex, in the surface survey.” Should the miner be so fortunate as to have a vein which outcrops plainly on the surface, he may stake out the ground without difficulty, so that the vein crosses the end lines. But if his vein does not appear on the surface, and he fails to guess its direction correctly, and finds, on developing, that it does not cross the end lines of his claim, he is suddenly cut off from all extra-lateral rights. Or should he, in laying out his lines along the rough, precipitous mountain-side, fail to make his end lines parallel, he again finds his rights limited. Nor has this law been made clearer by court decisions, but rather it has been complicated.

(Ingersoll-Sergeant Duplex Corliss Condensing Air Compressor.)]

Certainly this is a peculiar condition of affairs. The century which has witnessed an advance from the hazel rod to the diamond drill, from the spade to the steam shovel, from fire softening to dynamite shattering; a century during which a clumsy car pushed over cast-iron rails by a boy has grown to a cable train, and a two-hundred-pound bucket raised by women has developed into a six-ton self-dumping skip hoisted by electricity; a century productive of new devices which tunnel mountains, cross ravines, or sink through quicksands with equal ease; a century which has seen the touch of a button and the turn of a wheel bring power from thirty miles away to light and drain the mine, as well as operate the drills and hoist; such a century closes with a law in force in the greatest mining country in the world which makes litigation one of the expected stages of mine development.

At the beginning of the century the mining engineer advised where to sink, the manner of working, and the method of dealing with the water: to-day he must not only be a mining, civil, and hydraulic expert, but a mechanical and electrical engineer, a chemist, and a lawyer.

The time was when he who leveled forests, built himself a home, and brought the land under cultivation, was regarded as the true pioneer of civilization. In later times the miner fairly divides this honor. Pursuing a hazardous occupation, he has invaded most out-of-the-way and desolate places, creating untold wealth, founding towns and States, and inviting vast and substantial populations. By his industry and enterprise he has not only revealed the seventy-seven non-metallic underground products which in the United States alone, in 1899, had a value approximating $500,000,000, but the twelve metals—precious and useful—whose value in the same year approximated $270,000,000. Around his gold mines—deep and placer—have grown California, Nevada, the Dakotas, Colorado, and even Alaska; while empires have sprung up at the sound of his pick and the introduction of his mighty machinery in Australasia and South Africa. In the development of silver he has contributed wealth, population, and institutions to Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Montana, and Arizona. His iron and copper mines have transformed the barren coasts of the Great Lakes. The quicksilver mines of Southern California brought San José and other towns to wealth and importance. In the history of Ureka and Leadville, Col., we have the romance of both the gold and lead mine. And so, whether the miner unearths the ores, the coals, the wonderful variety of buried materials which nature has provided for the use and comfort of mankind, he so frequently becomes the source of wealth, population, and permanent civic organization as to give him high rank among the “true pioneers of civilization.”

ART PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY

BY JOHN V. SEARS,

_Art Critic Philadelphia “Evening Telegraph.”_

I. PAINTING

At no period since the Renaissance has there been such marked progress in certain walks of art as during the period of reconstruction in the political, social, economic, and æsthetic world immediately following the French Revolution of 1798. The armies of France, returning from the conquest of Europe, brought home to Paris the treasures of art ravished from the great capital cities. The vast public galleries and numerous private collections established under the first Empire contained accumulations of pictures, marbles, bronzes, tapestries, decorations, and bric-à-brac brought from Italy, from Germany, from the Low Countries, from Spain, and even from Russia and Egypt, of extent and value unparalleled in the history of the human race. These treasures were dispersed under the Restoration and returned to their former owners; but, in the meantime, their educational influence upon the people of France, and especially of Paris, had produced profound and permanent impressions which abide to this day. To this practical education afforded by the models and examples of all that is noble and exalted, gathered from the galleries and safe deposits of the civilized world, France is primarily indebted for that cultured skill and that refinement of good taste which have enabled her to take and hold her acknowledged position as the leading nation in the realm of art in the nineteenth century.

At the beginning of the century the art of France was resting inert in the bonds of classic tradition. Academic conventionality held almost undisputed sway; only a few painters of portraits, as, for example, Madame Vigée-Lebrun, Isabey, and decorative artists like Greuze, venturing beyond the limits of the hard and fast rules prescribed by scholastic pedants. The only subjects regarded as legitimate for artistic treatment were illustrations of mythology or of Greek or Roman literature. Sacred pictures illustrating the Biblical narratives and lives of the saints were permitted for church adornment and for religious purposes; but historic and story-telling pictures of the order now known as genre were classic in subject and academic in treatment. Even in portraiture, where a likeness was the main consideration, military heroes were represented in Greek armor and distinguished civilians were invested with the dignity of the Roman toga.

The high priest of ancient pagan worship in France during the first quarter of the century was Jacques Louis David (1748–1825). David was a master of such real power that he was court painter to Louis XVI., director of Fine Arts under the Republic, and again court painter to the Emperor Napoleon. His great work, “The Oath of the Horatii,” now in the Louvre, first exhibited in 1784, was universally admired and is still highly esteemed. This was followed by a triumphal procession of classic compositions, the most notable of which were “The Rape of the Sabines,” usually considered to be his masterpiece, “The Death of Socrates,” “Paris and Helen,” and “Brutus and His Sons,” all of which have been reproduced many times in prints. David was influenced, late in his career, by the romantic reaction, as shown by his “Napoleon Crossing the Alps” and his “Floating Martyr,” but he championed classic art all his life, his last words expressing an aspiration to paint the head of Leonidas.

The downfall of the classic dominion in France was brought about by the revolt of Géricault and Delacroix, about 1820. Jean Louis Géricault (1791–1824) was declared by Viardot to have revealed an era when liberty in art was revived together with political liberty, joining the general movement of the human spirit in the march of progress toward independence. His epoch-marking picture, “The Raft of the Medusa,” in the Salon of 1819, created an intense excitement not only in artistic circles, where it opened the battle between romance and classic tradition, but also among the people. Instead of Greek heroes, posing like antique statues, this thrilling picture portrayed a group of French sailors, perishing amid the horrors of shipwreck and starvation, the subject being a scene in the awful tragedy incident to the loss of the frigate Medusa in 1816, a calamity which the nation was then mourning with unspeakable grief. Women wept and strong men paled before this terrible illustration of human agonies endured unto death, but the academicians attacked the work and the artist with almost savage fury. Géricault, a genius, sensitive and nervous, quailing before the storm which beat upon him, fled to England, but, pining in exile, returned home, only to die, crushed and broken-hearted.

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was a man of firmer fibre than his friend and fellow-student, and his was the strong hand to take up the gage of battle when Géricault fell in the fight. For daring to depart from the classic traditions, these two young painters of the commonplace subjects of every-day human tragedy and romantic drama were savagely denounced by the academicians as traitors, as charlatans, as assassins seeking to murder art. The persecution killed Géricault, but Delacroix laughed at it. As Théophile Souvestre said of him: “The blindness of ignorance, the intrigues and clamors of envy, have not arrested him for an instant in his valiant and glorious course.” By the splendor of his genius and the virility of his work, as shown in his great pictures, “The Bride of Abydos,” “The Two Foscari,” “The Amende Honorable,” and the magnificent series of Oriental studies by which he is best known, he established the romantic school on a firm basis and attracted to it nearly all the talented and promising young painters of Paris.

Among these students and unknown painters were many whose names subsequently became famous, as Horace Vernet, Paul Delaroche, Baron Gros, Ary Scheffer, Alexandre Decamps,—artists whose noble productions gave to the romantic school its finest triumphs. In the mean time, classic art was ably and effectively supported by the distinguished labors of Doménique Ingres, pupil and successor of David, Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, Hippolyte Flandrin, and Jean Baptiste Regnault. The Academy, though defeated, still lives, and modern lovers of art find that, especially in decorative design, there is much to admire in classic subjects.

After the revolt of the romanticists the most important movement in the world of art also took place in France, and is known as the “Revolution of 1830.” To understand this movement it is necessary to consider the state of art in England, as the “men of 1830” in France derived their inspiration from John Constable, an English landscape painter. At the beginning of the century the two great artists of England were Sir David Wilkie and J. M. W. Turner. David Wilkie (1785–1841) was a portrait, historic, and genre painter, and no English artist up to his time had ever attained such wide popularity as he enjoyed. His pictures are all known the world over, as witness such titles as “The Rent Day,” “Village Politicians,” “The Blind Fiddler,” “King Alfred in the Neatherd’s Cottage,” “The Village Festival,” “Reading the Will,” “The Chelsea Pensioners,” “Blind Man’s Buff,” “The Village School,” and “John Knox preaching.”

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was one of the most remarkable artists that ever lived; a most original genius, “without ancestors and without heirs.” He was a landscape painter and a most earnest and faithful student of nature, as shown by his wonderful illustrations, in black and white, of the scenery of England and Wales. In his paintings, however, he interpreted rather than portrayed nature, investing his subjects with the grandeur and glory of his imagination. His pictures were “golden dreams,” revealing the beauty, the majesty, the sadness, and the terror inspired by nature, not from observed details “but from the image or ideal in his own mind.” Of his many masterworks mention can only be made here of “Crossing the Brook,” “Dido in Carthage,” “Palestrina,” “The Golden Bough,” “Hannibal Crossing the Alps,” “The Slave Ship,” “Battle of the Nile,” “Burial of Sir David Wilkie at Sea,” and perhaps the greatest of all, “The Fighting Téméraire.”

Turner created no school and left no successor, but he made a distinct impression on the art of England by stimulating an active interest in landscape painting. Patrick Nasmyth, Augustus Wall Callcott, John Linnell, and a score of artists turned to the study of rural scenery, with the result that they succeeded in establishing what is known as the Norwich school of landscape art. By far the most important name in the annals of this period, after Turner’s, is that of John Constable (1776–1837). Constable presents the contrast of diametric opposition to Turner. His pictures, so far from being “golden dreams,” are more like cast-iron realities. When Turner was an idealist, Constable was an uncompromising realist. If the one painted poetry, the other painted prose, and often very rugged, plain prose indeed. While Turner subordinated fact to fancy, illuminating his subjects with the glow of his fervid imagination, Constable devoutly stood before nature in the attitude of a worshiper, and faithfully labored to represent as truthfully as his powers permitted exactly what he beheld. In contrast with the shining canvases of his brilliant contemporary, Constable’s pictures seemed dark, dull, and heavy to the British public, and the original genius of the conscientious artist was not recognized. His greatest works, “Dedham Vale,” “The White Horse,” “The Hay Cart,” “Stratford Mill,” “Salisbury Cathedral,” “The Rainbow,” and others were exhibited in succession during the second decade of the century, before an indifferent public, only his fellow artists and a few connoisseurs caring for them, the painter meanwhile starving in neglect.

In 1824 two of his pictures were shown in Paris, and were then instantly understood and appreciated. They created a profound impression and, as has been justly said, inaugurated the second revolution of the century in the realm of art. By this revolution the artists were driven out of their studios and out of the city, to study nature in the spirit of humble sincerity shown by John Constable. Among the young students who went forth to encounter poverty, hardship, and the severest toil were the “men of 1830,” the founders of the Barbizon school of painting. Millet, Rousseau, Diaz, Corot, Troyon, Daubigny, and Dupré left Paris and the ways that then led to success, and sacrificed themselves to what they saw to be the truth in art. They carried the study of out-door nature further than ever before; created the standard of modern landscape art, and attained immortal fame, though not until their leader and prototype had perished in poverty.

Jean François Millet (1815–1875) has been called the greatest painter of the nineteenth century, and his masterpiece, “The Angelus,” is regarded by many as second only to the “Sistine Madonna” of Raphael in the brief catalogue of the world’s artistic treasures. He lived the life of a poor peasant in the rural village of Barbizon, attracting around him, late in life, the ablest of the “men of 1830,” and producing there those works which have placed his name first on the annals of our time: “The Sower,” “Waiting,” “Sheep-shearers,” “Woman Carding,” “The Gleaners,” “Shepherdess and Flock,” and the few others that constitute the tale of his exceedingly careful and long-considered compositions.

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) was declared, by Edmond About, to be the Moses who led the landscape painters of France out of the Egyptian bondage of academic convention into the promised land of liberty, where rivers ran water, where trees were rooted in the ground, and where animals lived, moved, and had their being. As late as 1848 the Salon rejected Rousseau’s noble work, “The Alley of Chestnut Trees,” one of the finest landscapes ever painted; but this was the last act of the academic tyrants, the foolish offense against the great master causing the old classic pedants to be relegated to oblivion. Rousseau took up his residence in Barbizon, and in the forest of Fontainebleau and the adjoining country studied those rural and pastoral scenes that have given him his place as one of the first, if not the very first, of landscape painters. Of these magnificent examples of landscape art, mention can only be made here of “The Village,” “A Pool under Oaks,” “Edge of the Forest at Barbizon,” “A Forest Interior,” “Water Course at Sologne,” and “Hoar Frost,” these being the pictures best known to the public through reproductions in black and white.

If Turner was a painter of “golden dreams,” Corot was a painter of silver dreams; the pearly haze of early morning, the pale sky and misty tree-forms of a gray day, and the soft, low tones of a still, cloudy afternoon attracting his loving devotion and commanding the conscientious exercise of his skill. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796–1875) was certainly one of the happiest artists that ever lived. Like the other “men of 1830,” he was ostracized by the Academy, and he was never allowed to receive the first medal of the Salon, but he had every other honor and compensation, and, late in life, was given a magnificent gold medal by popular subscription. For many years he could not sell a single picture, but, being fortunately independent, in a modest way, he continued to paint the subjects which, as he said, delighted his heart, and to treat them, as he again said, “with truth to your own instincts, to your own method of seeing, with what I call conscientiousness and sincerity.” In due time Corot conquered his world and, in the height of his career, was earning not less than $50,000 a year by his brush. He was a constant visitor at Barbizon, maintained a close intimacy with his friends, there, and studied in the vicinity many of the hundreds of landscapes his industrious and tireless hand rejoicingly produced.

Jules Dupré (1812–1889) and Charles François Daubigny (1817–1878) are distinguished members of the “1830” group, each standing at the head of the department of landscape art to which he was especially devoted. Narcisse-Virgil Diaz de la Peña, called Diaz (1807–1876), another of the fraternity, was not technically so thoroughly trained as his fellows, but he was a stronger colorist than any of them and a romanticist of the most pronounced type. Constant Troyon (1810–1865) was the most eminent cattle-painter of the century. He came on the scene after the revolt of Géricault was accomplished, but was in full sympathy with the movement, and is usually accounted as one of the revolutionists. So also with Jean Leon Gérôme (1824), an artist surviving to the close of the century.

He first exhibited in 1847, but he took up the line of Oriental romance, following Delacroix, and made so strong an impression with his illustrations of the splendors and glories of the East that his influence in art will be felt for generations to come. After attaining fame as a painter, Gérôme also developed marked ability as a sculptor.

In strict chronological order the birth of the pre-Raphaelite movement in art preceded the “revolution of 1830,” as the event actually occurred in Rome, about 1812. The movement was not originally known by the name subsequently given it, and it did not attain to more than local importance until it was fully developed in England, about 1850. It is to the great German artist, Peter von Cornelius (1783–1867), that the honor of originating the pre-Raphaelite revolution must be given. In 1811 Cornelius went to Rome and soon became the master spirit of the “Brotherhood of Painters,” popularly called “Nazarites,” banded together for the study of the thirteenth-century Italians, Cimabue and Giotto, and their successors in the century following, Gaddi, Simoni, and Orcagna. This Brotherhood was afterward imitated by Rossetti in London, and its purposes more fully developed; but it was the young German enthusiasts of the previous generation who affected a revival of the pure religious spirit, the devout simplicity, and the absolute sincerity of the Italian artists before the era of Raphael.

Cornelius returned to Germany in 1816, became the founder of what is known as the Munich school of painting, and was made director of the Art Institute of that city. He exercised a controlling influence in the evolution of modern German art and, indirectly, on art in England and in America. His pupil and successor, Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805–1874), imparted vitality and power to the Munich school, attracting to his classes students from all civilized countries. During the second and third quarters of this century, Kaulbach reigned as the first artist of Germany and one of the first in the world.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) founded his pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in London, with John Everett Millais—subsequently president of the Royal Academy—and William Holman Hunt, in 1848. The pre-Raphaelite movement gave a richer and stronger color to English painting in the latter half of the century, and also awakened general interest in early Christian art, that is, the art of the Italian Renaissance. Beyond this, Rossetti’s new departure, though widely advertised by John Ruskin, had very little permanent effect. Millais soon left the Brotherhood and produced his master-works, the greatest historic-genre pictures of his time, in England, after outliving pre-Raphaelite influences.

Little known outside of England, that movement did not entirely absorb British art, as proved by such a man as G. F. Watts, a master of portraiture, who made studies of many of the most notable men of the century in England, besides many imaginative works of great interest. Others were Holman Hunt, with his powerful religious conceptions, and the talented Landseer family, the youngest member of which, Edwin, is world-famous for his animal pictures. The critic and philosopher, John Ruskin, studied art and became a proficient draughtsman, although never using his skill professionally. His literary works on art, however, have had so wide an influence that it seems just to include him in the list of contributors to art’s progress in this era. His criticism of the fantastic productions of James McNeill Whistler brought forth a controversy and law suit, resulting in a verdict of damages of one farthing to the injured artist, and enough advertising gratis to secure his fame. The genius of the latter for achieving artistic effects and personal notoriety are equal to his skill in avoiding oblivion. He is a unique and interesting figure, despite his abnormal vanity, for his unquestionable talent in many lines of art, and is American by birth, English by adoption, and now French by force of circumstances. Edwin Abbey is also an adopted son of Britain, although born in America. He is better known through illustrative work in black and white, but his superb decorations in the Boston Public Library testify to his great skill as a colorist. The most illustrious growth of foreign seed on British soil has been Lorenz Alma Tadema, whose wonderful representations of Greek and Roman life place him _hors concours_ as an artist, and hold before our eyes a mirror of ancient days. Sir Frederick Leighton, the recently deceased president of the Royal Academy, was a true Briton and a leader of modern art in England, as also was Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson Butler, with her patriotic war pictures, as vigorous as any man’s could be. A talented young artist, whose untimely death cut short a promising career, was Frederick Walker, who is said to have been the original of “Little Billee” in Du Maurier’s famous novel of student life in the Latin Quarter, “Trilby.” That masterpiece takes us into the art atmosphere of Paris, and we readily understand why there is the centre of the artistic circle.

From thence have risen most of the great modern names, one of the greatest and most honored being that of Rosa Bonheur, who has received all possible distinction as an artist and reverence as a woman. Her animal pictures, especially horses and cattle, are known the world over, and the story of her early struggle for study, disguised as a boy, that she might work unmolested where a girl could hardly have gone, is well known, yet she never renounced an atom of her womanliness in adopting masculine attire. It is hard to avoid dwelling on the lives and works of the modern masters, but we must pass over the intermediate period between the revolt of 1830 and our own day, touching only an especially shining light here and there, such as Jules Breton, with his sturdy peasants; Léon Bonnat, Alexandre Cabanel, and Carolus Duran, with their elegant distingué portraiture. Besides these are Edouard Détaille and Alphonse de Neuville, showing faithful studies of soldier life and action; Eugène Fromentin, with his picturesque Arabs; and the decorative allegories of Puvis de Chavannes. The brilliant Spaniards, Mariano Fortuny and Don Frederick Madrazo, are practically Frenchmen in their art, although each is distinctly individual in manner. We must also mention Vibert, with his delightful little satires on the human frailities of the holy fathers of the Church, and Meissonier, the master of exquisite finish in detail, and Passini, with his small canvases crowded with Oriental figures glowing with color. In addition to the great French names of this time are Defregger, of the Munich School; Israels of Amsterdam, Schreyer of Frankfort, whose works all hold that quality dear to the popular heart, but despised by the high priests of lofty criticism nowadays, that is, they have a story to tell, and they tell it.

At the time these men were telling their artistic tales in Europe, such men as Washington Allston, the first great painter in this country; Thomas Sully, whose rare works in portraiture entitled him to paint the Queen of England, Victoria, when a girl; Henry Inman, also a great portrait painter; George Fuller, a painter of poetic dreams; and many others of talent, had said their say in America. Almost with the beginning of the new country, public interest had been roused in the fine arts by the efforts of such men as Gilbert Stuart and the Peales, Charles and Rembrandt, who bridged the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries together, and labored to advance the cause of art. Schools and academies, with adequate galleries for exhibition purposes, became necessary; and such institutions as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design in New York were established. The latter was started in 1802, but did not receive its charter until 1808; so the Pennsylvania Academy, which was incorporated in Philadelphia in 1806, was really the first of its kind in the country. In 1807, the minutes bearing the date of October 8 record as follows: “Until the funds of the institution will admit of opening a school on a more extended plan, persons of good character shall be permitted to make drawings from the statues and busts belonging to the Academy,” thus showing the humble beginning of art education in America. Naturally, for many years the facilities for learning were too limited to supply more than rudimentary instruction, and the pilgrimage to Paris was a necessity before an artist could feel qualified to launch out professionally. In these latter days that need no longer exists, for the great art schools of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis can amply provide all that is required; but the charm of the Latin Quarter still draws as a magnet all who can afford to go there.

In that centre is a constant mingling of ideas from all sources seeking new forms of expression, out of which proceed the impulses that vibrate through the world of current art. Naturally enough many of the new departures are futile experiments, short lived and not sufficiently important to discuss; but within recent years the movement known as impressionism has been so widespread in influence, so radical in method, and so vital in result, that it has doubtless produced a permanent effect on art. Like its predecessor, the renaissance after the dark ages, this _mouvement moderne_ was an upheaval of all forms of expression; and in painting it seemed as if a wave of dazzling color had burst over the studios, drenching the canvases with rainbow tints, flooding the exhibition galleries with bewildering brilliance. The unaccustomed eye was overwhelmed, and the confused and wondering public burst into loud outcry against the insane folly of these mad young painters, who showed purple and green gridirons, speckled with green and streaked with scarlet, and called them landscapes, marines, and figure studies as they chose. Of course the pendulum swung to its limit, the radicals carrying things to extremes after the fashion of their kind, and making foolish caricatures of work that was really great. By degrees, however, sober sense prevailed, the new ideas became better understood, the public point of view changed, and it was seen that there was method in this madness. The new movement was intended simply to interpret what the artist saw most forcibly expressed by any given subject, or, as the name implies, to record his first impression and convey the idea rather by suggestion than by explicit statement and detail. Applied to out-of-door subjects, these principles were carried out by the _plein air_ colorists, as they were styled, from their efforts to suggest atmosphere glowing with light, a feeling of space and sunshine. Edouard Manet was the leader of the new school in figure work, and Claude Monet in landscape. No two styles could be more widely different save in their mutual abhorrence of detail; the first dark, heavy, and sombre in color; the latter luminous and palpitating, every conceivable tint vibrating into harmony, an example which is followed in this country by Childe Hassam, often successfully, but sometimes with extravagance. After reaching extreme high-water mark, the flood of brilliance has somewhat subsided, and latter-day painters do not find it necessary to observe the world through a prism. While returning to more sober statements of simple truth, without trying to copy a kaleidoscope, the vision men have had of pure color sparkling with light has given them an insight into Mother Nature’s method that has left a lasting impression upon the minds and manners of the best workers and lifted the whole tone of modern painting. Whether one was prepared to enjoy truly impressionistic pictures or not, the force of them in a collection of works in the old manner of hard outline and heavy shadow could not fail to be felt like a beam of light in a dark room. However one might protest against the invader, the old friends looked dull and flat after a time, in spite of the most determined loyalty. The style of the Hudson River school was narrow and petty, full of trifling little details, the color often being forced and theatrical in effect. The striking scenery of that noble stream inspired the efforts of American landscape painters of the two decades from 1830 to 1850. Asher B. Durand was a leader among them, and for many years the manner of a generation past held sway until the new method forced a place for itself. It was an amusing experience in following exhibitions of late years to see, one after another, the leaders, long established in their own particular methods, finally breaking away from lifelong habits and coming into line with the new movement, some keeping step bravely with the vigorous newcomers, some halting along with pitiful attempts at a jaunty stride. The strong men neither hung back in sulky indifference nor flung themselves wildly about in exuberant freedom, but kept quietly on the even tenor of their way, absorbing what was best in the new, holding fast to what was best in the old, and producing the kind of work that is independent of schools and eras, but intrinsically great in itself. In Paris, the younger workers who began sending strange wild landscape and figure pictures to the exhibition at the Salon of the Champs Elysées, the most important annual exhibition in the world, were indignantly rejected by the horrified jury of selection. Equally indignant at their treatment, the young painters, who felt themselves to be the coming men, gathered their rejected treasures together in an independent exhibition of their own, and established a rival salon in the Champ de Mars, which has come to hold an equal footing in the world of art with the older institution.